Strand Road Appeals Judgement due 11th April 2025
https://irishcycle.com/2025/02/12/long-awaited-strand-road-cycle-path-judgment-due-in-april-2025/
Wonder how they'd squared the circle of correcting the obvious error from the judge, while also not undermining the judge due to his recent promotion.
Judges rule based on the information presented to them. So, in this case, there will obviously be some additional information that was not brought to the attention of the earlier judge. Had the previous judge seen that information, then naturally, he would have come to more or less the same decision as the new judge will…
Yeah, considering how plainly the judges highlighted the original, blatant mistakes, I'm not sure how they could get around it.
Remember when we used to build Greenways?
Pepperridge farm remembers
most of the low hanging fruit is done or in progress - canals and old railways which had no prospect of reopening. Now we're into more contentious projects that will just get bogged down in our useless planning system.
In addition a lot of projects are happening but at a more local level (there's probably plenty of missing routes on the map, especially town networks).
Work on almost the full potential length of the South Kerry Greenway is ongoing, that's going to be huge when it opens (and hopefully there will be a serious clamour for a safe high quality route from Killarney to Glenbeigh to make it an even bigger tourist draw)
After that the next 'big' greenway is probably going to be the grand canal. It's awaiting three sections to be completed for the full length of the mainline from GCD to the Shannon (Portobello to Suir Road, Grange Castle to Hazelhatch, Sallins to Edenderry) once those are complete you can traffic free cycle from Dublin to the Shannon, Athy, and with the Planned bog railway networks potentially as far as Clonmacnoise (Linking to the "easy" to build sections of the Galway to Athlone greenway).
But yes many of the other 'big' projects are facing pushback, and the small schemes are vital but are never going to recieve much fanfare.
Blessington is one of the big ones that's in trouble having been rejected by ABP - has anyone seen the reasons for rejection, are they surmountable? If it's just the one-way systems on the bridges then I'd have thought building separate bridges for the greenway or cantilevering it off the existing road bridges would be an option (albeit requiring more money). If it's environmental issues that might not be so simple to fix.
Blessington was refused due to wildlife, waterquality and skyline concerns…
https://www.thejournal.ie/blessington-greenway-planning-denied-6567615-Dec2024/
Update for Cork East section of the map:
Carrigtohill greenway well underway now with earthworks and metalworks along a lot of the route.
Waterrock section (NW Midleton) now effectively complete and open
Tivoli section (Glanmire to City Phase 2) has been approved and is in Planned/In Progress
Midleton South towards Aghada is underway
Below Midleton SW is complete:
Once the mainline Grand canal is done the lack of progress on the Barrow navigation from Athy down to St Mullins is going to really stick out, it would be an attractive, off road link from the SE, possibly we could have greenway all the way for Rosslare port up into the Midlands and Dublin.
@hans aus dtschl what route is this?
"Midleton South towards Aghada is underway"
I can't find any design references online at all?
The Cork Co Co website changed and everything was lost unfortunately. "Ballinacurra to Midleton" was the overall, and some images are below.
https://www.dbfl.ie/project/ballinacurra-to-midleton-pedestrian-and-cycle-route/#:~:text=This%20pedestrian%20and%20cycle%20route,and%20the%20Midleton%20Train%20station.
It's all underway right now, but some sections (as I drew above) are complete.
The section to the very South is only a few weeks from completion by the looks of it. The Northern section including train underpass are underway but are a good bit away from being finished. Months at minimum.
There's also a park planned to the very north as well which will link to the North West, directly into Waterrock.
https://www.corkcoco.ie/sites/default/files/2023-07/water_rock_linear_park_drawing_pack.pdf
What's been completed in Waterrock is extremely low quality. It involves 10 or so cyclist yield signs per km and beg buttons for the traffic lights. You can see these from google maps now, and I was able to count the stupid "yields". The sections in the drawing above are of much higher quality, proper greenway.
In fact that drawing I did doesn't cover everything, here's a more complete one, minus Waterrock and the new linear park:
Thanks! Should all be updated now, let me know if I'm missing anything.
Sorry, I should have remembered more, while we were out in East Cork:
https://www.corkcoco.ie/sites/default/files/2024-01/8._scheme_drawings.pdf
It's like this, using your map:
And there's also the Carrigaline TPREP greenways, I think you have some of these but not others, basically there's an overall plan for Carrigaline that's being implemented piecemeal and will theoretically have the black lines from the below: some of these are one-per-side but the main spine is the greenway which arrives from the North (as you have drawn) and then both connects to the Crosshaven greenway and also goes directly West towards the other side of town, like an upside-down T
Can I ask for one @hans aus dtschl per town to contribute to this thread thanks! 😁
Royal Canal Greenway is done now from lock 13 to Confey station.
Cycle path under construction on the Maynooth-Leixlip road from just west of Intel towards main entrance to Carton House.
^^^ The surface looks so much better than the road 😎
Needs to be.
Cycles need very smooth surfaces. Cars have twice as many wheels and much fatter tyres and drivers can handle potholes much easier than a cyclist.
Thankfully the weight of bikes also means that a well maintained surface will last a lot longer than a road surface will
Eh, no.
Bike lights are a real thing.
We don't need anymore light pollution thanks.
I was really just excitedly stating the obvious. I've cycled that stretch so much and know how crappy it is so the new surface is to be welcomed.
Cannot wait for this to be open. Cycling through those road works at the moment is seriously dodgy. No room to overtake so if you happen to be holding up an impatient git in a car it's very high risk
I've gone from not wanting greenways to using them heavily even for slower winter training spins now, the rolling resistance is as good or better than dual carriageways. It's a small thing, but it makes a bigger difference than I expected
If the surface on the cycle path is worse than the road the some (many) cyclist will use the road - particularly if they have narrow racing type tyres.
Those with narrow racing type tyres aren't the target audience, confident road cyclists are going, to use the road no matter what the facilities are.
Hell some of them are actively opposed to cycling infrastructure (either they see it as pointless, or antagonising drivers (themselves included))
A safe cycling route with minimal interaction with drivers is for anyone who wouldn't have been confident on a road bike, and definitely not confident taking primary on a road for any stretch of time.
the main gripe serious cyclists have with cycle lanes is that if they exist on a road, drivers expect all cyclists to use them (even if they're badly designed, don't have priority, are covered in joggers and dog walkers or one of the many other reasons not to use them) and you're likely to get even more aggro than usual from drivers if you're cycling on the road.
BusConnects is a good example of this - yes it will provide safe and mostly continuous cycling routes into the city, but anyone who already cycles these routes will find their journey a lot slower as they'll be expected to wait for bike-specific signals at many junctions where general traffic will have priority.
I don't think any cyclists have a problem with off-road greenways.
