So the balls-up has started since last night which makes Fairview from clontarf to Edges corner a single lane with bollards down the centre.
This will be a permanent feature and works will take 21 months.
Noticed that earlier. So that's that then? No cars parked means people won't have issue seeing cyclists?
Update:
The greenway on the canal opens from north strand to summerhill Friday week I think
I think idea of it was a little over romanticised
The pool is operational, you can pay to use it whenever you want, however most open water swimmers will just use the sea thats free alongside it, anyone with kids need an indoor pool like Westwood, CRC, or the DCC pools
https://www.clontarfoutdoorpool.com/
The restaurant wasn't great for food, wasn't going to get people going out of the way, and a little bit too remote for any passing traffic. I went for a night out there once but it was a taxi there and taxi back job, very nice location to look out on the water when the weather was nice in the summer, but became any other restaurant once darkness fell.
This comment wins the internet today!
Wonder if the lads on Scramblers doing wheelies at high speed down Amiens Street will stop at the new bike lights?
It’s probably too big for a cafe. The little horse box across the road does good trade, but overheads are obviously way lower. And then there’s a few other coffee options not too far away on vernon avenue.
Looks like there’s still nothing much happening at the Baths? Such a shame for what could be a fabulous cafe and community facility. Kills me looking at pictures of the fabulous lidos in the UK and that pool lying there with restricted or no access at all to the community.
They are only short of putting a lollipop person at each bus stop. The world is gone mad if nonsense like this can get green lit.
DCC are doing a consultation on the Clontarf-CityCentre cycle path: https://eu.surveymonkey.com/r/M7HHBR8
Is that the same disability campaigner who said this about Ciaran Cannon when he discussed his crash...?
A story from a rabid cyclist who hates motor vehicles and refuses to wear the RSA approved safety gear. Hobble on.
There is that one disability campaigner who is driven primarily by a blind hatred of cycling. And he does seem to have some influence. Maybe this is just to shut him up.
Hard to imagine how disability campaigners are concerned with this. There are several junctions across the city that are completely impassible with a wheelchair and many streets also. And the NTA also has planning permission to make more streets impassible for wheelchair users due to their failure to meet their own design standards for bus corridors. These are real issues that they could tackle
I assume they are wasting a small amount of money in order to avoid wasting a huge amount of money implementing this nonsense everywhere. I mean, I'm hoping the point of this trial is to prove that these lights are a pile of crap which nobody (neither pedestrian nor cyclist) will use.
I assume they have some way of monitoring the effects of the lights otherwise I don't see how it would work as a trial.
It's down to appeasing disability advocates like Gary Kearney that despise cyclists and are fine with cars mowing pedestrians down but just hate anyone who uses a bike for some reason. All of it is completely irrational.
What you're suggesting is exactly what should be happening but it's not. There seems be a small but vocal number of disability advocates in Ireland who have a big problem with cycling infrastructure and DCC are willing to listen to them and try to address their concerns. The same group however, seem less preoccupied with road infrastructure which is why you don't see DCC introducing these kinds of things at road jucntions, only at cycle-lane junctions.
The situation in the picture above is literally a new build, part of the same C2CC scheme!
There are literally dozens of streets along this scheme where pedestrians of all types have to cross the street with no lights.
Or go to Grace Park Road, where ChildVision is, the school for children with sight loss (and other related facilities) and that street has multiple road crossings with no traffic lights!
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with a single light at the odd key location. The problem is buying and maintaining such lights costs a lot of money. Apparently some disability groups want them at every crossing on a cycle path. That would make building cycle paths vastly more expensive. That is how you end up with multi million Euro cycle paths!
I worry that it would greatly slow down how quickly we can roll out cycle paths by over engineering them and massively increasing costs.
But what really annoys me, it simply doesn't make any sense, the pedestrian crossings like the one in the picture above are VASTLY more dangerous, not just for the less sighted, but all pedestrians. Yet I don't hear the same disability groups complaining about them!
It is just super weird and really makes no sense.
I appreciate that, but many of these situations have been like that for a long time and I guess they want to set a new standard and do it "right", not that I think it's practical! The problem is likely that it's a straight stretch of cycle patch where cyclists would be going at a reasonable pace as opposed to a slow turn the cars would make in your image above.
Not saying I agree with any of it, just playing devil's advocate!
How does a blind person cross a road that doesn't have traffic lights?
They stick their pole out, try and listen for cars, maybe have a guide dog and they then cross and hope for the best!
The point is there are literally thousands of roads you have to cross all over Dublin that don't have lights and are vastly more dangerous then crossing a cycling path.
Take this one at the end of the Malahide road, cars, buses and trucks blast through it every day. I've seen people almost hit multiple times here, but no lights, just cross and hope for the best:
I think it's largely to aid those with impairments, such as the blind. While I completely agree that hardly any cyclist will stop at these lights, how else can you provide "safe" infrastructure for the visually impaired to get to the bus stops in these locations?
What a stupid waste of money. The ironic thing is all this is spent in some misguided effort to protect pedestrians from cyclists, yet there are vast swathes of the city where pedestrians cannot safely or conveniently cross a road with speeding CARS on it. There are junctions where you have to cross 5 times to get to where you're going and they're wasting money on this crap. The cycle lane isn't even 2m wide you can safely cross in 2 steps, you just have to LOOK and use common sense.
Irish cycle article on the new lights:
They changed immediately when I pressed them, and it stays red for 15 seconds. Then it takes 60 seconds until it allows another press to trigger the sequence again.
But I agree about it being a waste. Both cyclists/scooters/pedestrians ignore the crossing most of the time.
And everyone is going to ignore them. Pedestrians won't wait for them to change either - they'll just cross. Complete waste of time really.
Hmm, if someone's ignoring the zebra crossing they're probably going to ignore those lights. At least the lights look less insane than the Liffey valley ones.
New lights at the zebra crossings at bus stops, on trial.
A bus must have been 40cm by me when passing me by on the lane. They can get very close to you on some sections where there's only the kerb between you and the road. They should really give some space sometimes, I think they could hit people with their mirror if the cyclist is close to the road in the lane.
On some schemes there's a 3D visual representation developed using microsimulation software, but the visuals are automated on a cycle so wouldn't represent real life dynamic conditions; they're only for public consultation.
You could model different dynamic scenarios, but its timely and expensive, so not typically put forward in tendering that favours lowest cost.
It should be visible to engineers on flat maps but do they not do 3d previs of the routes too these days.
I'm very glad to hear it. Seems like a sensible approach to make these changes and then wait to see how it goes.
In fairness, they have made other quick changes in the past, like putting the red paint on the cycle path in front of the gym.
The article doesn't mention it, but I hope this change also includes removing the barriers from the parking space and either replacing it with greenery or if they don't want to make a permanent change there yet, then perhaps a different temporary measure like low planter boxes that stop cars parking there, but improve visibility.
I hope lessons are being learned from this project and will be applied to future cycle lane projects, BusConnects, etc.
