Meanwhile on the Roads...

RTE Prime Time— Tuesday 25th November-- a report from the Cycle Lanes to Nowhere in South Kildare. This utter fiasco needs a national conversation as TII are becoming a law unto themselves; local concerns over safety, never mind the extraordinary overspend, are continuing to mount. If this becomes national policy, we might as well just sell our bikes and be rid of them

Yes, that is correct. Landing this urban style infrastructure on to a rural community has seen an extraordinary increase in incidents and injuries (at least 50 since July, with a number of hospitalisations) whereas the past 20 years has seen only a handful of such incidents on either hard shoulder. Ivory Tower engineers and commentators hold a lot of influence in Ireland and here we see the unfortunate unfolding of same

For a random KM of regional/national road you could easily have 5-10 landowners.

Each landowners is entitled to

*Compensation for lost land

*Compensation for effect on rest of holding

*Professional fees for solicitor, perhaps barrister, valuer and maybe engineer.

If we want to create a massive cottage industry for professionals CPO would be the way to go.

There's a reason councils avoid them where possible.

That's why CPOs are largely avoided and you can regularly get over 50% more than your land value from any council looking to buy your land

One good solution is to build cycle lanes without taking over road space. Doing so would reduce any unnecessary tension between road users, particularly cyclists and drivers. When it comes to cost we're building a bike lane, not a bike shelter, so there should be better value there for all

There are many things you could do. Some of the suggestions that were already here such as in a rural setting above you buy the land from the nearby landowners. In an urban setting you could cut back footpath space or only have a path on one side of the road. New bridges for river crossing points

All sensible stuff and the right team could probably get them done for less than the price of a dáil bike shelter

Previous stats for RTA's on the old N9 are held in the Garda database; local consultation in previous months unearthed a very small number (single figures) on this specific stretch of road since this road by-pass opened. Recent stats are being logged by the local resident group, who forward them to the Gardai and the contractor. 62 incidents so far— that's only the ones that are being logged. The recent uptick is easily explained if one was to visit the site itself, especially in darkness or bad weather

”North Korean Style”?

https://road.cc/content/news/kildare-cycle-lane-no-purpose-40-incidents-317013?fbclid=IwZnRzaAOT28ZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeA7Vsl2HnNoQJHhLIpY4kXNErKMxQ8vdLz9Ll2lysGrd0M57sY8dQt8IHigk_aem_IpJVJE1xRLorw9wxDZnrkQ

What Garda database? Who got the figures from it?

You're counting apples and oranges there, with very different criteria for the before and after counts.

Ok-- you have an opinion on the matter, that corresponds with a lot of the condescending and dismissive communication locals have become accustomed to since the diggers and trucks arrived. There are no apples or oranges involved and if you are supportive of this scheme, then so be it.

I'll go further and say that there was almost no need for this study in the first place. The National Cycle Design Manual is already of a higher standard than TII's one and it provides them with plenty of best-practice examples. The whole play here was that they don't want to adhere to the National Cycle Design Manual, want to water it right down and want to create their own low-quality cycle design guideline for non-urban roads. But by watering the cycle design they effectively got a result of "everyone loses".

I don't think that's a reasonable appraisal of the post you were replying to. I didn't think the poster was being condescending or dismissive. And I suspect the poster may actually not actually be supportive of the scheme because of its low quality cycle design features.

I think this project is rubbish too, but my own initial thoughts were also that the data you're referencing unfortunately isn't fully reliable. This can best be summarised as "higher levels of reporting correlates with higher levels of monitoring" if that makes sense. The Gardai themselves do this the opposite way around, with press releases on "reduced recorded crime numbers" etc which can be realised through lower levels or recording rather than actual reduction in crime.

Anyway, the TLDR version: your data here could be indicative but it's unfortunately not conclusive right now.

Depends on the urban setting obviously. Point is there are ways to go about building cycle lanes but taking over road space is the current go-to. Probably all done to create a divide and conquer situation

They are not stopping the sulky races, they just moved them to another road. You need strong legislation and strong enforcement to stop the sulky racing outright