Protected cycle lanes to schools

Chuchote

smacl wrote: »

One my daughter is using below which is quite good. It demands a fair land take though, so while it works well in new developments it is difficult to retrofit to constrained spaces.

Mostly in cities, spaces are only constrained because for some strange reason we accept that having unused cars taking up road space for twelve hours per day is normal. If we moved parking off the roads, it would free all this space.

magicbastarder

speaking of parking on the road, how in hell did this get planning permission? parking at ashtown in D15, pulling out directly onto the river road. which is not the widest road in dublin.

https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3776393,-6.3307462,3a,75y,82.69h,82.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfaGq4gsyohPqdjfLbOhyRg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

smacl

Deedsie wrote: »

What's wrong with dropping kids to a bus stop closer to your home? Or God forbid walking them to the bus stop and waiting until they get on.

I think most people follow the path of least resistance, and often lack imagination. On days that my daughter doesn't cycle for example, we're car pooling with other parents in our area. The kids walk up to a local meeting point and one parent brings a car full in each day, which cuts the total number of car based school journeys by a factor of three to four. One scheme I saw working in the States was the equivalent of a bollarded off bus lane which was for cars with three or more passengers, which made car pooling the most efficient form of travel in congested areas. Get rid of single occupancy car travel during rush hour and you solve the traffic issue without having to rebuild the infrastructure.

Chuchote

You solve the traffic issue. What you don't solve is the child health issue. We're bringing up a generation of passive little slugs who don't know how to take charge of their own lives. Getting them cycling to school would kickstart a different way of growing up.

seamus

I think on-road cycle lanes don't really do much in this regard. At best it makes our own commutes easier, but as others have pointed out, they'll just become another place for idiots to pull in, "just for two minutes".

I think a greater focus on non-road routes is a good idea. Cycling routes that take direct paths through fields, laneways and pieces of wasteland. When I was growing up there were dirt paths everywhere across all sorts of green areas, giving kids direct walking routes to schools and shops and wherever.

Rather than taking the clever tack and paving these trails, they instead built fences to stop people getting through, and force them to follow the roads instead. So it's no wonder that people drive when you're being forced to walk the same route.

Every piece of council land should have paths across them linking point A to point B, for use by walkers and cyclists. Every new estate built should have a minimum of 1 pedestrian/cycle entrance for every 50m of road frontage, and an accessible route through the development to all adjoining lands. Part of the reason why people drive everywhere is because we stopped creating ways for pedestrians and bikes to get around and started building sealed, gated developments.

The traffic issue I think unsolvable by enforcement. As much as I'd like to see an army of Gardai fining people for poor parking and forcing them to pull in 500m away from the school, it's unfeasible. People are too sh1tty for it to work. Instead you have to make it easier to get to the school by means other than driving.

magicbastarder

as mentioned elsewhere, there were genuinely far fewer cars on the road (probably less than half) when i was cycling to school over 20 years ago. while lane design may have changed, the roads are the same width on the route i cycled; would be interesting to cycle those roads again on my clunky old mountain bike with a bag of heavy books, as a 13 year old, but with the modern volumes of traffic.

Chuchote

Depends what you mean by on-road cycle lanes. Protected lanes can't be parked on.

Council estates and paths - well, it depends on the estate. When I lived beside Fatima Mansions back in the day, there was a huge child and teen crime problem. It was solved by building walls between the blocks so that the kids had to walk around to join up into big groups. Ended the problem instantly.

I'm not, obviously, saying that all council blocks have rough and scary gangs. This was a problem of its time and place. And Simon Coveney's plan for mixed housing is a good one, which will stop ghettoisation from happening again, if it comes to pass.

endacl

Jep Gambardella wrote: »

We need to do better at informing people that cycling isn't dangerous.

Building cycle lanes like these only reinforces the perception that young cyclists shouldn't be on the road.

Nonsense. Door to door covered cycle lanes, floored with that bouncy playground stuff. Each child to wear jacket, trousers and helmet made from bubblewrap. The 'big bubble' kind. Mandatory stabilisers till the age of 16. Tricycles for delicate children.

Carawaystick

magicbastarder wrote: »

speaking of parking on the road, how in hell did this get planning permission? parking at ashtown in D15, pulling out directly onto the river road. which is not the widest road in dublin.

https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3776393,-6.3307462,3a,75y,82.69h,82.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfaGq4gsyohPqdjfLbOhyRg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

There's cycling lanes and a footpath through the park across the road, and along the canal and through the development.
It's a 50kmh speedlimit area, the parking bays are outside where the road was originally.

magicbastarder

i wasn't really referring to it in terms of cycling - the river road is not a road i've a great hankering to cycle on, but i was surprised they'd allow parking spaces directly pulling out onto the road.

Chuchote

Carawaystick wrote: »

There's cycling lanes and a footpath through the park across the road, and along the canal and through the development.
It's a 50kmh speedlimit area, the parking bays are outside where the road was originally.

But why should private cars take up public space?

magicbastarder

as Carawaystick mentioned, where the spaces are is not on the public road itself, or on public property.

Chuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

as Carawaystick mentioned, where the spaces are is not on the public road itself, or on public property.

Really? It's a private road paid for by residents?

magicbastarder

no, the road is public. the parking spaces are not (would not be 100% certain, but before those apartments were built, where the parking spaces are would have been hedgerow IIRC.

Chuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

no, the road is public. the parking spaces are not (would not be 100% certain, but before those apartments were built, where the parking spaces are would have been hedgerow IIRC.

So Our Road Tax is paying for people's private parking. Harrumph!

07Lapierre

Chuchote wrote: »

So Our Road Tax is paying for people's private parking. Harrumph!

Were cyclists! we dont pay road tax remeber? :P

Plastik

Nobody pays road tax.

Carawaystick

Chuchote wrote: »

Really? It's a private road paid for by residents?

The land where the parking is, was a private field/ditch before the land was developed. The cost of implementing the parking would have beed bourn by the owners of the land now. The owners might or might now live in the developed land. The land where the road is is public land.

tomasrojo

smacl wrote: »

One scheme I saw working in the States was the equivalent of a bollarded off bus lane which was for cars with three or more passengers, which made car pooling the most efficient form of travel in congested areas.

You'll just get Larry David-types picking up three prostitutes to make up the numbers, instead of one.

Carawaystick

Chuchote wrote: »

And the biggest change to cycling could be if Ireland built protected cycle lanes for a mile to every school.

I don't think you appreciate that implementing a one size fits all school would be impossible.

Firstly, Do you mean to have a cycle lane on all approaches to a school in a 1 mile radius?
Secondly, If the road is too narrow to implement a cycle lane, would you CPO land to build these lanes?
Thirdly, would you cpo extra land inside a ditch, to avoid removing thousands of miles of hedgerows, or thrash nature to build cycle lanes that may be unnecessary?
Fourthly, where would the funding come from? Dept Education, local councils, chronically underfunded schools?
Fifthly, would this be implemented for temporary schools? where it is highly likely the school will be moving to a different location soon?
Sixthly, are you including or excluding schools of adult education?
Seventhly, What change to cycling in Ireland do you predict happening from your cycle lane building?

smacl

Darkglasses wrote: »

As for cycling numbers, I worked in a large secondary school for about 2 years recently enough, and in that time there was one boy (out of over 600) who would cycle a couple of times a year. One day, about 7 out of the 600+ cycled in due to a special initiative in the build-up to CAS. One or two teachers cycled in habitually. Other than that, there was only ever me.

Youngest is in her first year of a new secondary school with just 28 kids in the year. Seven currently cycling, and a few more planning to. I could see it developing a cycling culture quite easily, as the kids use bikes socially to get around. Decent off road tracks help where they're there, about half the 10k in our case. From what I'm told, about half the staff also cycle.

Sorry to see there is so few in Wexford. Loads of club cyclists on the road whenever I'm down, so you'd think the roads aren't that dangerous or that safe routes couldn't be put together,

Chuchote

Carawaystick wrote: »

I don't think you appreciate that implementing a one size fits all school would be impossible.

Firstly, Do you mean to have a cycle lane on all approaches to a school in a 1 mile radius?
Secondly, If the road is too narrow to implement a cycle lane, would you CPO land to build these lanes?
Thirdly, would you cpo extra land inside a ditch, to avoid removing thousands of miles of hedgerows, or thrash nature to build cycle lanes that may be unnecessary?
Fourthly, where would the funding come from? Dept Education, local councils, chronically underfunded schools?
Fifthly, would this be implemented for temporary schools? where it is highly likely the school will be moving to a different location soon?
Sixthly, are you including or excluding schools of adult education?
Seventhly, What change to cycling in Ireland do you predict happening from your cycle lane building?

When you don't want something it's easy to pick, pick, pick.

smacl

Chuchote wrote: »

When you don't want something it's easy to pick, pick, pick.

True, but there are probably better more cost effective ways of getting kids to use bikes to get around. If the bike2work for example was extended to bike2school many more kids could afford have decent commuters. Good kids bikes still aren't cheap, and my experience is that bad kids bikes put kids off cycling. More education around cycling is also needed, as many parents are clueless as to the safety of cycling and what is a reasonable distance for kids to cycle. Lastly, as _cdaly pointed out, if you make driving a single kid to a school more difficult than the alternatives, people will use the alternatives, with the result of less traffic around schools. I think kids not cycling as much as they should is as much a cultural as an infrastructural problem.

magicbastarder

smacl wrote: »

Good kids bikes still aren't cheap, and my experience is that bad kids bikes put kids off cycling.

even something like having someone visit a school to talk to parents about what to get and what to avoid in bikes for kids might be good.
e.g. kids like full suspension bikes, but parents may ne interest to know they're heavy and of little benefit unless you spend quite a bit of money.

Chuchote

Most parents are not going to allow their kids to cycle to school unless there are protected lanes.

magicbastarder

smacl wrote: »

Lastly, as _cdaly pointed out, if you make driving a single kid to a school more difficult than the alternatives

are there any stats on the average distance from school a secondary pupil lives?

Chuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

are there any stats on the average distance from school a secondary pupil lives?

There are, begob

http://www.cso.ie/en/census/censusforschools/census2002schoolresources/factsforstudents/averagedistancetravelledtoschool/

Actually, those are old.

Means of travel (1911):

http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/Statire/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?maintable=CD003&PLanguage=0

Travelling to primary school to bike: Children at school aged between 5 and 12 years
Bicycle Both sexes 6,252
Students at school or college aged between 13 and 18 years
Bicycle Both sexes 6,592
Students at school or college aged 19 years and over
Bicycle Both sexes 8,530

Census stuff from 2006:

http://www.cso.ie/en/newsandevents/pressreleases/2007pressreleases/censusvolume12-traveltoworkschoolandcollege/

Of the 247,000 primary school children who were driven to school in 2006 (55% of the total) 44,000 were driven 1 kilometre or less. A further 105,000 were driven 4 kilometres or less.

Among secondary school students there was a marked difference in transport use between urban and rural dwellers with over half of children in rural areas taking the bus compared with one in five in urban areas. In all, 45% were driven 4 kilometres or less to school, representing 43,000 car journeys.

No mention of cycling in these figures.

Here's 2011. I'll let you sort out the figures for yourselves, horribly presented

https://data.gov.ie/dataset/travel-to-work-school-and-college

magicbastarder

4.8km average in urban areas; higher than i would have guessed. though i was thinking along the lines of nearest school, rather than school attended (speaking as someone who did not attend the secondary school nearest me, i should have factored this in).

Chuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

4.8km average in urban areas; higher than i would have guessed. though i was thinking along the lines of nearest school, rather than school attended (speaking as someone who did not attend the secondary school nearest me, i should have factored this in).

But remember that average will have been vastly increased by kids like my nephew who used to take the train from Portarlington to a Dublin school every day.

magicbastarder

i assume the urban/rural divide refers to where the pupil lives, rather than the location of the school.