Journalism and cycling

tomasrojo

After cycling on the cobbly east end of the Grand Canal cycle route in a cargo bike last week, I also have misgivings about what we're likely to get.

check_six

Doctor Bob wrote: »

I'm sure I've said it on here before, but bad infrastructure is not an argument against infrastructure, it's an argument against bad infrastructure.

I'd probably share your concerns on the likelihood of getting good infrastructure, but it's worth noting that such a thing does exist.

I'd like to be able to point out some good stuff and say "More of that sort of thing, please".

as suggested by loyatemu:

there are some examples of good infrastructure about

Grand Canal Cycleway
Rock Road cycle lanes and the nearby contraflow lane on Newtown Ave
Clontarf Rd cycle path.
the new lanes on Wyattville Rd. are well designed.

more generally I'd like to see more contraflow lanes and bypass lanes at the top of T-junctions.

Contraflows on one way streets and bypass lanes would be my favourites.

Can anyone think of a really good junction layout that has been implemented in Ireland that would be a good example?

magicbastarder

is the contraflow on newtown avenue the one that buses have been known to drive along?

tomasrojo

Contraflows should be an easy win. They don't necessarily require anything except signage. But no progress even on them.

I mean, the Grand Canal route would link up with Harold's Cross if they just made Windsor Terrace two-way for bikes. It's being treated as two-way by people on bikes anyway, which may be irritating to those who dislike rule-flouting, but there have been no serious incidents I'm aware of. In theory, it should be quite easy to just put up the required sign.

monument

CramCycle wrote: »

If people drove slower safer, and paying more attention, then the need for segregated infrastructure would disappear.

To add to what Doctor Bob said above, the idea of motorists all behaving, along with vehicular cycling, was the aim of cycling campaigners here and in the UK and elsewhere for a long time. It has not worked anywhere, not even in places like Germany where we think they are more law abiding.

Rechuchote wrote: »

But in London, they got their core 2 bus corridors by calling in business owners and hospitals - a campaign about to start now in Dublin, to get CEOs & hospital masters, university and school bosses, &c to write to Transport for Ireland demanding safe cycling infrastructure for their employees

That's not quite how it worked in London.

Plans for two segregated routes were in place after work started by Ken Livingstone, taking up by Boris Johnson, painted crap was put in place first, then the London Cycling Campaign and others pushed their Love London Go Dutch campaign before the mayoral election getting all candidates to sign up, and a lot of things came together at once, including a high number of deaths, including some on the painted infra, and, when Transport for London put out the segregated routes to public consultation, then CyclingWorks kicked in and pushed for work places to support the projects at consultation stage -- all of that helped Boris, along with a strong head of cycling in his administration, to push ahead with the segregated routes in the face of massive opposition.

Open to correction on any of that, but I've followed developments in London fairly, and I think my timeline and details above is close enough to spot on from memory.

tomasrojo wrote: »

Contraflows should be an easy win. They don't necessarily require anything except signage. But no progress even on them.

I mean, the Grand Canal route would link up with Harold's Cross if they just made Windsor Terrace two-way for bikes. It's being treated as two-way by people on bikes anyway, which may be irritating to those who dislike rule-flouting, but there have been no serious incidents I'm aware of. In theory, it should be quite easy to just put up the required sign.

I think the city council's cycling officer might have thought the same thing back in 2010.... http://irishcycle.com/2010/04/25/contraflow-cycle-lanes-purposed-for-dublin-city/

Rechuchote

magicbastarder wrote: »

is the contraflow on newtown avenue the one that buses have been known to drive along?

Bollards…

tomasrojo wrote: »

Contraflows should be an easy win. They don't necessarily require anything except signage. But no progress even on them.

I mean, the Grand Canal route would link up with Harold's Cross if they just made Windsor Terrace two-way for bikes. It's being treated as two-way by people on bikes anyway, which may be irritating to those who dislike rule-flouting, but there have been no serious incidents I'm aware of. In theory, it should be quite easy to just put up the required sign.

There was a plan to shoot a bridge for people on bikes across from Greenmount - which would mean the route could continue through the Tenters, which is relatively quiet, into town, or else go over to Windsor Terrace to go north.

magicbastarder

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-lurid-gear-and-swanky-bikes-mark-cycling-as-the-new-golf-1.3500071

subscriber only. mcwilliams should stick to economics.

Here he is so self-assured, you don’t even have to sneak up on him. Secure among his own species, the normally socially anxious Mamil congregates with carefree abandon. Today, he luxuriates in the bright sunshine, resplendent in multi-hued plumes of bright pinks, greens and blues.

Rechuchote

Saw an excellent presentation by around 15 or 20 students from DIT Architecture yesterday, on what a paradise they would make of Harold's Cross. Mouthwatering! And it included the bridge over to the back of Griffith College.

Fighting Tao

magicbastarder wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-lurid-gear-and-swanky-bikes-mark-cycling-as-the-new-golf-1.3500071

subscriber only. mcwilliams should stick to economics.

I’m glad he can see cyclists.

rubadub

magicbastarder wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/david-mcwilliams-lurid-gear-and-swanky-bikes-mark-cycling-as-the-new-golf-1.3500071

David McWilliams: Lurid gear and swanky bikes mark cycling as the new golf
Cycling,

jaysus, that phrase is so old it would not surprise me if it has gone full circle and have someone say golf is the new cycling.

once a blue collar sport, is now the pursuit of choice for the professional classes

a blue collar sport? never heard that one before, a decent bike that competitive sporting cyclists use has always cost a fair bit.

magicbastarder

cycling being a working man's sport was something i've read quite a bit.

John_Rambo

rubadub wrote: »

jaysus, that phrase is so old it would not surprise me if it has gone full circle and have someone say golf is the new cycling

I've heard it bandied about for lots of different sports including my own. A lazy (and as you rightly pointed out) continuously rehashed, unimaginative comment to stir up a bit of hate.

eeeee

magicbastarder wrote: »

cycling being a working man's sport was something i've read quite a bit.

It is absolute bullcrap now. Racing anyway. The vast and overwhelming majority of bike racers are not working class from my experience. I've been racing 4 years now. It's a sport that requires 10 to 20 hours a week training, expensive equipment, and the necessary economic and social stability for both. Training requires recovery too, which is even more time.
That's not to say there aren't any, or it hasn't or isn't being done, of course it is, and I know some, but none of the top people in my group are working class, or near it.

magicbastarder

i should have meant i have read that in an historical sense.

eeeee

magicbastarder wrote: »

i should have meant i have read that in an historical sense.

Maybe it was back in the day. It's certainly an emancipatory tool. Bikes rule!

magicbastarder

IIRC, it was mentioned in 'slaying the badger', one of the books i've read more recently, about hinault being from a very working class background and this being quite typical.

Grassey

The formation of the Clarion Cycle Club in 1895 signifies the first explicit recognition of
the potential linkage between working class identity and cycling in the UK (Pye 1995).
The Clarion’s motto (taken from William Morris) “Fellowship is life – lack of Fellowship
is Death”, and its propagandising work aimed to promote the use of the bicycle as a
means of liberation for working class men and women. Though the intention of the
Clarion CC was primarily propagandist and cycling was simply a means by which to
spread propaganda, the growth of local clubs and activities, and the increasing
availability of a second-hand cycle market enabled a significant change in the image of
the cycle as a bourgeois plaything. The process enabled by the bicycle for the Clarion
CC was two fold – both to provide physical means of escape from the confines of urban
industrial life and to provide the means for said fellowship.

An interesting and diverting read for a Monday morning
http://www2.uwe.ac.uk/faculties/FET/Research/cts/cycling-society/Peter-Cox.PDF

CramCycle

loyatemu wrote: »

there are some examples of good infrastructure about

Grand Canal Cycleway
Rock Road cycle lanes and the nearby contraflow lane on Newtown Ave
Clontarf Rd cycle path.
the new lanes on Wyattville Rd. are well designed.

more generally I'd like to see more contraflow lanes and bypass lanes at the top of T-junctions.

I would disagree, I find most of these examples of bad infrastructure. I nearly always use the road around the grand canal. The lights there infuriate everyone except those going across the canal to the point where pedestrians and cyclists have no idea what is really going on (Rock road crossing), with several shared points being so narrow that you can barely have more than two people there(crossing as you head west at Leeson St.). The rock road is still horrible with several motorists driving over the bollards on a regular basis, and the clontarf cycle path suffers from "bigus dicus" where a small number of cyclists can't deal with pedestrians in a civilised fashion.

As I said to my partner on Sunday as comment was passed on the pedestrians on the cyclepath.

There is one thing worse than a pedestrian on a cycle path, and that is a cyclist who cannot safely get around a pedestrian on a cycle path.

Doctor Bob wrote: »

Not necessarily true.

There was a scheme in Poynton in the UK a few years ago that relied heavily on shared space, i.e. mixing cycling and motorised traffic. As I understand it, it did deliver considerable benefits for pedestrians - who had dedicated space, interestingly - and resulted in a less traffic-dominated town centre. But cyclists didn't benefit as much as was hoped/promised. One of the roads in the scheme had a single 3 metre traffic lane in each direction, separated from each other by a raised central median. This did slow traffic and require drivers to pay more attention, but it also required cyclists to queue up as there wasn't space to pass up the inside of traffic (unless they used the footpath). Had the scheme included segregated cycle tracks, cyclists would have been able to bypass the traffic queue.

I'd have no issue with that to be honest. Pedestrians must always be the first priority and they seemed to nailed that. I remember the pics from the scheme. If I have it right it seemed more that some cyclists were unsure of what they were and were not allowed do rather than a lack of space.

Doctor Bob wrote: »

I'm sure I've said it on here before, but bad infrastructure is not an argument against infrastructure, it's an argument against bad infrastructure.

I'd probably share your concerns on the likelihood of getting good infrastructure, but it's worth noting that such a thing does exist.

It does exist but it is so rare that one wonders if trying to remove or rehabilitate the road users that cause the danger might be a more productive use of resources.

monument wrote: »

To add to what Doctor Bob said above, the idea of motorists all behaving, along with vehicular cycling, was the aim of cycling campaigners here and in the UK and elsewhere for a long time. It has not worked anywhere, not even in places like Germany where we think they are more law abiding.

It won't work here until enforcement is brought in heavy handedly. You report an incident here, with camera footage and it routinely gets ignored. It should have a civilian team, get unedited footage and a fine. Keep that up for long enough, along with red light and average speed cameras and you will solve an outrageous amount of issues in 3 months. Not only ones caused by motorists but by cyclists as well.

tomasrojo

The McWilliams article is behind a registration wall, but I probably wouldn't read it anyway. I assume it's another attempt to make out that adults on bikes are just taking part in the latest craze, rather than leveraging a wonderful, versatile transport mode to make their lives better, as if bikes are essentially hula hoops (or golf clubs).

McWilliams wrote an article years ago, which I've never seen since, in which he claimed that child bike seats were the ultimate symbol of smugness, again with the implication that things that appear to be practical adaptations to make some activity possible or easier are in fact just a form of virtue signalling.


Also, professionally he only ever had one good idea, which was to look at house prices in terms of price/earnings ratio, which meant he correctly judged that house prices in Ireland were substantially overvalued. He was wrong in thinking that they couldn't get much more overvalued though.

Chips Lovell

It's the laziest thing I've seen in ages. Not so much phoned in as yawned from beneath a duvet.

buffalo

tomasrojo wrote: »

The McWilliams article is behind a registration wall, but I probably wouldn't read it anyway. I assume it's another attempt to make out that adults on bikes are just taking part in the latest craze, rather than leveraging a wonderful, versatile transport mode to make their lives better, as if bikes are essentially hula hoops (or golf clubs).

I read it on Saturday. It's an odd article essentially arguing that cycling is great and healthy, but is the hobby of the elite rich people, written in a constantly condescending tone.

I came away from it wondering if he was trying to rile cyclists up, but hadn't the heart to really commit. It certainly hadn't anything that merited being published.

Here are some samples, hopefully avoiding the Sherlock:

Once refreshed, the congress of Mamils and Willows get back on their carbon-framed Ridleys, Specializeds or Canyons, bikes that can set you back more than a few grand, and head up the steep Wicklow hills. Cycling is not for the faint-hearted; it is difficult and demands commitment and this is why it’s popular.

Cycling is hard, it gets people fit and even if the caricature of the Mamil is as much defined by his paunch as his mettle, imagine his paunch without the wheels?

Or maybe the camaraderie of a congress of Mamils and Willows, head to toe in excessively tight, almost auto-erotic, exotically coloured, flamboyant clobber is simply too irresistible.

tomasrojo

So he's going with a minor variation of cycling gear is sexually perverse. He's terribly original, isn't he?

Also, just on stylistic nit picks:

Today, he luxuriates in the bright sunshine, resplendent in multi-hued plumes of bright pinks, greens and blues

"Luxuriate", "bright" and "resplendent" are all doing much the same thing.
"Multi-hued" followed by a list of colours is also pretty redundant.

QueensGael

Ooo, I'm a Willow now, and there I was, tearing around unmonikered all these years

CramCycle

What in ****s name is a Willow? I can understand the Mamil but Willow?

Women in luxurious lycra ominously weaving?

Grassey

CramCycle wrote: »

What in ****s name is a Willow? I can understand the Mamil but Willow?

Women in luxurious lycra ominously weaving?

Women I'd Love-to Look-at Out-in Wicklow

QueensGael

Women in Lurid Lycra on Wheels

(not all that dramatic really!)

tomasrojo

Journalist Economist Rattling Keyboard

Annie get your Run

QueensGael wrote: »

Women in Lurid Lycra on Wheels

(not all that dramatic really!)

I think its Luminous :pac:

QueensGael

My bad!

eeeee

QueensGael wrote: »

Women in Lurid Lycra on Wheels

(not all that dramatic really!)

Ha ha ha I'm a willow so too!
I'll glad there's a counterpart to the mamil, andr you don't even have to be middle aged to be a willow! #winwin