Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

tomasrojo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122527533#Comment_122527533

Yeah, I remember him disliking the #andacyclist thing. He does think a lot of things are ridiculous, and he tenatively was defending the Irish Times article about cycling infrastructure being just for middle-class people.

(As I often say, people break the rules that they're able to; motorists can't really make a habit of going the wrong way down busy one-way streets or breaking red lights once the traffic in their lane has come to a stop; cyclists can't break too many speed limits.)

buffalo

Wasn't there a RSA free speed survey that had a figure of 81% of motorists speeding in one dataset? I think it was on 30kph roads.

magicbastarder

on 30km/h roads, i think it was higher than that, over 90%. well, one dataset anyway, may not have been RSA.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122528237#Comment_122528237

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122528270#Comment_122528270

It reached 98% one year, possibly 2018, before slipping back into the 80%s.

But the bould Donald only sees cyclists breaking traffic laws.

magicbastarder

i have found that it's pointless arguing against the 'cyclists break reds' argument; because plenty do. the subtleties of the argument are usually lost in the noise, and i've recently made headway with a 'yeah, so?' response.

i was able to point out to someone recently that my entire vehicle weighs less than a single tyre on their car, which was an easy metric to illustrate the folly of the false equivalence. (and yes, i also then acknowledged the total weight of cyclist plus bike).

also that when a motorist breaks a red, the burden of the risk involved falls on other road users; but with a cyclist, the burden of the (much lesser) risk falls on the cyclist.

tomasrojo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122528309#Comment_122528309

Yeah, it does actually annoy me when people using any transport mode break lights, and in particular there's a right turn I have to do on the cargo bike where I have to cross Luas tracks perpendicularly and turn sharp right and my path after the turn is often suddenly blocked by people on bikes choosing that exact moment to run a red light. In fact there are a few parts of my regular routes where I have a very short time window to cross a junction or complete a manoeuvre and I get blocked in the middle by people running lights on bikes.

It's just part of the city's rich tapestry of dumb egotism though.

Paddigol

I'm firmly in the live-and-let-live camp when it comes to red-light breaking on a bike. I'll be stopped on my bike at a red light and see cyclists carefully proceed through, and think nothing of it. Other times I'll be shaking my head as some numpty blasts through a busy junction at speed. Then there are times when I'll break my own rules and roll through a pedestrian crossing where the pedestrian has visibly already crossed before they got a 'green man'.

It kind of boils down to what should be the underlying rule for taking part in society - 'don't be a d**k'. It doesn't really matter how nice you are as a person, or how considerate, caring and even careful a person you are, if car drivers were given discretion as to when they obey traffic lights there would be carnage on the roads, both in terms of traffic congestion and injury. This clearly is not the case with bicycles. Why we can't just take an adult approach to it and recognise that bikes aren't cars any more than pedestrians are, so can be accommodated differently when it comes to road traffic rules, is beyond me.

I've concluded that 99% of the time when this topic comes up, people just want a moan as opposed to having a genuine concern.

tomasrojo

I think I should have said that it "micro-annoys" me when people run lights. Depends on how outrageous it is, but I'm not on the verge of dismay or rage all the time.

Stark

I mean the way I see it, traffic lights are there as a prioritization measure rather than a safety measure. If it was really the case that people can't be trusted to show judgement as to whether it's safe to proceed or not without reliance on the lights, how are they meant to navigate the myriad of junctions without signal control? The idiot who blasts through a red light in busy traffic without looking is the same idiot who's going to blast out of side road junctions without yielding. In a lot of countries, it's perfectly legal to make a left (or right in countries where they drive on the right) turn on a bike while treating the red light as a signal to yield to traffic, so it's a legality thing rather than a safety thing.

The one time it annoys me is if pedestrians have the green light and someone cycles through them without any due care or consideration.

tomasrojo

Yeah, blasting through pedestrian crossing time is the worst.

Most people are breaking lights with some care with regard to motorized traffic, but I'm definitely getting very little due care and attention from people on bikes waiting to cross some junctions when I'm crossing on the cargo bike (with the lights in my favour).

It's just mildly annoying. This isn't therapy time for me!

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122528734#Comment_122528734

Yeah, its the lack of consideration that annoys me too. People who cycle like the roads are their personal playground are as annoying, though nowhere nearly as dangerous (I mean to the point of almost not even registering on the scale) as drivers who do the same thing. I just don't get it. We all make mistakes now and then and may breeze through a zebra crossing not having spotted the old lady waiting to cross, but some people are just unrepentant d**ks who know exactly what they're doing but couldn't care less. In a way, I stop at red lights as a kind of public antidote to them. A cycling jesus-on-the-cross, if you like. I'm pretty much a saint.

LeoD

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122394717#Comment_122394717

The people who whinge about unused 'cycle lanes' invariably use cars as their sole mode of transport. What these whingers don't understand is that the new cycle infrastructure they are whinging about has being built especially for them as the purpose of creating a cycle network is to enable modal shift from cars. However, perceived 'empty' cycle lanes shouldn't be disregarded either as it's probably an indicator that the quality is so poor that it is not achieving its goal of attracting people from their cars. I would consider these highly visible cycle counters as a bit of a gimmick and I'd prefer to see the network designers focussing on the quality of the infrastructure they are delivering because despite Limerick's active travel team probably being one of the most proactive in the country, the overall quality of what's being delivered needs to be a lot better to enable serious modal shift.

Stark

Their examples of empty cycle lanes are so fecking cherry picked as well. David Quinn of Iona fame posted a picture of an "empty" North strand road cycle lane which coincidentally also showed empty driving lanes next to it, indicating he had to wait till the absolute quietest part of the week to take the photo. Anyone who's driven or cycled that road will know that the cycle lanes are crammed with cyclists. I have memories of driving it one time a few months back and needing to turn into a side road and it was a legit worry that I wouldn't be able to as there were no gaps in the cycling traffic whatsoever (luckily a couple of nice cyclists saw me waiting there with my indicator on and stopped to let me turn). And that was with the cycle lanes in a mess due to road works. I imagine there'll be even greater numbers when the lanes are fully finished.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122530735#Comment_122530735

I think you miss a very valid detail. Car drivers aren't whinging because of new cycle lanes being introduced. The problem that many of them have is that what was formerly road space is being allocated for cycle lanes. This causes traffic build up which frustrates both car drivers and people who live in the local area

A key example of this is the Shannon Bridge in Limerick that used to have 3 lanes of traffic 2 heading into the city, one out. The active travel team decided to remove one of those lanes to install a 2-way cycle lane. This causes traffic to build up on the Condel, North Circular and Shelbourne Roads. This annoys people commuting by car as they now spend longer in traffic as well as people living in the area as there is now more congestion on their doorstep. At the same time cyclists are no more likely to use the cycle lanes as there is no cycle lane connection on either side of the bridge. Had active travel built a new bridge instead of taking over a lane of an existing one none of these would be issues.

Recently built cycle lanes along the Childers Road and Hyde Avenue are used mainly by scrambler bikes, causes more congestion along the roads leading to them and obviously cyclists are staying away from them

My point is Limerick active travel are not seen as very competent

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122530925#Comment_122530925

Traffic was already well built up on those roads. Most of it heading for the clogged Dock Road so go away with that shte of blaming the cycle lane for taking up a filter lane on Shannon Bridge.

Did the Childers and Hyde cycle lanes take up road space ? They were mostly built on a grass verge and previous to their building the scramblers were just on the path and road anyway.

Stark

I think people easily forget just how much traffic is increasing due to population increase, increased economic activity and people returning to the office after covid. Like there's not a single cycle lane on the M50, yet the traffic on it is a total shitshow these days. You could say it's traffic avoiding city streets but the actual increase in volume of cars travelling on the M50 has been less than elsewhere. The Scholarstown road roundabout in Firhouse got similar flack after its upgrade despite traffic counters showing it was handling the same volume of cars as before, the tailbacks were due to increased volumes of traffic from all the building that had been going on in the area.

That said, I'm sure Limerick city council are also doing a **** job of making an active travel network that's compelling to use. I know Cork city council are really bad at it.

tomasrojo

This is a fairly old misunderstanding. More people can be using the adjacent cycle lanes and they can look "empty". They're just orders of magnitude more efficient in throughput. You don't get bottlenecks and backlogs of people on bikes. Twenty people in cars is enough to have a line of cars along a city block in Dublin. Twenty people on bikes can pass through a cycling-infrastructure junction in seconds.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122530990#Comment_122530990

You are correct, apologies, what I should have pointed out is that the cycle lane on the Shannon Bridge has caused more of a traffic buildup and more congestion. A journey that used to take 15 minutes now takes 45 minutes at rush hour for example. The fact that most of the traffic was heading to the dock road is irrelevant as regardless of the destination it still takes up space

The hyde avenue cycle lane was built mainly in the grass verge although the road did notably become more narrow after it was built, the childers road one was part road, part verge, again a much more narrow road after the cycle lane was installed

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122531314#Comment_122531314

If I walk the length of a cycle lane I see no bikes. Is that a sign of efficiency or underuse?

tomasrojo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122531383#Comment_122531383

I'd have to know what cycle lane you're talking about and what time of day it is. The usual way to measure usage is how many people make their way through it during various time of day, on various days.

The typical form of these meme is a car-clogged road with an empty cycle lane beside it. But it's just a snapshot. Usage figures can tell a totally different story. And roads get clogged with relatively small numbers of car users.

Even looking at the quays in Dublin, you might get the impression that it's mostly motorized traffic there at peak hous, because the motorized traffic takes up so much space. But as far as I recall more people are using the quays on bikes than in cars or vans.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122531383#Comment_122531383

Again pure lies with your 15 to 45 minutes.

By "more narrow" do you mean less lanes or the same amount but people have to be more careful when bombing through a housing estate.

You keep trying to pull the same "I'm for active travel. But" shte over on the Limerick threads. You are absolutely against every single thing that is being built in the city be it lane or building.

tomasrojo

So, basically, numbers tell the story, not snapshots. There are underused cycle facilities, and know that they are underused and why is important. But a snapshot isn't the way to figure out whether they're underused.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122531420#Comment_122531420

I'm not familiar with this meme although I can picture it in my head. I would suggest it's a bit silly to be showing still pictures about moving traffic, which I think is the point you make also.

As you correctly say, roads get clogged with relatively small numbers of car users and, as somebody else mentioned, our population is growing. So is it really sensible to be reducing the space cars have? Why not maintain the space and build our cycle lanes without removing road space?

To be honest I'm not massively familiar with the quays in Dublin but if you built a segregated cycle lane without the removal of the roadways would that improve overall traffic flow?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122531435#Comment_122531435

If somebody is sitting in rush hour traffic for 45 minutes and the driver of the car counts 3 bikes passing in that time, it tells a story. As somebody else pointed out, if you build a cycle lane and the traffic levels don't decrease then the cycle lane is obviously not doing the job it was designed to do which is move people out of cars and on to bikes.

Obviously we all agree manual surveys or counters (such as the ones I mentioned above) would be the best way to know if it's being used or not but there are other less accurate ways to tell

tomasrojo

"Why not maintain the space and build our cycle lanes without removing road space?"

This has been tried for several decades, and it's been a total failure. The only space left to take is pedestrian space, and, in Dublin city centre at least, walking is the most popular transport mode, and already have close to the least space, so why should any more be taken from them?. The other options are taking away parking spaces, and people go nuts over that too, or taking away grass verges and trees.

mvt

A cycle lanes job is not to remove people from cars & onto bikes.

Unrealistic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122532409#Comment_122532409

Yet that would seem to be a core stated aim of the state body funding the cycle lanes.

The work of the NTA’s Active Travel Programme is underpinned by the aims and objectives set out in the Government’s Climate Action Plan 2023

One of the key aims cited is to increase the number of walking and cycling networks so that walking, cycling and public transport will account for 50% of all journeys made by 2030.

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/planning-and-investment/transport-investment/active-travel-investment-programme/

Paddigol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122532544#Comment_122532544

So to summarise;

1. It's the Govt's job to get people out of cars and onto, amongst other things, bike; and
2. Its the bike lane's job to make it easier for people on bikes to commute.

I think?

tomasrojo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122532573#Comment_122532573

In the last few years, there's more emphasis on local journeys of all kinds by bike and not just commutes, though there's still a lot of emphasis on the latter.

Seth Brundle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122532609#Comment_122532609

There are multiple reasons to encourage people away from driving locally. Leaving aside the environmental and cost implications of driving a car with a cold engine short distances, we are on the whole becoming more and more overweight. We've become complacent and lazy. In general, we won't walk the 10 minutes (or 3 minute cycle) to the shop because we can drive it in 60 seconds. Now whilst the obesity issue is not all down to driving, it is a huge factor.

Shedite27

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122530925#Comment_122530925

The cars aren't stuck in traffic, they are the traffic.

Red Silurian

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122534342#Comment_122534342

They are both when roads are inefficient. With proper roads they are still the traffic but without being stuck in it. It's like the argument people make about cycle lanes, if the road is quiet then it was built efficiently