Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

Ah the poor bus drivers, pregnant women and children. All cyclists should get off the cycle lane on Alfie Byrne Road so these lads can park their buses for 2 concerts this weekend.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2022/0422/1293799-ed-sheeran-concert-coaches-bus/

Yup the aptly named “Docklands Coach Parking Facility” just behind the train station there. Built specifically by the NTA for this kind of thing, but the operators won’t pay for it.

edit: actually it’s only open from 7am to 7pm according to the NTA website, which is daft

Yeah that’s the one, you enter through the slip road here

It looks like NTA have given them Whitehall church car park anyways

Croke Park not the only place that saw cycle lane induced 'chaos' this week.

Parking at Dublin Zoo

Sat, Apr 23, 2022, 00:05

Sir, – Over the Easter Holiday, there were chaotic scenes in the Phoenix Park as thousands of families, hoping to visit Dublin Zoo, struggled to find parking.

The Dublin Zoo is a truly national Irish institution, with families travelling from Kerry, Belfast, Cork, Galway, etc, to see this beautiful and educational campus. However, over Easter many simply had to give up when they could not park their car, as the Dublin Zoo car park and nearby areas were completely oversubscribed.

The cause of this chaos was a deliberate decision by the Office of Public Works to end public parking along the main Chesterfield Avenue in order to create new cycling lanes on both side of this road, despite the fact that perfectly adequate cycling lanes, separate from the road, have for years existed a few yards away, through the grass. The only reason for this perverse decision was an ideological antagonism to those wishing to arrive by car.

It is simply wrong to ask families, especially those with young children and buggies, to arrive at Dublin Zoo either by foot or through the non-existent public transport system in the Phoenix Park. Many of these families have travelled huge distances to get to the Dublin Zoo.

It is yet another example of the “Green Agenda” losing touch with reality and inflicting needless discomfort on the local citizenry.

It is time for our local politicians, including Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, to put a stop to this new regime and allow parking again on Chesterfield Avenue. – Yours, etc,

Dr RAY BASSETT,

Dublin 15.

Glad to say I've never heard of either of them (dont do twitter).

Nonetheless, Irexit or not, he is given an audience in the Irish Times.

This line alone - "The only reason for this perverse decision was an ideological antagonism to those wishing to arrive by car."

He is saying that the only reason the cycle path was put in was so as to antagonise motorists. FFS. Of course he is allowed say it. But he isnt the one publishing it.

Cant ignore it - its a letter in the Irish Times, with a huge readership, complaining about motorists being disenfranchised by cycle lanes. One of probably hundreds of such letters over the past decade. Factually incorrect, but sure why does that matter.

Do you think any disgruntled motorist will read that and say "well its Ray Bassett, so I wont take this too seriously".

But when you say 'needlessly clogs up', I'd have thought it from a different perspective that they have concentrated all the traffic on Chesterfield so that other parts of the park can be pedestrianised/ one way.