Journalism and Cycling 2: the difficult second album

One afternoon a few years ago, I happened to be riding past one of the construction sites we were managing (for a client with an extremely stringent position on safety) at finishing time and, exactly as you've noted, the standard of driving from people leaving the site was appalling - people who, inside the site fence, had an exemplary safety record.

I spoke with the construction manager the following morning and while "words were had" with some of the offenders, we had neither carrot nor stick to impact worker behaviour on public roads.

Just seeing the pushback Donald Clarke got on Twitter for saying that, as a man of sixty who has never had a driver's licence, he thinks the implication that he lacks independence and is a burden is ludicrous. The pushback is mostly the usual how-dare-you-you-people-in-Dublin-argle-bargle, and fair enough, there are places where car-dependency is just a fact of life but the implication that normal people, people who don't get laughed at, drive habitually is unmistakeable, and it's in direct opposition to government and EU policy. They're not the good-driving agency.

(The RSA replied that the "burden" framing was one they got from young men in surveys. I bet they also could get some framing about what sort of magnet a car is. Might see that in the next ad they run.)

Yeah, though he seemed overall like a decent enough guy in any online interactions I had with him back when I used Twitter (I stopped posting back when Musk started opining about Varadkar not liking Irish people). I guess he can be a bit prickly (and pedantic about words in a way I'd personally regard as ahistorical).

What is particularly disappointing about the the current RSA position is that about 2 weeks ago, they had a representative on Radio 1 talking about their research into motorbike injuries. It was interesting to hear the rep talking about the risks bikers experienced from drivers and that some of the most common situations were as a result of poor driver behaviour. There was no attempt to victim blame.

Contrast that with the RSA approach to cyclists and pedestrians where the company line is based around the continued indemnification of motorists.

RSA on bikers hit by drivers: "The driver is not paying attention and needs to be more considerate"

RSA on cyclists hit by drivers "It's probably your own fault for not wearing The Magic Jacket"

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.

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

But the bould Donald only sees cyclists breaking traffic laws.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

I think most people assume that the cycle lane is underused if they see no bikes on it. The counters I mentioned earlier would put that argument to bed or even something similar to what we have for counting cars with those 2 black cables running across the road.

Fact is nobody has the definitive numbers of how many cyclists use a particular stretch of lane but when no cyclists at all are seen during a rush hour period it certainly suggests underusage

That's interesting, can you confirm what cycle tracks you've seen them on?

Since the 30's, at a time when more people were buying cars, more cars appeared on the road? I'll hold my shock in this time.

Cause to effect is very important here, the traffic was induced by the growing need for people to commute more by car. People didn't wake up one day and suddenly decide they were going to aimlessly drive the new road every morning and afternoon at rush hour.

People see what they want to see.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

If any roads are seen as quiet in rush hours, can we take them away for nice plazas and outdoor eating space?