Cycled to and from work for years before the pandemic, at one point I was cycling over 20km from Co Dublin (north) to Dublin 4, and even that was quicker than driving. Have been WFH ever since and totally fallen out of the habit of cycling unfortunately.
if you drive down the north quays you deserve to be stuck in traffic
See how the bike lane looks empty too? Cycle lanes look empty because it’s near impossible to get a traffic jam on one when they’re a sixth the size of a car.
Cycling is sexy
I don’t get why cars and bikes always seem to be placed in opposition to each other. I love using my bike in and around the city (which seems to upset people that exclusively drive) and I love having my car for longer journeys or for collecting large items (which seems to annoy cyclists).
They have different use cases and the narrative seems to foster a kind of cultish mentality around it that hinders more than it helps, in my opinion.
Quick bit of praise for the Green Party. I work in urban planning in Dublin, and I’ve seen a lot of new cycle and pedestrian improvement projects in the last 18 months or so, particularly around schools.
In the 2019 programme for government, the Greens secured 10% of the transport budget for cycling facilities, 10% for pedestrian facilities, and a doubling of the budget for public transport. That will substantially improve safety conditions and improve commute speeds in the future
It’s sad that it’s always framed as a tussle between cycling and driving. The real culprit here is the lack of proper public transport options in a city that has a nightmare of a traffic problem. They keep making grand plans to pedestrianise areas without a single thought how it will affect traffic as it doesn’t provide an alternative. They keep making so called cycle paths(not saying that there hasn’t been an improvement lately) but they are haphazardly planned and in many cases utterly useless not to mention dangerous. As with most things with policy making in this country, superficial changes and no real long term change or planning.
bUt ThEy DoNt PaY rOaD tAx. WhAt BoUt HaRd PrEsSeD mOtOriStS.
I knew people who would drive to the Phoenix park and then cycle into the city centre. They would need to drive to the bus or the train anyway. The problem is that you have to drive as part of the journey. They people lived so far from Dublin there was no choice. Am glad that Dublin is getting better cycling infrastructure but it is addressing any of the other problems that our infrastructure, towns and cities has.
5 times quicker?
But my low end car cost 10x the cost of an expensive bike.
We need to build more infrastructure so my car can go faster.
Increased infrastructure like this so that anyone who wants to use a bicycle or walk to work can do so is one of the easiest ways to take pressure off the streets. There will always be a need for some level of car usage but reducing it as much as possible by making alternatives viable is fantastic and should always be encouraged.
Should be done all over the city, the quicker we dump cars out of the city the quicker you will see families etc return
I’d love to cycle to work if I had the option. Unfortunately I live in rural Ireland and the distance isn’t practical to do on the daily but if I lived somewhere like Dublin, Galway, Limerick etc I would definitely drive.
The traffic in Galway in particular is an absolute travesty.
Just in case anyone wants to claim the reason for the traffic is the bike lane, the quays have always been clogged with traffic.
Here are [traffic counts from 2016](https://i.imgur.com/kJLLUHQ.jpg) from Ellis quay (just up from where the photo in the tweet was taken). Bicycles outnumbered cars during morning rush hour back then, before there were any segregated cycle lanes on the quays and before the bus priority was added at bachelor’s walk.
My commute from Rathfarnham to town used to be about 1hr 30 mins in the 16 bus (edited for typo).
I’m working in D8 at the moment, so that would likely have been more like 1hr 45 minutes to go about 8.5km (a joke to be honest, to the point I literally would probably be faster walking).
By bike it takes 30 minutes. I switched to a scooter when my bike got flecked and as surprised to find out it is actually a little slower (downhill on the way in, though so much easier on windy days back uphill)… about 35-40 mins. Whether there it tonnes or traffic or none at all makes more of less no difference to my commute time either, which is great. Leave by 8.20am and I’m guaranteed to be in on time.
Bike lane made it harder for me to filter in the quays on my motorcycle but I still agree with the new cycle lane.
If you don’t want to cycle just get a moped.
Most people I see in cars have 4 empty seats commuting to work.
“A developed country isn’t a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.”
The bigger problem here is the other comparisons. My commute is roughly:
– car: an hour
– train: an hour
– bus: over an hour
When driving isn’t significantly more expensive than public transport, but is more convenient and often faster, it’s hardly surprising we have a traffic problem.
As a mainland European, I pity you guys for having such a nice location for good bike and public infrastructure but you still are car-centric as fuck
I cycle D3 to D8 every morning, and there is a direct bus route there (the 123), my cycle takes 25 mins and the bus 50 mins. Its a no-brainer, and it improves my morning mood by far!
If I lived in a city, I would bike everywhere, it’s great exercise and a good thing for the environment! However I don’t live in a city, and biking to the nearest one takes a few hours, I would still do it occasionally if we had designated bike lanes/paths
Bikes are hella quick
Ireland is a pretty obese country, it’s time our population got a bike
26 comments
So a 20 minute walk then? A walk it is.
If only we could have such lanes country-wide.
Cycled to and from work for years before the pandemic, at one point I was cycling over 20km from Co Dublin (north) to Dublin 4, and even that was quicker than driving. Have been WFH ever since and totally fallen out of the habit of cycling unfortunately.
if you drive down the north quays you deserve to be stuck in traffic
Get an ebike! Up here in Craigavon – Craigavon’s active travel network – designed and built in the 1960s – is better known locally as the Black Paths. Presently, there are no maps, signage or other means to navigate this complex network of cycle lanes. As a result – the Black Paths are a mystery to almost everyone outside the immediate area.
https://blackpaths.org/#:~:text=Craigavon's%20active%20travel%20network%20%E2%80%93%20designed,everyone%20outside%20the%20immediate%20area.
See how the bike lane looks empty too? Cycle lanes look empty because it’s near impossible to get a traffic jam on one when they’re a sixth the size of a car.
Cycling is sexy
I don’t get why cars and bikes always seem to be placed in opposition to each other. I love using my bike in and around the city (which seems to upset people that exclusively drive) and I love having my car for longer journeys or for collecting large items (which seems to annoy cyclists).
They have different use cases and the narrative seems to foster a kind of cultish mentality around it that hinders more than it helps, in my opinion.
Quick bit of praise for the Green Party. I work in urban planning in Dublin, and I’ve seen a lot of new cycle and pedestrian improvement projects in the last 18 months or so, particularly around schools.
In the 2019 programme for government, the Greens secured 10% of the transport budget for cycling facilities, 10% for pedestrian facilities, and a doubling of the budget for public transport. That will substantially improve safety conditions and improve commute speeds in the future
It’s sad that it’s always framed as a tussle between cycling and driving. The real culprit here is the lack of proper public transport options in a city that has a nightmare of a traffic problem. They keep making grand plans to pedestrianise areas without a single thought how it will affect traffic as it doesn’t provide an alternative. They keep making so called cycle paths(not saying that there hasn’t been an improvement lately) but they are haphazardly planned and in many cases utterly useless not to mention dangerous. As with most things with policy making in this country, superficial changes and no real long term change or planning.
bUt ThEy DoNt PaY rOaD tAx. WhAt BoUt HaRd PrEsSeD mOtOriStS.
I knew people who would drive to the Phoenix park and then cycle into the city centre. They would need to drive to the bus or the train anyway. The problem is that you have to drive as part of the journey. They people lived so far from Dublin there was no choice. Am glad that Dublin is getting better cycling infrastructure but it is addressing any of the other problems that our infrastructure, towns and cities has.
5 times quicker?
But my low end car cost 10x the cost of an expensive bike.
We need to build more infrastructure so my car can go faster.
Increased infrastructure like this so that anyone who wants to use a bicycle or walk to work can do so is one of the easiest ways to take pressure off the streets. There will always be a need for some level of car usage but reducing it as much as possible by making alternatives viable is fantastic and should always be encouraged.
Should be done all over the city, the quicker we dump cars out of the city the quicker you will see families etc return
I’d love to cycle to work if I had the option. Unfortunately I live in rural Ireland and the distance isn’t practical to do on the daily but if I lived somewhere like Dublin, Galway, Limerick etc I would definitely drive.
The traffic in Galway in particular is an absolute travesty.
Just in case anyone wants to claim the reason for the traffic is the bike lane, the quays have always been clogged with traffic.
Here are [traffic counts from 2016](https://i.imgur.com/kJLLUHQ.jpg) from Ellis quay (just up from where the photo in the tweet was taken). Bicycles outnumbered cars during morning rush hour back then, before there were any segregated cycle lanes on the quays and before the bus priority was added at bachelor’s walk.
My commute from Rathfarnham to town used to be about 1hr 30 mins in the 16 bus (edited for typo).
I’m working in D8 at the moment, so that would likely have been more like 1hr 45 minutes to go about 8.5km (a joke to be honest, to the point I literally would probably be faster walking).
By bike it takes 30 minutes. I switched to a scooter when my bike got flecked and as surprised to find out it is actually a little slower (downhill on the way in, though so much easier on windy days back uphill)… about 35-40 mins. Whether there it tonnes or traffic or none at all makes more of less no difference to my commute time either, which is great. Leave by 8.20am and I’m guaranteed to be in on time.
Bike lane made it harder for me to filter in the quays on my motorcycle but I still agree with the new cycle lane.
If you don’t want to cycle just get a moped.
Most people I see in cars have 4 empty seats commuting to work.
“A developed country isn’t a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.”
The bigger problem here is the other comparisons. My commute is roughly:
– car: an hour
– train: an hour
– bus: over an hour
When driving isn’t significantly more expensive than public transport, but is more convenient and often faster, it’s hardly surprising we have a traffic problem.
As a mainland European, I pity you guys for having such a nice location for good bike and public infrastructure but you still are car-centric as fuck
I cycle D3 to D8 every morning, and there is a direct bus route there (the 123), my cycle takes 25 mins and the bus 50 mins. Its a no-brainer, and it improves my morning mood by far!
If I lived in a city, I would bike everywhere, it’s great exercise and a good thing for the environment! However I don’t live in a city, and biking to the nearest one takes a few hours, I would still do it occasionally if we had designated bike lanes/paths
Bikes are hella quick
Ireland is a pretty obese country, it’s time our population got a bike