Cycle paths in Britain and Ireland

23 comments
  1. It’s insane how cycle hostile this country is for a place so small. Cycle paths are rarely connected, mostly just paint on the road if they’re even there to begin with, and people look at you funny if you say you cycle places. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not the type to say there’s never a reason for a car. Some bucko out in Carlow driving into Dublin for work every day or someone from longford driving to galway… yea they won’t be swapping to a bike anytime soon. But why do people hop in the car to go 3 miles up the road to a friend’s house? I get that the weather is not ideal but to me the cost savings is just incredibly worth it. Even more so in this climate with fuel going through the roof and insurance being as bad as it has ever been.

  2. A lot of the UK ones are just paint on the side of the road. In the case of the route around the Antrim coast not even that – they just declared it a cycle route while it’s a main road.

  3. A lot of British cycle paths are canal towpaths, and they’ve loads of canals. It’s not like they went on a building spree of loads of greenways.

  4. Currently doing a cycle across Europe now myself.Cycling infrastructure is miles ahead over here. Proper signage and dedicated cycle paths. Drivers are on the whole more welcoming and understanding to cyclists here as well.Having a cycle week isn’t going to gloss over the fact that Ireland is a woeful place to be a cyclist.

  5. Just looking myself(bearing in mind I have never cycled in the UK) this map seems hugely innaccurate and probably was just somebody feeding in some sort of weird data on cycling routes without checking what that meant. A lot of the UK ones appear to just be a map of main roads(many of which don’t even have hard shoulders) wheras in Ireland they seem to have largely only put in greenways, which are largely a different sort of infrastructure and very small atm.

    I think this is probably the reason why the border counties are suspicious cycle heavy because its being included from the NI “cycle routes”. I think if they were doing this map more accurately they should have either included more main roads in Ireland(some of which have pretty decent protected cycle lanes) or removed a lot of the ones in the UK.

  6. Note that alluring blob of best-in-the-world bike infrastructure at the bottom right of the picture.
    If anyone’s curious, I started a project to try to map out proposed bike infra at [joinedupthinking.ie](https://joinedupthinking.ie) . It’s kinda sloppy but brings together existing infra, proposed infra for Dublin and elsewhere (especially the midlands since I live here), and rail rights of way, including decommissioned lines, that might be useful in the future.

    ​

    My dream, such as it is, is for my kid to be able to cycle to school safely.

  7. The map of Northern Ireland is hugely inaccurate. Those are just standard roads with signs pointing out cycle routes with no actual bicycle infrastructure in place.

  8. i live in the cork city area and i hate that the area is so extremely car centric.

    ridiculously bad bus and train connections, and very hostile for bicycles.

    if I’m working the early shift, i can’t take the bus as there is simply no bus at the time o would need to leave. i can take the train but I’ll arrive at work 45 minutes early, so that’s just wasted time. and it’s considerable more expensive of course.

    (for reference, i grew up in Germany. while not the greatest cycle and public transport country in the world, i have still no problem getting anywhere with the bike or public transport at virtually any time)

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