It’s good to see Eamon Ryan explicitly making this argument in the national papers. People who make the argument that we aren’t Amsterdam when talking about cycling infrastructure forget that neither was [Amsterdam in the 70s.](https://i.imgur.com/Djv2TLg.jpg) It was a conscious choice and a process of redeveloping and prioritising space and infrastructure away from private cars that made them the way they are today. Other cities like Copenhagen and Paris are following at various paces.
Also heartening to see this argument from Ryan, when I think a lot of people assume they see taxes or charges as the solution to all problems. His way is far better:
>I read with interest the advice of Professor John FitzGerald in this paper two weeks ago that we should use pricing mechanisms – like congestion charges – to delver this modal shift. I fear such an approach would require such a high price it would not be accepted by the vast majority of people. Besides, in my view, it is much fairer to put the alternatives in place first. It is better to regulate traffic by the reallocation of road space rather than just hitting people with another tax.
>Towards this, and because it takes some ten years to get a bus corridor through our policy, planning and construction process, we need to accelerate the introduction of bus-priority measures, including experimental bus gates, new one-way routes and using road space reallocation to make sure all our buses run on time and to ensure that we have safe, segregated space for walking and cycling.
Although it does raise the question of why the fuck it takes ten years to get a bus corridor through…
There is one reason. Inner city bike thieves.
Ryan is truly terrible at public speaking, but when he can put his thoughts to paper he can be very compelling.
While the other members of government are fumbling over controversies which all boil down to dishonesty, it’s refreshing to see that at least some people in government are truly passionate about making a difference above anything else.
There is: Paddy’s inability to plan.
Yes please
Limit car speed to 30 kph on shared roads, make all roads that do not have space for a seperate cycle lane shared. Get rid of the stupid bollards on shared roads that will kill people if there’s more than 1 cyclist per hour like now (see Fietsersbond research, bollards are dissapearing all over NL). This increases safety massively, leading to more happy cyclists.
Edit: importantly, it leads to less cars too! 1 cyclist = 1 less car to hold up traffic.
Rains plenty in NL. Dutch people just have rain gear and get on with it. Source: I live here. It’s ingrained in their psyche.
There is no reason Dublin cannot be like Copenhagen or Amsterdam.
There is no reason Dublin cannot be like Amsterdam for cocaine.
I own both a bike and a car. I use the car for leisure and grocery runs etc, commute to work by bike. I’d rather cycle 15/20 mins in the rain than sit deadlock in traffic for an hour feeling life slip me by one red light at a time. If I could live without the car I absolutely would it’s a fucking money hole that never ends. Petrol, insurance, tax; maintenance and sanity
Only input on the bike is 30 euro roughly a year on maintenance (the odd big job costs more but consistent maintenance avoids the big jobs). It’s a no brainier for my head my wallet and my waistline
I personally view Eamon Ryan as a FG lick arse who is out of touch when it comes to public transport outside the Greater Dublin area.
However even broken clocks can be right, and this is an instance where he is.
Dublin City isn’t huge, with the right infrastructure cycling within the city can be much quicker, it’s biggest hindrance is other traffic, I wouldn’t be opposed to how London is managing traffic with car fees and limits. But it needs to be synergiesed with public transport. Which isn’t the case in Dublin. For example the 8.22 that gets you from mullingar to Dublin stops at broombridge, However unconveniently the luas that leaves from broombridge leaves the second the train stops there. Its just plain stupidity to not give 2 minutes for commuters to get to the luas vs waiting 10 mins in the cold for another, might as well go to conolly and walk to the green line from there.
Firstly yes it rains plenty in other city’s but they are flat and they don’t have the crazy wind along with the rain. I drove through town yesterday as I have to do it once a week and it genuinely seems that DCC is determined to make Dublin the least accessible city going. It’s a joke how what used to be a thirty min journey is now an hour and a half but the thing about it is if I used accessible travel each way that journey would take much longer. Do DCC just not want people to come to Dublin anymore? It’s easier and quicker for me to leave Dublin and go to another county to do something then to travel through Dublin.
We’d need have public transport as good as those cities to start. The underground in Copenhagen is amazing.
There is – drivers fucking *hate* cyclists in Dublin
As a cyclist I think we need way more **secure** parking
One major issue with this is the amount of bike theft in Dublin (and most other Irish cities).
Not enough hash in Dublin for it to work though.
I find that the likes of Newstalk has a swathe of speakers that shite all over cyclists, and it’s not really helping the transition that’s needed. We need a change in thinking as well as infrastructure.
Maybe if there weren’t so many scrotes who steal bikes and break into sheds to steal bikes, it might encourage people a bit more.
I’m in Leiden for a few days and gobsmacked by the infrastructure here. Bike lanes, bike parking garages, social acceptance of cycling, absolutely fantastic rail infrastructure.
Delusional to think this will ever be reproduced in Ireland.
Oulu is a city way up north in Finland and is bloody freezing and covered in snow and ice in for 5 months of the year. Yet cycling there is huge no matter what time of year. There is no excuse for Dublin not to be like this, especially within the canals.
What we should have done is build a underground metro system, instead of the Luas, that way we would have had more road space to accommodate cycle lanes and to remove cars altogether.
An underground metro system would be much easier to expand that the Luas, you could easily have lines that run from the city centre to Dublin Airport, Croke Park, the Aviva, the RDS and many other venues and places.
True but we are a nation of fat fucks and there is a weird hatred of cyclists here.
I live in Amsterdam, used to live in Dublin. The main reason Dublin can’t be like these cities is mindset. They don’t have it and NIMBYs are fierce in Dublin and pandered to politically.
Is it correct that legally cars always wrong in accidents with bikes in Amsterdam?
I don’t mind this, I think cities shouldn’t prioritise cars, however there’s no mention of protection from bike thieves at the moment. There’s apparently 20,000 bikes stolen a year in dublin, it’s a really big issue that puts people off cycling into the city.
There is
– Rain
– Wind (there is dangerous gusts)
– Hills, everywhere.
– dublin Bus drivers who want to kill you
– stupid drivers who don’t respect you
–
Lol can we also start with making Luas and Bus pet friendly. I would happily not buy a car then and cycle everywhere I need to go alone.
Or for trains, trams, and metro…
I know it’s a stupid idea, but what if they actually run public transport at the times people need for work? I can get the first bus outside my door in northside of Dublin and be dropped outside work about 90 mins later. pity I’m only 3 hours late for my shift by then, and forget about making it in for the weekend shifts.
30 comments
It’s good to see Eamon Ryan explicitly making this argument in the national papers. People who make the argument that we aren’t Amsterdam when talking about cycling infrastructure forget that neither was [Amsterdam in the 70s.](https://i.imgur.com/Djv2TLg.jpg) It was a conscious choice and a process of redeveloping and prioritising space and infrastructure away from private cars that made them the way they are today. Other cities like Copenhagen and Paris are following at various paces.
Also heartening to see this argument from Ryan, when I think a lot of people assume they see taxes or charges as the solution to all problems. His way is far better:
>I read with interest the advice of Professor John FitzGerald in this paper two weeks ago that we should use pricing mechanisms – like congestion charges – to delver this modal shift. I fear such an approach would require such a high price it would not be accepted by the vast majority of people. Besides, in my view, it is much fairer to put the alternatives in place first. It is better to regulate traffic by the reallocation of road space rather than just hitting people with another tax.
>Towards this, and because it takes some ten years to get a bus corridor through our policy, planning and construction process, we need to accelerate the introduction of bus-priority measures, including experimental bus gates, new one-way routes and using road space reallocation to make sure all our buses run on time and to ensure that we have safe, segregated space for walking and cycling.
Although it does raise the question of why the fuck it takes ten years to get a bus corridor through…
There is one reason. Inner city bike thieves.
Ryan is truly terrible at public speaking, but when he can put his thoughts to paper he can be very compelling.
While the other members of government are fumbling over controversies which all boil down to dishonesty, it’s refreshing to see that at least some people in government are truly passionate about making a difference above anything else.
There is: Paddy’s inability to plan.
Yes please
Limit car speed to 30 kph on shared roads, make all roads that do not have space for a seperate cycle lane shared. Get rid of the stupid bollards on shared roads that will kill people if there’s more than 1 cyclist per hour like now (see Fietsersbond research, bollards are dissapearing all over NL). This increases safety massively, leading to more happy cyclists.
Edit: importantly, it leads to less cars too! 1 cyclist = 1 less car to hold up traffic.
Rains plenty in NL. Dutch people just have rain gear and get on with it. Source: I live here. It’s ingrained in their psyche.
There is no reason Dublin cannot be like Copenhagen or Amsterdam.
There is no reason Dublin cannot be like Amsterdam for cocaine.
I own both a bike and a car. I use the car for leisure and grocery runs etc, commute to work by bike. I’d rather cycle 15/20 mins in the rain than sit deadlock in traffic for an hour feeling life slip me by one red light at a time. If I could live without the car I absolutely would it’s a fucking money hole that never ends. Petrol, insurance, tax; maintenance and sanity
Only input on the bike is 30 euro roughly a year on maintenance (the odd big job costs more but consistent maintenance avoids the big jobs). It’s a no brainier for my head my wallet and my waistline
I personally view Eamon Ryan as a FG lick arse who is out of touch when it comes to public transport outside the Greater Dublin area.
However even broken clocks can be right, and this is an instance where he is.
Dublin City isn’t huge, with the right infrastructure cycling within the city can be much quicker, it’s biggest hindrance is other traffic, I wouldn’t be opposed to how London is managing traffic with car fees and limits. But it needs to be synergiesed with public transport. Which isn’t the case in Dublin. For example the 8.22 that gets you from mullingar to Dublin stops at broombridge, However unconveniently the luas that leaves from broombridge leaves the second the train stops there. Its just plain stupidity to not give 2 minutes for commuters to get to the luas vs waiting 10 mins in the cold for another, might as well go to conolly and walk to the green line from there.
Firstly yes it rains plenty in other city’s but they are flat and they don’t have the crazy wind along with the rain. I drove through town yesterday as I have to do it once a week and it genuinely seems that DCC is determined to make Dublin the least accessible city going. It’s a joke how what used to be a thirty min journey is now an hour and a half but the thing about it is if I used accessible travel each way that journey would take much longer. Do DCC just not want people to come to Dublin anymore? It’s easier and quicker for me to leave Dublin and go to another county to do something then to travel through Dublin.
We’d need have public transport as good as those cities to start. The underground in Copenhagen is amazing.
There is – drivers fucking *hate* cyclists in Dublin
As a cyclist I think we need way more **secure** parking
One major issue with this is the amount of bike theft in Dublin (and most other Irish cities).
Not enough hash in Dublin for it to work though.
I find that the likes of Newstalk has a swathe of speakers that shite all over cyclists, and it’s not really helping the transition that’s needed. We need a change in thinking as well as infrastructure.
Maybe if there weren’t so many scrotes who steal bikes and break into sheds to steal bikes, it might encourage people a bit more.
I’m in Leiden for a few days and gobsmacked by the infrastructure here. Bike lanes, bike parking garages, social acceptance of cycling, absolutely fantastic rail infrastructure.
Delusional to think this will ever be reproduced in Ireland.
Oulu is a city way up north in Finland and is bloody freezing and covered in snow and ice in for 5 months of the year. Yet cycling there is huge no matter what time of year. There is no excuse for Dublin not to be like this, especially within the canals.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-64354089
What we should have done is build a underground metro system, instead of the Luas, that way we would have had more road space to accommodate cycle lanes and to remove cars altogether.
An underground metro system would be much easier to expand that the Luas, you could easily have lines that run from the city centre to Dublin Airport, Croke Park, the Aviva, the RDS and many other venues and places.
True but we are a nation of fat fucks and there is a weird hatred of cyclists here.
I live in Amsterdam, used to live in Dublin. The main reason Dublin can’t be like these cities is mindset. They don’t have it and NIMBYs are fierce in Dublin and pandered to politically.
Is it correct that legally cars always wrong in accidents with bikes in Amsterdam?
I don’t mind this, I think cities shouldn’t prioritise cars, however there’s no mention of protection from bike thieves at the moment. There’s apparently 20,000 bikes stolen a year in dublin, it’s a really big issue that puts people off cycling into the city.
There is
– Rain
– Wind (there is dangerous gusts)
– Hills, everywhere.
– dublin Bus drivers who want to kill you
– stupid drivers who don’t respect you
–
Lol can we also start with making Luas and Bus pet friendly. I would happily not buy a car then and cycle everywhere I need to go alone.
Or for trains, trams, and metro…
I know it’s a stupid idea, but what if they actually run public transport at the times people need for work? I can get the first bus outside my door in northside of Dublin and be dropped outside work about 90 mins later. pity I’m only 3 hours late for my shift by then, and forget about making it in for the weekend shifts.