The Dublin Cycling Campaign is an independent, voluntary lobby group that has been working to improve the city for all cyclists for over a decade and a half.
PLANS FOR a 2,000km national network of cycle paths connecting cities and major town across the Republic have been drafted by the National Roads Authority.
Work on a detailed route for the first “interurban” cycle path from Dublin to Galway began recently and is due to be completed by the end of the year.
The authority has mapped out 13 route “corridors” serving the cities of Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Limerick and Galway, and almost 100 large towns which will make up the National Cycle Network.
The routes pass through all of the 26 counties except Longford and vary in length from 52km (Drogheda to Trim) to 286km (Wexford to Tralee).
Local authorities along the routes have identified almost 500km of potential off-road cycle routes, which are physically separated from the road by a grass verge or other barrier.
AN UNWITTING user of Dublin City Council’s popular Dublinbike scheme undertook the service’s one millionth journey on Saturday night.
The landmark trip was undertaken at 7.25pm, but details of the station and route have been withheld due to restrictions placed on the scheme’s operators by the Data Protection Act.
Operators of the scheme were trying to contact the cyclist yesterday to notify the person that he or she had won a prize for choosing pedals over petrol on the night in question.
TRANSPORT: It’s All About the Bike , By Robert Penn, Particular Books, 208pp. £17.99
JOURNALIST AND cycling enthusiast Robert Penn isn’t quite Sergeant Pluck, but in his entertaining and vividly informative book he proudly intimates that he’s more than halfway there.
The doughty Pluck is the hero of Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman , the satirical tale of a tender but unrequited love affair between a man and his bike. Penn quotes Pluck’s “atomic theory” that prolonged contact with a bicycle can result in “molecular exchange” whereby a man spends so much time in the saddle he becomes half man, half bike.
Madam, – I am a keen cyclist but find myself repeatedly frustrated by the facilities available to cyclists in Ireland when travelling with a bike. Simply put, it is nearly impossible to travel by train with your bicycle. I will give two examples.
Bike campaigner stages fashion show to highlight the benefits of using two wheels to get around the city
WE WOULD all just hop on our bikes to go to the local shop, cinema, library or post office if Mikael Colville-Andersen, Danish urban mobility expert and owner of the Copenhagen Cycle Chic and Copenhagenize.com blogs, had his way.
Colville-Andersen was in Dublin last week to launch Dublin Cycle Chic, the city’s first cycle fashion show organised by Dublin City Council and the Danish Embassy as part of National Bike Week.
More than one million people who drive to work each day are to be persuaded to switch to more sustainable forms of transport including car-pooling, walking and cycling.
The Smarter Travel Workplaces Programme, unveiled today, aims to see a quarter of a million workers out of their cars by 2012 to reduce carbon emissions.
At present, almost 57 per cent of workers drive to work, with 90 per cent of vehicles containing only the driver, statistics released by the Department of Transport reveal.
Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey said the programme hopes to assist companies to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in staff car usage.
MAKING CHANGES to our built environment would help counter low levels of physical activity in Ireland, a seminar has heard.
More than 130 delegates attending a joint seminar by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland and the UKCRC Centre of Excellence for Public Health heard that low levels of physical activity are contributing to long-term health problems.
Teresa Lavin, Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH) said that enhancing opportunities for physical activity in the built environment was essential in influencing the public in carrying out physical exercise.
The building boom did nothing for our activity levels, so we need to get out there and redesign our environment, writes SYLVIA THOMPSON
MORE TEENAGE girls drive to school than cycle in Ireland. This shocking statistic was cited at a seminar in Dublin last week on finding ways to improve the built environment to encourage physical activity.
“We need to rethink what we’ve done to become modern and sophisticated because the environment we’ve built and the policies we have put in place have made us inactive,” said Prof James Sallis, director of the Active Living Research and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, California, who addressed the seminar.
JOE DALY, who has died aged 89, was the founder and owner of the famous bicycle shop in Dundrum, Co Dublin which bears his name.
Bikes were his life. He sold and repaired them, talked about and cycled them, and fraternised with and supported the professional and wider cycling population, having first set up business in 1951.
Dublin City Council is to draw up plans for "contra flow lanes" for cyclists, allowing them to travel in either direction on streets that are restricted to one-way for motor vehicles.
The move has been prompted by members of the Dublin Cycle Forum who pointed out the current one-way streets such as Pearse Street and Nassau Street can leave cyclists a detour of several kilometres.
Councillors must put safety ahead of the motoring lobby by holding their nerve with the new 30km/h limit
THERE IS is almost nothing quite so pathetic as the sight and sound of public representatives buckling under pressure from powerful lobbies or vested interests. We are seeing more of this shameful spectacle, as the elected members of Dublin City Council reconsider the 30km/h city centre speed limit – an initiative less than a month old.
REPRESENTATIVES FROM over a dozen civic organisations have urged Dublin city councillors to maintain the 30km/h speed limit in the city centre.
Signatories of the open letter come from a wide range of bodies including the Children’s Rights Alliance, National Council for the Blind of Ireland, An Taisce, Dublin Cycling Campaign, pedestrian advocacy group Cosain, Friends of the Irish Environment as well as Dr Declan Bedford specialist in public health medicine and broadcaster Duncan Stewart.
Madam, – There has been much ill-informed comment about the new 30km/h speed limit in Dublin city centre, with some people claiming “you could walk faster”, or (more realistically) that many cyclists go faster. The truth is that only the fittest cyclists will do 30km/h on the flat, and Usain Bolt’s world record 100m run was at a speed of 37.58km/h.
Double lock : If your bike cost a lot and you want to take it out in public, make sure you use a U-lock as well as a wire lock - thieves need a hammer (or angle grinder) for the former and a bolt cutter for the latter, so only the most dedicated of scoundrels will be fully equipped.
While pedal power is back in vogue, so is bicycle theft
CYCLING IS, in many ways, the perfect form of commuting. It's fast, cheap, wholesome, invigorating and very, very handy as long as you live within 10kms of your place of work - any further and you need steely determination and steelier thighs.
A SENIOR public health doctor has called on local authorities to consider introducing 30km/h speed limit zones in towns and villages in a bid to reduce deaths and injuries from crashes.
Dr Declan Bedford, acting director of public health with the HSE and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, said research from London showed the rationale for lower limits in built up areas was compelling.
Madam, – There has been much ill-informed comment about the new 30km/h speed limit in Dublin city centre, with some people claiming “you could walk faster”, or (more realistically) that many cyclists go faster. The truth is that only the fittest cyclists will do 30km/h on the flat, and Usain Bolt’s world record 100m run was at a speed of 37.58km/h.
