[Mike Banim]

This is City Quay, Dublin. One of our newer and nicer pieces of infrastructure. However it ends at this horrible junction. If you are turning left, or proceeding straight on, the experience isn’t too bad. But what if you want to turn right, and go across the bridge? 3 branches of the road to cross to get to the cycle lane on the other side of the bridge, and then potentially more crossings on the other side of the river.

[Mike Banim]

Reply to Colin MacKenzie’s post about a protected bike path in Ottawa. Colin’s example shares some similarities to the emergency covid-19 bike lane in Dublin that I posted, in that it runs alongside quite a busy street, has some junctions with quieter streets, and is protected behind car parking with a buffer zone. Obviously there are significant differences as it has much stronger physical separation as it is a permanent piece of infrastructure.

Incremental improvements that I would see that could be made:

– The path doesn’t look that wide, so I think that could be improved. Either by narrowing the width of the car lanes (I’m not sure what Canadian regulations for minimum widths are), or by removing another lane.
– Give priority to pedestrians and cyclists at the junctions with the side residential streets. These side streets look like they’d have relatively little traffic, so rather than have the pedestrians and cyclists yield to the roadway at each junction, there could be continuous footway and cycle paths here. Continue the footway and cycle lane at their grade, so that cars crossing have to mount (via a bevel-edged kerb) the footway and yield to any peds or cyclists.
– Lower the grade of the cycle path slightly to make a clearer distinction between the footway and the cycle path.

 

Changes to narrow the car lanes (or to remove a lane entirely) would be met with opposition making predictions of increased congestion.

Changes to the junction design to a pedestrian & cyclist priority design would be opposed on safety grounds, and possibly also congestion grounds as above.

Changes to the grade of the cycle path might be of concern to disability groups, although I think this change would make it safer.

 

[Mike Banim]

This is a brand new piece of infrastructure (rapid build, tactical) in my area. This photo was taken a few days after it was put in last week – the paint in the middle isn’t even complete, as there were some cars parked in the way when they were painting the lines!

As you can see, some of the old markings are still visible, and the surface quality isn’t very good. Further down the road the lane widens to nearly 3m wide with excellent quality surface, but I think this would be totally unrepresentative. Similarly on the main road outside my house, the quality of the cycle lane is far, far, far worse than this. I think this is a good representative design of what our council is currently building in these covid-19 times.

This is located on the below google maps link – however, it is so new that it isn’t visible:

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3480673,-6.2938088,20.68z

 

 

[Mike Banim]

Hey everyone,

I’m Mike and I’m from Dublin, Ireland. I work in IT so I don’t have a professional background in the area. However I am currently doing an MSc in Sustainable Transport & Mobility in TU Dublin and hope to eventually transition into a mobility-related career. My expertise, such as it is, comes from that, from cycling advocacy with cycling groups I’m a member of, from an interest in mobility generally, and finally from a decent level of exposure to local and community politics over the years.

These things inform my perspective as well. Beyond that, I got rid of my car last year and now rely on walking, cycling and occasionally public transport for all of my mobility needs. I’m also quite interested in cycling as a solution for the mobility impaired, as I have elderly relatives living in suburban/rural locations, and am acutely aware of the paucity of mobility choices they are presented with due to the design choices that have been made in Ireland over the past 60-70 years.

You can find me on twitter: @MikeBanim

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