2009-12-14 Metro: Cycle in the City? You must be mad

Bumpy: Off-road conditions on Inchicore Road

Cycle in the city? You must be mad

BY ROSS McDONAGH

http://e-edition.metroireland.ie/2009/12/14/index.html?p=1

Confused? Mindboggling lanes reverse the normal rule of keeping left at South Campshires, near the IFSC

CYCLISTS are being called upon to voice their criticism of Dublin’s substandard cycle lanes.

Website Dublincycling.com has published a series of photographs taken by cyclists showing the damaged, hidden, confusing and unsafe conditions bicycle users are expected to travel in.

‘There is an element of “green washing” about the current provision of cycle lanes,’ said James Leahy of Dublin Cycling Campaign. ‘They are put in by local councils to be seen to be doing something to promote cycling. But in many cases, they actually make it more dangerous to be there than if they were just using the regular road.

‘Most of the cycle lanes across the entire city will need remedial work as they weren’t designed properly in the first place. It is a similar situation elsewhere,’ he added.

South Campshires in the Docklands is one of the worst offenders, with sprawling and bewildering junctions in one area and narrow 1.2-metre-wide two-way tracks in others. Bollards encroach along the track at perfect height to clip handlebars, while at another stage the cycle lane abruptly ends on the wrong side of the road, forcing cyclists out into oncoming traffic.

Photos from Inchicore show the track riddled with potholes, some made even more dangerous by Tarmac patch-ups.

One cyclist claims to have found Dublin’s narrowest cycle lane on the South Circular Road, ‘a mere 600mm wide, narrower than the handlebars of a bike’, while another spotted the capital’s shortest on Aungier Street, where a road repair crew covered all but two feet of the lane in Tarmac and didn’t repaint it.

And it’s not just Dublin. A long cycle lane in Doughiska, Co Galway, which is broken up every few metres to give right of way to cars at several junctions, forces cyclists to either dismount every time or risk being knocked off their bike.

Stop-start: Cyclists in Galway are flummoxed