Irish Cycle Facility of the Week

February 01, 2015:

Our image above shows the common sight of a bus covering a cycle lane — a typical narrow cycle lane placed inside a narrow bus lane. In this case it’s on Wolfe Tone Quay in Dublin. It used to be part of a number of IrishCycle.com’s commutes and, to be fair to bus drivers, most did well to keep out of the cycle lane when it was occupied — the issue is how space is allocated.

Along this section of the river the quays, on both sides combined, effectively make up an 8-lane dual carriageway in the heart of the city. Worse, still the river-side lane here is a near 400 meter right turning lane which is rarely even a quarter used. The next lane in is a straight-ahead stacking lane which ends around 260 meters after it starts — after which this point there’s a pinch point on the quays which only allows for one straight ahead lane for the guts of 1km.

The footpath on the quayside is also hardly used, because — when walking from west of this point — to get to the footpath you have to run across 14 meters of a one-way road with fast moving traffic.

The quays are a prime example of arrogance of space.

Yes. There are as-of-yet unconfirmed plans to change this. But we still don’t know if such plans will go ahead and, even if they do go ahead, we don’t know how long it will take. The city manager has already said that the quays walking and cycling route won’t go ahead until after Luas Cross City is complete — which, if all goes well, is nearly three years from now.

Image: IrishCycle.com
Location: Wolfe Tone Quay
Local body/authority: Dublin City Council
Street View: As shown

Send suggestions to hello@irishcycle.com. And make sure to view the original and UK-focused facility of the month page on Warrington Cycle Campaign’s website.


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