August 25, 2014
Most Irish Cycle Facility of the Week examples are of poor design, but some Irish cycle facilities have other problems which councils are not mostly responsible. We have yet to see the rest of the Thomas Street / James’s Street quality bus corridor upgrade, but this section shows an overall good design. It’s a pity about the parking.
Hopefully the planned “no entry expect bicycles” sign isn’t already placed and it can be put in a way to block parking as shown above.
As this planning drawing shows, the design shown is positive for cycling — people cycling out of the side road (Bow Lane) get a short ‘bypass’ which segregates them from what will now be left turning motor traffic, and the motorists exiting the side road are now placed at a better angle to see people on bicycles and buses which are already on James’s Street:
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Photo: Niall O’Gorman
Drawing: Crop of planning drawing by Roughan O’Donovan for Dublin City Council and NTA
Location: James’s Street, Dublin 8
Local body/authority: Dublin City Council / NTA
Street View: Currently shows view before QBC upgrade
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And a Garda car sails on by………..
Our gardai just don’t ‘see’ these issues as deserving their attention. They leave it to Traffic Wardens but no one has told Garda that cut-backs have severely depleted TW numbers.
Don’t forget you can park in/on cycling facilities for up to 30 min if you are delivering ‘goods’.
Irish solutions to Irish problems don’t work for cyclists.
We need to get the parking SIs revisited to remove the ‘delivering good’s get-out-of-jail card for drivers.
There’s a chipper among the row of shops there, and invariably in the evening there is a car parked like in the photograph with the hazard lights on and the driver gone into the shop.
The sad thing is that this whole junction (along with where the Luas turns, including the other triangular island where homeless people tend to gather) could have been much better designed, with a lot of public space returned in the process. Instead there are now two largely-unusable islands of “open space” among the traffic.
Unbelievable! Only I believe it.