Plans for the Dodder Greenway in the South Dublin County Council area need to be improved to include better segregation between cycling and walking, a councillor has said.
“We want to make sure that the Dodder Greenway will be friendly for children, for people with disabilities and for all users. I think it needs to have much more delineation in the plans between pedestrians and cyclists,” said Cllr Dermot Looney (Social Democrats).
He said separated paths would allow cyclists to go a little bit faster while allowing pedestrians to feel safer. He made the comments in a video exploring the route, see below or on Facebook.
The South Dublin County Council section includes the areas of Kiltipper, Tallaght, Old Bawn, Firhouse, Templeogue, Terenure and Rathfarnham. The rest of the route to Grand Canal Dock runs in other council areas and are part of different planning processes.
Details drawings for the route can be found on the council’s website and submissions can be made via the same page up to 4pm on Friday August 18, 2017.
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I agree with this, in fact I would go further and say that it should just simply be considered standard design to have separation of the two modes everywhere. An exception can be made if a certain place is a remote rural area with very few people expected to walk but that would be an exception and not the norm. The norm should be separation.
The Dutch Fietsberaad have a document with some guidelines. There are a few types of separation to choose from depending on the expected volumes of pedestrians. It would make sense to design it so there could be an easy upgrade to a higher degree in the future.
For this greenway, I could see some areas having a painted line and others having a grade separation or separation with a median.
http://www.ictct.org/migrated_2014/ictct_document_nr_760_703B%20Hans%20Godefrooij%20Cycling%20in%20pedestrian%20areas.pdf
Here are a few points they write using pedestrians per hour and path width:
• At pedestrian densities up to 100 pedestrians per hour per meter mixing cyclists and pedestrians is easily possible. No additional measures are necessary.
• At pedestrian densities over 100 pedestrians per hour per meter, the separation of pedestrians and cyclists within the street layout is desirable. At densities of up to 160 pedestrians/h/m a driving strip, with deviant colour of pavement, will suffice.
• At high pedestrian densities (up to over 200 pedestrians/h/m) a height difference (side walk) is a solution.
• If the density of pedestrians rises over 200 pedestrians/h/m, mixing cyclists and pedestrians is no longer possible.
In Milltown Park, there’s a line down the middle, ignored by everyone. I’ve had the chance to test my disc brakes as small dogs rushed in front of me and walkers strayed left and right, wandering with earphones in their ears (why, beside a lovely river?) – and the side with bicycles drawn on it is overgrown to half its width with grass that is never lifted back and trimmed with spades, so that the ‘walking’ half is double the width.
Mostly, though, people get on fine and give way to each other as needed – cyclists go slowly behind walkers waiting for them to gather themselves in on one side, and walkers draw to their side to allow cyclists past.
There are some parts of the infrastructure that are fine for walking and not for cycling – for instance random bollards strewn along the middle of the cycle path in Firhouse; a deadly ‘kissing gate’ at Londonbridge road that I’ve seen bring down more than one cyclist and which seems to have no purpose.