With less than a week to go before Pope Francis visits Dublin the arrangements for people traveling to the Phoenix Park on bicycles still seems to be an ecumenical matter.
As well as the event planned at the Phoenix Park there will be other large public events relating to the World Meeting of Families 2018 around Dublin city centre over the weekend, including at Croke Park, and the Pope is expected to visit a number of locations.
Attendees, commuters and other visitors to the city centre are advised by Gardai to leave their cars at home on Saturday August 25 and Sunday August 26
Based Government sources we published a news article on August 5 reporting that details of the bicycle parking for the Phoenix Park event was expected to be announced some time that week — two weeks later and the details have yet to be announced ahead of the Pope’s visit.
RTE followed up our report by reporting: “It is expected there will be enough parking for around 2,500 bikes. The location of the bike parks will be announced later this week.”
However, there is still no mention of cycling the World Meeting of Families 2018 transport to the Phoenix Park page, the Government’s travel web page of the event still contains the on-of-date advise that cycling will not be allowed, and there’s no firm details the National Transport Authority’s travel advise page.
Confusingly, the National Transport Authority’s page links to its online cycle planner and general travel planner for walking advise. But, at the time of writing, these planners do no seem to be loaded with planned restrictions for next weekend, so, people could use the systems to plan routes that may not be available on the day.
DublinBikes.ie has an update, but it too has no details. There is no information on what bike stands may be disrupted as a result of the events of the weekend. Although DublinBikes warns: “Any bike rented from the Just Eat dublinbikes scheme remains the responsibility of the account holder. Charges will apply until the bike has been returned safely into a Just Eat dublinbikes bike stand.”
We’ll report more as we get it.
Saw a tweet last night referenciing bike parking for Phoenix Park in a primary school in Blanchardstown but can’t remember whose it was. Poster said the walk would be over an hour for a fit person