Cycling gets less than 2% of Department of Transport’s €384m budget increase

— Level of funding “token increase” “kick in the teeth for people who cycle”, says cycling advocates.

Cycling is to get less than 2% of the Department of Transport’s €384m budget increase in Budget 2020 — and this is further watered down by including tourism-focused greenways under the header of “sustainable mobility projects”.

Cycling groups had looked for 10% of the transport budget to be spent on cycling, while CyclingForAll.ie — which is linked to this website — looks for 20% for walking and cycling combined.

As well as walking and cycling measures, the sustainable mobility projects header often also include public transport access measures.

According to reports €8m is to be set aside for grants for electric cars, while €3m infrastructure for electric cars — meaning electric cars will get more funding than cycling.

Cyclist.ie — an umbrella group for most cycling campaigner groups in Ireland — tweeted: “Land Transport Budget €1,466,523. The 10% sought for cycling amounts to €146 MILLION. The Min has announced €9M – where is the rest? Where is the fundamental change in expenditure? Where is decarbonising transport in Ireland. Still the laggards in Europe.”

Ciarán Ferrie, co-founder of I Bike Dublin, said on his personal account: “The €9m allocated in #Budget2020 for cycling infrastructure includes “Greenways & Urban Cycling”. The government again muddying the waters by mixing up tourism infrastructure with transport infrastructure. This is a kick in the teeth for people who cycle.”

Dublin-based councillor Patrick Costello (Green) tweeted: “Cycling per budget: 2015-€19m, 2016-Almost halved to €10.5m, 2018-Fell further to €7m… 2020-A token increase to €9m on greenway & urban cycling. We spent more in the past & need even more again to make a real difference in cycling, walking & to promote modal shift! ”


...That's the end of the article. Keep scrolling if you want to the comments, but IrishCycle.com *NEEDS* readers like you to keep it that way. It only requires a small percentage of readers to give a bit each month or every year to keep IrishCycle.com's journalism open to all. Thank you.


4 comments

  1. Quite disheartening when you know that Flanders (part of Belgium) is reserving 300 million next year just for cycling infrastructure.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.