— “A community torn apart by two motorways is not an easy place to organise anything.”
When Anne Bedos, owner of Phibsboro’s Rothar bicycle shop, tweeted appreciation for dividers installed on the cycle track outsider her shop she wasn’t expecting such a negative reaction, but her response the next day is more than worth publishing here.
In a twitter thread response (see below), Bedos said: “They consulted engineers, architects, and were told time after time that nothing was possible because the flow of motorised traffic in and out of the city cannot be disturbed”.
She added: “So, after 12 years of incessantly calling, writing, ranting, demonstrating, signing petitions, a few bollards appear in front of my place, yes, it is something I am happy about. Because it is a nudge in the right direction for an abandoned area like the Phibsboro Road.”
Here’s the original tweet:
https://twitter.com/CafeRothar/status/1273547889478897664?s=20
And here’s the response thread the next day:
First of all, it's the greatest area in the city ☺ It's literally 10mn (walk) from cinema, theatre, we have a great library, plenty of history, a multicultural population, beautiful food, a canal, close to the Phoenix Park. In short, it could be paradise.
— Rothar (@RotharPhibsboro) June 19, 2020
The very dynamic @Phizzfest talked for years to everyone. DCC, the NTA. They consulted engineers, architects, and were told time after time that nothing was possible because the flow of motorised traffic in and out of the city cannot be disturbed
— Rothar (@RotharPhibsboro) June 19, 2020
A community torn apart by 2 motorways is not an easy place to organise anything. On the Phibsboro road, there's a lot of people in underpaid labour, who live in far too expensive flats rented by slumlords.
— Rothar (@RotharPhibsboro) June 19, 2020
So, after 12 years of incessantly calling, writing, ranting, demonstrating, signing petitions, a few bollards appear in front of my place, yes, it is something I am happy about. Because it is a nudge in the right direction for an abandoned area like the Phibsboro road.
— Rothar (@RotharPhibsboro) June 19, 2020
But for the first time ever were we told by the Council that the area got its attention. And I'm planning to keep it that way. Onwards and upwards!
— Rothar (@RotharPhibsboro) June 19, 2020
Flexible bollards/Wands are scant protection for the cycling public. Scandinavians and other people who have seriously approached the issue of urban and rural roads use guiding questions such as ‘Would my grandmother use this cycling infrastructure?’. Clearly only the most intrepid and fearless of the older members of the population would venture out on cycling lanes ‘protected’ by flexible bollards.
Although a ‘nudge in the right direction…’ for Phiboro, such piecemeal tinkering with bicycle users safety/infrastructure is tantamount to gross negligence.
With the swaths of data demonstrating beyond question the benefits of cycling, let alone the clear evidence during recent times, that the public are happy to use bicycles, isn’t it time politicians started asking whether their grandparents would use bicycles in today’s Ireland?
These bollards are a welcome sight in Phibsboro Donal.
Despite its not being a high-quality protected cycle lane – it *is* a successful land-grab, a place-holder, a signal of intent from the Corpo that they’re taking this metre of road-width from private motorists during Covid19, while anything goes. Engineers can return in the coming months to formalise the cycle lane’s design here and elsewhere, but in the mean-time this is a little win for locals, here-to-fore rebuffed at every request.