Comment & Analysis: We keep hearing that those bloody cyclists must stop cycling on footpaths! It’s mentioned nationwide and takes up hours of local area council meetings annually in Dublin City alone. And it consumes what feels like even more hours of talk radio time. Yet councils continue to design solutions where people cycling and those on foot are mixed along streets and roads when other options exist.
I feel like I’m repeating what I’ve written too many times in the last 15 years.
The latest example that has caught people’s attention is at the junctions of Herberton Road and Dolphin Road.
Design guidance can only do so much, but such guidance is an important part of improving design quality. Ireland’s Cycle Design Manual is generally a huge improvement and a great document, but one of its main flaws is not putting pedestrians and people cycling front and centre.
It is covered in a section called “Separation between Pedestrians and Cycle Users” which has some great advice on page 41.
But the UK’s equivalent, the ‘Cycle Infrastructure Design Local Transport Note 1/20’ (July 2020), has it highlighted on page 8, just after the cover pages, contents pages and introduction:
And on the next page, the following is listed as number two in its summary of its Principles
“Cycles must be treated as vehicles and not as pedestrians. On urban streets, cyclists must be physically separated from pedestrians and should not share space with pedestrians. Where cycle routes cross pavements, a physically segregated track should always be provided. At crossings and junctions, cyclists should not share the space used by pedestrians but should be provided with a separate parallel route.
Shared use routes in streets with high pedestrian or cyclist flows should not be used. Instead, in these sorts of spaces distinct tracks for cyclists should be made, using sloping, pedestrian-friendly kerbs and/or different surfacing. Shared use routes away from streets may be appropriate in locations such as
canal towpaths, paths through housing estates, parks and other green spaces, including in cities. Where cycle routes use such paths in built-up areas, you should try to separate them from pedestrians, perhaps with levels or a kerb.”
This is far clearer language than in the National Transport Authority’s Cycle Design Manual, which talks about “wherever practicable” and “where possible” rather than confining shared space to exceptional circumstances.
It’s worth saying that the UK is far from perfect, and Ireland is not alone. This concept of mixing walking and cycling at junctions and crossings is something that usually plagues countries that are less developed in terms of their cycling provision.
Worldwide, some exceptions exist (like in Japan and cities like Malmö) where most people think that mixing walking and cycling on footpath-like surfaces is fine. But Ireland is not one of these places.
To complicate matters, some people and groups who claim to speak for the rights of pedestrians, especially people with disabilities and older people, continue to highlight issues with bus stops combined with cycle tracks (while some of these designs need to be better, the issue is hyped). But in sharp contrast, most of them hardly say a word about shared path spaces at junctions and crossings.
One of the most high-profile voices on bus stops has a history of walking in these shared spaces at junctions and claiming they are footpaths where people shouldn’t be cycling — wagging their fingers at the users on bikes when they are doing little or nothing wrong.
I’ve seen it said that the difference is that cycling straight at bus stops is more of an issue because people going straight are likely to be going faster. But really, that doesn’t make much sense in terms of how problematic bicycle, illegal light motorcycles, and scooter users already abuse footpaths and shared spaces.
Greenways are a different context. Putting up shared use signs along roads and streets is nearly as good as giving misbehaving users of cycle routes a blessing to carry on.
The paradox here is that the way to reduce shared areas and crossings is to have a system of cycle paths which are segregated not just from roads but also from pedestrians, and within this, pedestrians and people cycling will generally navigate the interaction between each other unaided by traffic signals.
However, that requires acceptance that people can generally negotiate these crossings safely and that such arrangements are more practical than shared spaces or Dublin-style junctions where user behaviour (from both people on foot and bike) does not match the design expectations. It also requires more space — mainly from motoring — to be allocated for cycling.
To date, these shared path designs have been used mainly on large suburban roads. But they are going be more problematic in busier areas, not just city centres but also in other urban centres in towns and across different parts of cities.
But if councils build segregated routes which will attract more people to cycling and then force more people into shared footpath-like arrangements at junctions and other access points, it’s a different story than “dual provision”.
More often than not, there are other solutions. For example, at two key junctions along the C2CC, older draft designs had separate cycling and walking crossings. For example, in Fairview:
Or at Amiens Street at its junction with Buckingham Street Lower — by moving the crossing slightly to the right of the drawing here, there was ample space to allow a fully segregated cycling crossing from Amiens Street to cross over to Buckingham Street Lower:
Similarly, here at the crossover to/from the Tolka Greenway in the park — there’s space here for better design even before removing the second outbound here, which will be used besides as a “go faster lane” (ie speeding).
You can find these types of shared crossing points used across different BusConnects routes. For example, outside a Metro station:
In loads of areas where there is ample space but all other considerations, from car movements to cost to keeping a bit of grass, are viewed to be ahead of walking and cycling:
One of the best examples of space not being an issue but defaulting to shared paths must be where the Kinsale Road crosses the South Ring Road:
And you’ll find shared spaces outside schools and third-level institutions when all movements by car get their own space for example with this design in Tallaght which breaks a number of the principles of the Cycle Design Manual:
And even along what is already one of the busiest cycle routes in on the Rathmines Road we get shared crossings at junctions:
And in locations where two-stage crossings should be used instead:
If the NTA’s Cycle Design Manual had taken a clearer approach like its UK counterpart, it would have been effectively rubbishing a large section of the NTA’s BusConnect designs.
Questions about how we design our streets are as much or more so political than engineering choices, but transport Minister Eamon Ryan has so-far not wanted to overrule the NTA and set higher standards. Unless he sees the light in his last few months in office, the question of improving things falls to the next Minister.
And most people involved in cycling might be mainly hoping that the next Minister for Transport has at least some interest in promoting cycling — that’s opposed to being anti-cycling or just disinterested. But if they are somewhat interested, let’s hope they can see sense and set higher standards in terms of minimising shared spaces along streets and roads and also other basics such as widths of cycle tracks.