“Baffling”: Christmas tree plonked in middle of contra-flow cycle track in Limerick “must be removed immediately”, says campaigners

— Move to allow motorists to use bus lane on the same street is “stupid… and dangerous”.

A Christmas tree plonked in the middle of the contra-flow cycle track on O’Connell Street in Limerick “must be removed immediately”, local cycling campaigners have said.

Last year, IrishCycle.com reported on how the same cycle lane was “saved” from the Christmas tree barriers when the council moved the tree and barriers and reopened the lane. But if there’s any U-turn this year it doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

The Limerick Cycling Campaign said: “This is a clearly unsafe and ridiculous placing of the tree and leaves Limerick City and County Council open to serious legal repercussions by forcing cyclists into oncoming car traffic. It must be removed immediately.”

The Limerick Pedestrian Network, an advocacy group, today said: “Actually – this is placed at one of two extremely busy and entirely unprotected ‘informal’ pedestrian crossings in the city, now made more dangerous. People will come out of Penneys and have to stand in the road to see past the tree to navigate traffic. It’s a baffling decision.”

Closing bus lane, allowing all traffic to use it for Christmas

The blocking of the cycle lane comes after a local area meeting of councillors heard how some city centre traders wanted the bus lane on the street opened up to all traffic. A number of councillors voiced their support for removing bus priority on the street for Christmas, and it is understood that the council are considering this.

On the bus lane, the Limerick Pedestrian Network yesterday said: “There’s a push by some city councillors today to re-designate the O’Connell St bus lane as all-traffic during Christmastime. Not only is this a stupid (against all traffic planning evidence) idea, it’s also dangerous. It must not go ahead.”

“O’Connell Street was recently re-designed as a public transport only low-traffic street, with free movement of pedestrians prioritised (i.e. removal of official crossing at Bedford Row). But we’re still waiting for traffic changes, so the street is jammed and extremely unsafe for pedestrians,” the group said.

When posting the first image below of the street today to Twitter, the Limerick Urban Cycling Twitter account said today: “1.50pm on a Tuesday. The bus lane is carrying 60 people minimum (on the 304, it was full). Traffic lane carrying about half of that.”

Limerick City and County Council were contacted to comment on both the cycle lane and the bus lane issues.

Updates to follow.

IMAGES: Thanks for Limerick Urban Cycling on Twitter.

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