Kilmainham to Thomas St cycle route phase one: A mixed bag with clear improvements but with things which should have been better

Comment & Analysis: The Kilmainham to Thomas Street project is kind of a reflection of where Dublin City Council is at generally with cycle routes — it’s a mixed bag that is good in parts, but it could be more continuous and one of the main issues is lack of connections or slowness in building other sections of the route.

In July, this website covered how the Kilmainham to Thomas Street cycle route phase one was nearly finished and included this video (what’s changed since is outlined below):

Some minor work is still needed to finish the project, but it’s at the stage where a review should happen. So, here we go…

This is an overview of the route as it stands (with colours associated with the map below):

  1. Black: To form part of a future phase of the project.
  2. Light green: Bollard-segregated cycle lanes.
  3. Blue: A possible alternative route that could have been a mix of segregated paths/low traffic.
  4. Red: Around half a mix of sharing with two-way traffic and half a mix with a narrow one-way street with contra-flow cycling allowed.
  5. Green: Mainly a two-way cycle path with rubber bolt-in kerbs.
  6. Light blue: Shared path through the linear park area.
  7. Pink: Redesign of the junction between Suir Road and Davitt Road (being planned separately).

Section One: What’s missing?

If you look at a lot of the projects, both large and small, around the city, one of the main issues is what’s not included — in other words, the council has given up or delayed making a decision on a trickier part of a route.

The section in black in the map above can be split into two parts — the narrow part and the wider part:

The narrow section does not have the width for a continuous cycle path servicing both travel directions and filtering is likely not going to happen in the short-term due to the network of one-way streets.

So, the final option to allow two-way cycling is contra-flow cycling without lanes.

Contra-flow cycling without lanes is everywhere in cycling-friendly cities with networks of narrow streets like those in parts of central Dublin, and it’s also a part of this route — in a far more confined and trickier situation.

In this case, the contra-flow route would need to end with a traffic light sequence of its own at the junction of Thomas Street / Thomas Court (the end of the route), and Bridgefoot Street (the start of another route planned from Thomas St to Grangegorman).

There are some pinch points along Thomas Court, but there is good visibility and places to wait if needed to in the main:

But at this point, it might be worth removing around 2-4 car parking spaces:

In the Netherlands, many contra-flow without lanes arrangements on main cycle routes have been turned into ‘bicycle streets’.

This could be a good approach here

This is the junction of Thomas Court and Marrowbone Lane. There is a massive amount of unneeded road space here, and there are no safe crossings.

Note: This part of Earl Street South is two-way, with a stop sign added in recent years facing motorists/cyclists etc, coming from the east on the street, and after resurfacing, line markings were removed, allowing a left turn out of the flats to the right of this image.

There’s a lot of space to work with to allow for a transition from a two-way cycle path on Marrowbone Lane to a contra-flow argument on Thomas Court. For example, something like this:

Note: This image should be seen as a sketch and is devoid of details such as bicycle logos, ‘elephant feet’ markings for bicycle crossings, and other markings such as those denoting raised crossings etc.

In line with a bicycle street approach, I was thinking of a modern Dutch approach to transition from cycle paths to bicycle streets, but I think I might have just reinvented the mini-roundabout here:

Around this point, the route should also have a defined connection to/from the south city centre shopping area.

This would mainly involve signage to make the route clear in both directions (especially if it varies), signs to allow two-way cycling on otherwise one-way streets (again, contra-flow cycling without lanes) and small sections of cycle tracks to link up these streets (such as allowing people to legally cycle across from one side street to the other around Francis St without going a huge distance out of the way).

The main construction element would be a crossing of Patrick St and a link into Bride Street etc. Any suggestions for this are for best kept for another article, so the purple line is just a broad indication of the area:

This is the wider part of the black second. For this area, a two-way cycle track makes much more sense in how to build a continuous route. Regardless of whether it’s two-way or one-way, some space is required from the extra wide footpaths to segregate the cycle tracks here and allow for two-way traffic:

It should be a last resort to take space from footpaths, but the footpaths here are extra wide, and there’s a relatively low level of footfall most of the time on the footpath on the left (west) side here:

This section could just be changed to a two-way cycle path by mainly or only shifting the existing path on the left side (west) here over to the right side and installing a kerb:

For a short section, what’s in place isn’t too bad (besides the volume of bollards). What happens next is where it starts to go wrong….

It’s unclear if the parking behind the bollards is being planned. It seems unlikely it was planned this way with cars running over the larger bollards, which are not designed to be run over. Extra bollards were also added here at some point last year.

With a two-way cycle path, the cycling part of this to the other side of the road, and then the council can decide what it wants to do with this area — for example, adding greenery and seating as happened further up the road or a mix of that and parking.

And this crazy amount of bollards would be reduced too:

There were not enough bollards, so they added some — this is the very opposite of how people cycling should be merged into a shared traffic lane.

The extra bollards likely mainly encourage people to exit the lane before this point. The roadway here is busy enough that a near-90-degree turn makes it very hard at times to get out ahead of traffic. It’s a bit odd as cycling is given priority on other parts of the route, it’s as if two different people were designing the different sections.

Most of Marrowbone Lane is narrower but a mix of place makingplacemaking/greenery and traffic claiming could be a huge improvement to the area outside part of the Dublin City Council depot — it’s a massive 24 metres:

(Image made with Streetsketch, the EU version of Streetmix)

The red route is 200 metres, and it’s not possible to provide a continuous route that is segregated or has low traffic (at least without some major reworking of the traffic circulation in the area).

The blue route is 300 metres long, and it is possible to provide a route that is continuously segregated or has low traffic. In this context, an extra 100 metres is likely within the distance many people will take for a more pleasant route, while anybody who wants to could still use the red route.

Part of the red route is still useful, for example, for people cycling out to Cork Street:

There are different options to link the proposed two-way cycle path to the existing two-way cycle path (shown at the bottom left).

  • Purple / Long Lane: Extension of existing cycle path on James’s Walk along Long Lane (up as far as the Grand Canal Harbour development once that’s finished), with the road made one-way to allow parking to be retained on one side of the street.
  • Green / Section of Newport St: Retrofit the existing carriageway into a cycle path (no apparent car access is needed on this section).
  • Light blue / Newport St: Bicycle street treatment with parking on both sides retained.

Back to what was built on the route that was used, this is the shared section with a logo on a narrower section of Marrowbone Lane;

The shared section ends with a turn from Marrowbone Lane into an example of contra-flow without a marked lane on Forbes Lane. This lane is much more confined and trickier than the suggestion made earlier in this article for Thomas Court.

Before this project, Forbes Lane was two-way for all traffic with a narrower footpath throughout. The wider sections of the footpath are a clear improvement.

This contra-flow arrangement should exist, but with the traffic volume, it doesn’t work well enough as part of a route.

Routes can have different elements — cycle paths, two-way cycle paths, contra-flow, bicycle streets, shared paths in parks etc. However, the elements must give some sense of cohesiveness and continuity.

While it’s good to see more contra-flow without lanes, a few detail changes could have made this a bit better.

This short video includes the contra-flow without lanes section. It gives more of a feel for what it’s like that a still image can (although keep in mind that I’m obviously not looking in the same way the camera is, and I’ve a wider field of vision and am turning my head where needed):

For those who really want to have a look but cannot get there, the contra-flow section can also be partly viewed on Google Street View (note: before both ends, the Street View images flick back to older images).

Although both the video and the images likely don’t get across that there’s a small incline at the start, and how confined it can get:

Even in terms of smaller elements of the design, which could have made a significant difference: The removal of the traffic sign and pole on the left side (it doesn’t need to be on both sides; see the image above for the other side of the signs) and a slightly narrower footpath could improve the space left for cycling.

The small section could have meant fewer motorists encroaching on the safety-critical element of the cycling exit space — which should be ideally segregated. It would have made little difference to people walking because of the narrow width of the path further up the lane:

This is, I’m guessing, to deter motorists from exiting from a private garage to turn the wrong way, but, on balance, it seems to be an unneeded hazard for contra-flow cycling?

Where there was a bit more space, the footpath was extended.

The footpath really did need to be widened, but, again, maybe a better balance would have been to give 1/3 of the extra footpath space to contra-flow cycling?

This is a view of the last section before the end:

A key element of contra-flow cycling for slightly higher-volume streets is the junctions. This does not work, and it does not fit with the idea that the contra-flow entry and exit points should be protected where it’s possible to do so:

The idea of crossing points from the two-way cycle path section to the contra-flow section is good, but the design isn’t fully right. Because of the weird alignment, people are cycling in and out of the point closest to the camera here.

It’s great to see that the cycle route at this end of the contra-flow arrangement is given priority. However, a more permanent fix for this route should include at least a raised table and the red surfacing continuing across the junction.

At least one crossing for pedestrians would also be a welcome edition here:

The traffic lanes are on the wide end of things when this is just a local street:

The following section was not fully finished when it was last visited in December.

But it has been said that the car parking spaces here are required (the project removed quite a bit of parking).

Here, the footpath was narrowed, and the westbound cycle route merges with the carriageway. An alternative to these measures could have been to use the bicycle street approach and filtered permeability at the end of the street at the bridge.

The traffic arrangements could look something like the following, with the west end second of James’s Walk and Glenmalure Villas made two-way again for motorists, but for access-only (in purple) and no exit (or entry) for motorists at the South Circular Road (at the red line):

The current layout means the footpath ends short of the South Circular Road at Rialto Bridge.

This issue is acute at the moment because the other side of the canal is closed off due to the National Children’s Hospital construction, but it will remain after the path on that side is reopened.

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This is a video of the new crossing point for cycling beside the existing pedestrian crossing:

Here’s the view from the other side — the waiting area for cycling could have be made flatter to make it more accessible for people using adapted bicycles, cargo bikes etc.

And that’s it for now — it’s clearly an improvement overall, but some details could be better, the routing in parts could be better with a more continuous route, and the route needs to link into Thomas Street and beyond.

2 thoughts on “Kilmainham to Thomas St cycle route phase one: A mixed bag with clear improvements but with things which should have been better”

  1. Thanks Cian – I use this a lot. The end near Rialto bridge is better than expected, however the footpath closest to the luas track is still partially closed. Thanks for flagging the bollard hell section on Marrowbone Lane. I have panniers so find Forbes Lane very challenging to cycle. Cycle streets are a great idea. They have them in Leuven too and it is clear to all road users what they mean. Generally to give credit to DCC they have improved what was a hazardous and unpleasant journey enormously.

    Reply
  2. Thanks Cian for the comprehensive analysis. In addition to the patchiness of the cycling infrastructure, what strikes me is the level of dereliction and just plain ugliness that surrounds us in this city.

    Reply

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