A raft of legal changes are being progressed by the Department of Transport and the National Transport Authority to support the Cycle Design Manual, BusConnects and pedestrian streets.
The first phase of legal changes was implemented last year and reported on by this website. Most of the planned changes are expected to be implemented by this summer. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to the Government is currently reviewing the regulations.
One of the changes, contra-flow cycling on narrow one-way streets, is seen as key to increasing legal cycling permeability in areas such as city centres and some older suburbs with narrow streets. The measure is ubiquitous in Dutch, French, and Belgian cities and also implemented widely in the UK, Germany and Denmark, but Ireland has been behind the curve on this.
Only a handful of examples have been rolled out, but these have worked broadly successfully in the Dublin City Council area for decades. While the measure is allowed under law, the main block to wider implementation is a lack of formalisation of this in the Traffic Signs Manual, which councils follow.
Officials will also be adding clearer signage and allowing exception plates under the now standard continental-style no-entry signs. Currently, exception plates such as “except cyclists” can only be used under old-style no-entry signs, which has led to the situation where old-style no-entry signs need to be reinstalled to allow new exceptions.
Other formalising of legal and Traffic Signs Manual support for the designs in the Cycle Design Manual include parallel crossing for both pedestrians and bicycles, and directional traffic lights and directional signs and markings for cycle tracks — which are key for the safe and effective design of junctions many separated cycle paths.
In addition to supporting the Cycle Design Manual, the changes are also related to BusConnects and measures such as pedestrian streets.
These changes, for example, include allowing limited access to a section of an otherwise car-free street to allow access to blue badge disabled parking spaces. This is part of a move to allow for a wider range of low-traffic streets with access for different users.
This kind of arrangement, it is understood, would be implemented on pedestrian streets in less busy areas and would not be viewed as suitable for the likes of Grafton Street in Dublin or Shop Street in Galway.
Other new signs include regularised signs for School Streets, EV charging spaces, car (‘club’) share spaces, and for mobility hubs.
Many of the changes are minor in nature, including formalising the legal backing for line markings and signs. All traffic signs and markings are supposed to be prescribed by regulations, and a large number of the changes are to regulate existing markings or add legal support to new markings, such as “elephant markings” to highlight cycle paths at unsignalised junctions.
New signs will include a formal arrangement for signs to warn of crossings of two-way cycle paths and combined warning signs for zebra and cycling crossings.
Smaller signs such as those embedded in bollards or scaled down versions of signs for cycle paths will also get legal backing. The Road Traffic Acts and related secondary legislation currently prescribe that larger signs much be used in nearly all cases.
While Ireland is not a signee to the convention, officials have aimed to follow the standard signage of the Geneva Convention on Signs. This includes using the Geneva Convention standard for the ‘Bicycle Street’ concept to be implemented in Ireland, which was reported on in 2023 and is now being progressed.
It is understood that adopting continental “shark’s teeth” for yield markings was looked at, but this concept would need to be developed, including gradually replacing the similar markings currently used in Ireland to highlight speed ramps and raised crossings.
No doubt all of these new signs will be as widely communicated as previous signage updates. Would be nice to think it could be given the media coverage, adverts and comms that the change to the L road speed limit signage got.
“officials have aimed to follow the standard signage of the Geneva Convention on Signs.”
There’s very little evidence of that since many of the road signs used are different to European norms and some used here have (almost) the complete opposite meanings of what is used in other European countries.
Besides the silly rural speed limit sign (which there is no need for) there have been general moves in recent decades towards compliance with the standard signs in the Geneva Convention on Signs.
The mention in the article following the Convention only relates to the new signs that are planned under the legal changes.
As an aside: I’ve read a good deal of our Traffic Signs Manual, so, I took it to the next level and read over a chunk of the Convention. It turns out that our compliance is higher than even a lot of transport nerds think because the Convention allows our type of warning signs etc as alternatives to the standard sign, and the alternative signs are viewed to be compliant with the Convention.