THE DEPARTMENT of Transport is pressing ahead with its plans to spend €4 million to create cycle lanes on national roads in rural areas. Cycling lobbies argue it will be a waste of money because of poor maintenance but the department says this view is “misguided”.
The lobbies believe the “€4 million employment initiative” should be scrapped. Cycling lobby cyclist.ie said many similar facilities along roads in urban areas “have been a poor use of public money and are badly maintained – not even subjected to regular road-sweeping and left piled with snow during winter”.
Cyclist.ie chairman Dr Mike McKillen said: “The construction of roadside cycle facilities should cease until a proper framework is in place to ensure their appropriate design, construction, application and subsequent maintenance.”
According to the cyclists, inappropriate provision of cycle facilities “can actually end up making cycling conditions worse, rather than better” and rural roads were even less likely to “get any regular attention from councils’ road-sweeping equipment”.
Dr McKillen said it seemed “wholly inadvisable” to replace hard shoulders with cycle lanes. “This is nothing more than a make-work scheme that simply ignores cyclists’ real need for safer interaction between motorised vehicles and riders on our public roads.”
Most of the funding for an €880,000 scheme to provide hard-shoulder cycle lanes on the N7 – between Nenagh and Limerick – is coming from the Department of Transport, but the design specifications are left to local authorities.
“If the bulk of the money went on realignment and taking out hazards, fair enough”, said James Nix, of PlanBetter. “But if most of the €880,000 is going on red paint that the councils won’t later machine-sweep, the whole exercise is counterproductive.”
Cyclist.ie has offered to provide the department with a range of alternative schemes that would represent a better use of the money, which is coming from the Smarter Travel programme – aimed at encouraging a switch from cars to walking and cycling.
The department said cyclist.ie’s call for a postponement of the €4 million scheme was misguided. “This investment recognises the overriding need for employment generation given the current economic situation and it is not solely for cycling projects,” it said.
“Acting on cyclist.ie’s call in full would not only deny employment opportunities but also mean not progressing a large range of footpath and pedestrian-focused works . . . including safe crossings, improvements for people with disabilities [and] traffic calming projects.”
The scheme also included cycle parking – “projects to which cyclist.ie would likely give their full support”, the department said, adding that local authorities are specifically reminded to refer to the National Transport Authority’s online design manual at cyclemanual.ie
