Last night.

Dublin City Council voted against the Sandymount cycle path trial [along Sandymount strand, Dublin 4] Due to residents’ concerns about displacement of traffic into Sandymount village.

Ragamuffin writes:

The decision is now postponed until January, but looking less likely it will ever happen.

As a resident of Sandymount I was very much in favour of the plan.

Strand Road is a popular route for cyclists, yet is quite dangerous due to a lack of provision for them.

There is a major problem on Strand Rd with on-street parking on the inbound side between the martello tower (St Johns Rd) and Newgrove Ave (Roslyn Park College).

The road is simply not wide enough for 2 lanes of traffic and parking, which results in cars parking up on the kerb. These cars create a blockage for pedestrians on the path (particularly wheelchair users and those pushing buggies), and also pushes cyclists further out into the busy road.

I would argue that if Dublin City Council are going to postpone their segregated cycle lane, then a good interim measure would be removing the hazard of these parked cars by installing double yellow along the length of Strand Road in both directions.

This will free up approximately 1 meter from the road and 1 meter from the path for use by cyclists and pedestrians.

In DCC’s consultation document they describe this parking as ‘informal’, which suggests they take no responsibility for it. There seems to be no signage or ticketing in operation, even though I would have assumed there’s a bylaw against parking on the path in this manner.

If residents on Strand Rd are so desperate to park immediately outside their houses, then they should consider converting their front gardens to parking spaces.

A car is a private piece of property, why should anyone have the right to leave it (for free, in this case) on public land, obstructing a public road and path?

DCC make the valid point that the solution put forward by residents to build boardwalks over the beach and separate cycle lanes, would take years of planning and costly infrastructure as it’s a marine protection area.

DCC’s plan creatively solved these issues by re-purposing our existing resources, but unfortunately it is now put on a back-burner.

Everyone is in agreement that cycling infrastructure in this area, which is very popular with cyclists, needs improvement.

So why not make this small change, which will not completely fix the problem, but would hopefully reduce the risk for cyclists and pedestrians?

The consultation documents (now over) can be found here for anyone interested.

Anyone?

Pics: Google