National

Cyclists in Amsterdam are fearless: no helmets, no protective kit

Yet they may be safer, too. Read article

Irish Times - Well done all those who campaigned for this!

IRELAND’S ONLY local authority cycling officer is to lose his job before Christmas, after Dublin City Council was instructed by the Department of the Environment not to fund the position any further.

“I am due to leave next Thursday,” said the council’s cycling officer, Ciarán Fallon. A Facebook campaign has been started by outraged cycling campaigners in an effort to reverse the decision.

FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor. Read more

Building more quality safe space for cyclists along main routes will prevent them all crowding onto one path.

“If you build it they will come” has not always been true of the great British cycling facility. The bafflingly inappropriate pavements, muddy tracks and steps are usually no more attractive than riding on busy roads with fast cars and big trucks. Read more

IRELAND may get its first “traffic light-free” city centre if the ideas being pitched this week by a UK campaigner come to fruition.

Equality Streets is the brainchild of Martin Cassini who believes that replacing the constraints of traffic light systems with common sense and courtesy will lead to less congestion, fewer carbon emissions, improved road safety and billions of euro in savings. Read more

INADEQUATE PUBLIC transport has pushed Dublin down the rankings in a table of Europe’s top shopping cities according to a survey published this week.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Globe Shopper City survey found that while Dublin performed strongly when the number of shops was considered and did well on the length of its sales seasons, the city scored poorly in terms of public transport and this pushed it into 14th place out of 33 European cities.

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OPINION: THE PRIORITIES set out in the Government’s Infrastructure and Capital Investment 2012 – 2016: Medium-Term Exchequer Framework report of supporting enterprise, health and education are absolutely laudable. In a time when exchequer revenues are outstripped by expenditure, needs must.

But when one examines the transport stratagem against the three objectives it becomes clear the proposed investment does not deliver, nor on one other key criterion: maximising value for money. Most especially it will not promote public health, something that is increasingly linked to our level of active travel, to the best possible degree.

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IN the grand plan of things the Cycle to Work Scheme can hardly be described as world changing but in its own small, quiet, effective way it has been revolutionary and eye-opening. Read more