Transport and traffic chiefs clash over promotion of cycling in city

The head of the Dublin Transport Office, John Henry, and the director of traffic at Dublin City Council, Owen Keegan, have clashed over the city's efforts to promote cycling.

Mr Keegan yesterday criticised the promotion of cycle-lanes, saying they had failed to achieve their primary objective of halting the decline in cycling

Promoting cycle-lanes was the most controversial traffic measure promoted by the council, with "huge levels of opposition" from the general public, he told the Velo-City conference on urban cycling.

Mr Henry said Mr Keegan was being pessimistic and expressed confidence that "we've turned the corner" in relation to cycling numbers. Increased investment in recent years in a 300 km network of cycle-lanes around the city would eventually encourage more people to use bicycles as a means of transport.

Mr Keegan said an exclusive reliance on improving cycling infrastructure "does not work". While the public had accepted and were often enthusiastic about improvements in pedestrian and bus facilities, this was not the case with cycling infrastructure.

Reducing the number of car lanes to facilitate the installation of cycle-tracks at busy junctions had resulted in massive opposition.

Local politicians stood for election every five years and there was a limit to the number of "unpopular interventions" that could be imposed on them, Mr Keegan told a conference debate on transport in Dublin.

"We have failed to sell the cycling project to the general public. They have bought into other aspects of traffic management but not into cycling."

Cycling was suffering a haemorrhaging of young users and if this continued, "there won't be any cyclists because young people won't know how to cycle".

Supt Michael O'Sullivan of the Garda traffic division said that while the number of cyclist fatalities had fallen nationally in recent years, it had risen in Dublin. It was "unacceptable" that all such deaths last year and this year had occurred in collisions with trucks or buses.

Gardaí were hoping to achieve a 25 per cent reduction in cyclist fatalities by next year, he said.

Traffic congestion was the "friend" of buses and bicycles because it allowed them to compete effectively with cars, Derry O'Brien, strategic planning manager of Dublin Bus, told the conference.

Part of the fall-off in the popularity of cycling could be explained by the success of buses and quality bus corridors, he said. However, both modes of transport faced a challenge from population trends, which forecast a decline in the numbers living in the city and an increase in those living in outlying areas.

"Part of the answer is to target young transport users; we now have a population of kids in the city who have never been on a bus or cycled to school."