If there was one moment in the history of the bicycle that could be pinpointed as decisive,
it was the dramatic shift from high wheelers like the notorious Penny Farling to the safety
bicycles, an ancestor of what you see on the road today.
The perception moved from viewing bicycles as a dangerous toy for sporting young men,
transforming them into a tool of everyday transport for men and, crucially, women.
Some 19th century feminists and suffragists were so impressed with the liberating potential
of these new bicycles that they called them the freedom machine.
For a long time, the bicycle was the only personal means of transport in reach of the
meager personal finances of the average Irish person.
Bonham and 10 of us are fresh and tall and barely on vogue machine to Aiske.
Just the freedom of movement, you know, like if you want to go somewhere you can just go
there and it's on you, you know, I mean you don't have to rely on anyone else or you
don't have to have change, you know, for the bus.
It's reliable in that you always know what time you're going to be somewhere and how
long it's going to take you to get there.
I spent years getting buses all over the place and just get sick of it so quickly just waiting
around and you've no kind of, no real control over it yourself.
It's kind of a big, big reason I like cycling is that it gives you great kind of autonomy.
My main motivation for being a cyclist ends up being an independent.
I take my bicycle, it is at home and I can go from door to door.
When I don't have my bicycle, I'm extremely unproductive, I'm also quite pissed off because
everything takes longer.
There's a lot of places on the north side where the road quality is just really bad
and there's potholes everywhere, like I think probably in the city centre that's one of
the biggest dangers is potholes because you, you know, see a massive pothole coming right
up ahead of you, you're going to have to swerve four feet into the centre of the road out
of the way into traffic.
They've all gone car centric, they've just planned the streets for cars and are afraid
to go against the trend of putting the motor noses out of the joint by improving things
for cyclists.
There's not a culture of cycling in Dublin which means that, you know, it's important
that cyclists have that space and autonomy whereby this says, this is where I cycle,
this is from the point of view of a car, that's not where you go.
I'm happier seeing a bicycle lane than when I don't.
There is no national standard for designing cycle lanes.
There exists one but it's been shelved and it was ignored by councils.
We've been promised a replacement for about seven years now and all the time we're having
councils and the office that designs the quality bus corridors, rolling out new cycle lanes
which are not only uncomfortable for cyclists, they're actually positively dangerous.
I know the bus lane is supposed to be there to help cyclists or that's how it's perceived
but it's not actually the case because what happens is you're either caught behind a bus
and a bus stops because it stops at a bus stop which it's supposed to do and you're
forced then out into the traffic.
A lot of the kind of errors and like, you know, rule breaking that cyclists do is because
of the fact that there's a lack of facilities in cities like Dublin for cyclists so you
have to take these little chances and slightly more dangerous kind of strategies when you're
out there.
Scandinavia, Holland, Germany, for example, you're the best in Europe, you've just got
better cycle lanes, you've got higher priority for cyclists, you've got better motorist education,
they are held more responsible for their actions if they injure cyclists.
The whole thing is just designed more towards cyclists, even in old cities like here we
often hear that the streets are too narrow in Dublin, it's an old city, you know, it's
not as like, in like, you've got old cities across like Northern Europe which have got
very, very good cyclical priority.
It was just like a social pressure, you know, everyone has a care, I mean you've got to
get one too, you know, most people I wouldn't own, when they turn 16 or 17 or whatever it
is, first thing you've got to do is get your licence, you know, because you've got to get
your licence, you've got to get your care, you know.
And then obviously there's influences from pressure group in Dublin City Council or Ireland
or in Europe or the world for that matter, AA and other road groups, they want people
to drive and they really stop and don't want to get people to drive, whereas a cyclist,
I mean all you've got to do is get on your bike and cycle.
Our drivers usually would look down on cyclists, they consider themselves the superior and
they have more ownership of the road.
They're in the same situation, they're sharing a tiny little Irish road that's not even designed
probably for a double-decker bus in the first place, you know, and it has a double-decker
bus that's cars parked on the side and it has cyclists in between that little tiny space
along with pedestrians, you know, I mean it's not easy for them either.
I mean it's stressful as well in the city and a lot of people get very anxious and tense
and stuff.
When you're on your bicycle, you don't want to be held up.
When you're in a car, you don't want to be held up and sometimes car drivers become impatient
with cyclists because they're moving at a slightly slower rate, but we have to deal
with that.
You have a responsibility, you're in charge of one and a half tons of metal and plastic
and you have a responsibility to drive to be very careful with that.
Some drivers are just oblivious to you, so I mean it's quite exasperating to come across
somebody who just cuts you up when you're cycling alone, bicycle lane and just no heat
to it at all.
We drop the kid down to school, he doesn't have his bike yet because it's too far and
it's too small, but it's so nice to see all the other parents that have their kids cycling
behind them and then you see cars like the other morning, we were a bit late for school
and this car just assumed there was nobody coming and just pulled out really fast and
nearly knocked the two of us down and I suppose when you're in a car you don't consider somebody
else in a different type of space, you just consider a car space.
When you're on a bicycle and someone is coming past you in like a one tonne metal box, you're
definitely the one who's at risk in that situation, so having a kind of hierarchy where motorists
and particularly like large vehicle motorists know that by law they have to respect the
rights of pedestrians and cyclists, otherwise in an accident situation they're going to
be the ones that's liable.
When I'm driving a car I can do so much more harm, so I really do have to be that much
more careful.
Likewise if I'm cycling a bike I have the ability to play over a pedestrian so I have
to be careful of that, so it makes sense that those who can cause more damage really have
to be more aware and there's ones who should be on them.
I think it's a very good step and I think an essential step if you want the city to
work co-operatively, once drivers keep it in mind that there's a lot of people that
are in a more vulnerable position than them in the public domain.
I'm not sure how quickly motorists in Ireland would take to it though, I think there might
be a little bit of resistance because the car is an element of social status in Ireland
and in other countries, so implementing a hierarchy of bicycles first or pedestrians
first and then the motorist is in the wrong, that could be difficult but I think it would
definitely make the roads safer.
We can just go back to the way streets were where you'd simpler junctions, slower speeds,
zebra crossings where cars have to yield to pedestrians, so you start and do it in the
city where things are slow anyway and then you can embed the concepts and move them
out to the suburbs.
Vulnerable road users must be protected, I think we could bring this into Ireland immediately.
There would be a change in legislation which the implications of which I wouldn't be fully
aware of but I think it needs to be looked at very seriously and very soon.
This young man is not thinking about what he's doing, he's in danger because he's
unconscious of what's going on around him, it's downright dangerous.
I wouldn't be cycling or half the people you see on bikes in the city wouldn't be cycling
if it was this really dangerous thing to do.
Cycling isn't any more dangerous than a lot of human activities, getting in and out of
the bath.
It's not that they perceive it as dangerous, it's just that it was never ingrained in
them from like a young age, two cycles, so it's more of a, it's like an extreme sport.
There are risks, there are absolutely risks involved in cycling in Dublin and in a major
city, but the thing to remember is that the benefits to your heart and your lungs and your
fitness outweighs the risks by 20 to 1.
There's a lot of people I know that won't cycle in Dublin because they think it's too
dangerous, but I think the health benefits far outweigh the dangers anyway, but it's
hard to know without looking at stats for accidents or whatever, whether it's more
dangerous than that and else.
I don't think it's particularly dangerous, I think it's like that and else, if you take
care of yourself you'll be okay, if you just keep your eyes open and your ears open you'll
be okay.
Weaving in and out of traffic without looking, without looking behind you, it's like a car
making turns without looking in their rear view mirror.
It's crazy.
Cycling without lights for example that night, it's totally suicidal, I mean as a driver
I know how little you can observe in the dark if there's no lights around, so that's the
key.
So no lights, not, are weaving in and out of traffic without looking effectively behind
you and then again breaking traffic lights unnecessarily.
Lack of awareness, not signaling or not looking around particularly, just not being aware
of where they are on the road or particularly other road users are on the road and pedestrians
as well.
Like it's the same, lack of respect that other road users have and some cyclists have
that as well, like cutting through pedestrian crossings with pedestrians coming through
or doing stupid things.
Well you see examples of bad cycling on the road and people that are unsafe, that are
unaware of their road position, you do see that and I think training for cyclists would
be advisable in quite a few cases.
Sometimes you'll see these people indicating and not looking over their shoulder before
they turn, they'll just indicate and veer out into the middle of a road and I get cut
off quite regularly by cyclists doing that and it does really annoy me, like if you're
in a busy urban centre you need to use your eyes to look around, like I mean you can hear
so much around you but like if there's another bike behind you and if that bike is running
well, you're not going to hear it.
Always watch for car doors being suddenly opened or automobiles pulling out into traffic.
Sometimes the road presents special hazards.
I know a guy who cycles with a big pole at the back of his bike and it goes out so far
and anytime a car comes in the car hits off the big pole but I think that's a bit extreme.
Five years ago cycling was at the lowest in Ireland, little by little people are getting
on their bike again and the more cyclists you have the more secure it gets.
I think not expecting the unexpected and I'm repeating myself but I think that's the way
you have to cycle, you have to be very careful and if you are careful it's a very enjoyable
experience.
Just with the way that the cycle lanes are set up is that they're always on the inside
and a lot of motorists don't take much notice of cyclists.
Like if a car is veering in from your right hand side towards the left it'll maybe just
knock on the window just to get the driver's attention and quite often they'll give the
driver more of a fright than they ever intended but at the same time it does get their attention.
People should be more confident and not be, you know, because a lot of times they create
danger in themselves because they try to be more cautious than what they need to be.
Stake your claim on the road, don't be afraid when the cars start hunking at you, you know,
whatever, just let them hunk, you know.
The best thing you can do as a cyclist is just be confident that you belong on the road,
be really clear about which way you're going in terms of indicating and know that you have
a right to be there as well.
Look behind and make eye contact with motorists that you think is going to overtake or at
a junction, make eye contact with a motorist that you think is going to cross the junction.
When policy fails, this comes into place.
When helmet laws are introduced, cycling goes down.
When cycling goes down, less people cycle, which means that automatically cycling becomes
less safe.
If you take the example of Sweden, Holland, even France, even though our cycling culture
is not a developer, the other ones, people don't wear helmets and it's not only because
of the fashion thing, it's because they don't need it.
They have the proper infrastructures.
You have proper cycling tracks where the cars are forbidden.
I've always worn a helmet because it's a very mild inconvenience for the kind of peace
of mind that it gives me and I have been in accidents where I was really glad I was wearing
my helmet.
There was a 51 year old man who was killed, it was like two or three weeks ago when the
key was there and I saw a story in RTN News and somehow they related that story, the danger,
like bike on friendly roads and dubbing to people not wearing helmets and that we need
to wear helmets and I think that's absolutely ridiculous, it's like a scapegoat story.
I don't think they really do anything for you at all because they're not only good maybe
if you fall off your bike at five miles an hour, I think it deadens your brain, you can't
think straight with them.
I feel safer wearing a helmet, that's really all I can say, I feel more confident, I feel
more comfortable in cycling faster and kind of owning my place on the road whereas if
I'm not wearing a helmet I feel a little bit like, oh god what if I fall and again that
comes down to the confidence thing, the main thing is you're confident when you're cycling.
You are a road user, you don't have a secondary position just because you're not protected
by a metal thing around you.
Use the bike scheme, it's the only thing the Greens have done and so you may as well make
use of that bike scheme which means that I think you get up to 40% of your tax back.
Make sure your bike is in really really good work and order, you need to be able to stop,
that's very very important and an awful lot of people out there on bike steps aren't exactly
up to scratch.
Don't tell a new cyclist that they should get a helmet, they should get reflectors for
their bikes and they should get a busy vest and all the lights that they need and all
the equipment and stuff because you know you feel a lot safer in your head when you're
on the road and if you have lights and if you have a helmet on you have all different
things you feel a lot safer.
If you are feeling unsure, stay in the middle of the road, stay in the middle of the lane
if you're coming up to the lights and you're taking the right turn don't let them go past
you, be aggressive, make sure you have your own space and set your own space so that they
have to respect you because that's the only way you're going to get it, they either don't
see it or they're aiming for you.
I've been cycling daily for about a year and a half now and when I first started cycling
around the city centre a lot I used to get very frustrated with motorists coming me off
and just doing stupid stuff to make it unsafe for a cyclist and I'd vent me anger by banging
on the window or sticking my finger up at them or something like that but then over time
I started to realise that it was a much better approach to try and if you could catch the
motorist and tap on the window and just address them quite politely but just tell them that
they have done something that's completely ridiculous.
The other thing is to look at a map very carefully and study what routes you could take because
there's so many streets in Dublin, there are medieval street patterns, small back streets
and mues, sometimes you can pick out a really quiet route that you wouldn't have thought
of if you're on the bus all the time or if you're driving a car.
I really think that the most difficult thing is to start again, once you have started again
cycling and once you know how fast it is and how reliable it is you don't have to rely
on public transport and everything, once you have started cycling in the city you don't
give it up, it's just too fast, it's just too practical and everything so the main thing
is to start again.
Health benefits are huge, there are loads of studies showing as well for mental health
benefits about cycling, it really is good for your head.
When I started cycling this guy said to me, oh like cycling is great for your stress levels
and I was going to, well yeah I'm not really stressed, like I don't have stress in my life
at the moment, he's going no no but there's the hidden stress that you don't know about
you know and I thought oh he's mad.
You probably don't realise how beneficial it is to have that hour, well for me it's
about 40 minutes an hour, whatever your commute is every morning and evening, you know if
you've had a bit of a rough day in the office you cycle home and you can just process stuff
on your bike.
It can improve the air quality in Dublin because it's very bad, like as you know petrochemicals
cause cancer and strokes, heart disease, broncoysis, you name it and of course obesity
is a lot of people terrible fat now.
Yeah I don't do a lot of exercise, I don't play any sports and for me that is my exercise,
that and walking.
So it's definitely my commuting distance goes up a hill so it's a really good exercise
to do that.
The way I learned was just kind of as I encountered problems I tried to figure it out for myself
and I think it is really good to kind of make an effort to learn how your bike works.
Keep it clean and keep it oiled and it will last a hell of a lot longer than you will
if you don't.
The whole idea of people getting bikes is so that they don't have to pay for buses
or petrol or anything so why not take that a step further and not have to spend like
60 euro for your bike to get tightened up, you know it's the way to money.
In Ireland and in capitalist society like you're not really supposed to like kind of
skill share or kind of teach yourself how to do things, it's kind of like there's always
someone else that you can pay to do this service you know.
So as cyclists like the more we like share our skills about how it is that you maintain
your bike the easier it's going to be for everyone and the more cyclical people it do.
I was involved in a great project at Balimon run by this environmental group called Selogeco.
It kind of took many forms but the main one was that they had an old flat in one of the
Seloge terrors in Balimon that they opened up once a week or we opened up once a week
for kids to come in and they'd bring their bikes and we'd have all the bike trails and
everything so it was just an open door for two hours every Monday afternoon and the kids
would bring their bikes in and we'd teach them how to fix them.
Definitely it's something that I think any community anywhere could do because it's
cheap and it's obviously encouraging a whole lot of healthy habits and beliefs for kids.
I obviously use two locks like my back wheel and the frame and the front wheel and the
frame. Usually one good lock and one cheap lock is enough.
I still wouldn't run the risk of locking the bike somewhere overnight and yeah so just
I mean don't lock it down, lane is where someone would have a lot of time to walk and lock
it in more visible places.
There's one thing you notice around Dublin quite a bit if you look at bike racks there's
quite a few single wheels of bikes locked to bike racks and I think that's probably the
most common mistake that people make.
The steering tube, the handlebars and the part where the frame, the fork goes into the
frame, lock that to the pole.
There's plenty of places where you can get second hand bikes that are cheap enough you
know even if you just look around on the internet or whatever you can find somebody selling
their bike but you know it's a quite installing bike and I think it's just not on really you
know but that's up to some of these personal morals I suppose.
Cycling for me is the most efficient way to get around. I go to UCD every day, I work
out there and it takes me approximately 27 minutes from where I live on a firmy road
which is just beside the Phoenix Park and I'll turn the forms of transport, the bus
could take anything between 40 minutes and an hour and a half.
So from the official point of view it's much quicker.
Secondly from the point of view of health you know I enjoy cycling, recreation is much
I love my bike so I'm much happier getting onto my bicycle than I am getting into a car
or any other forms of transport.
In my commutes I go from North Inner City out to Finglas for work so on a dry day it
will take me 35, 35 to 40 minutes in a car. On a bike I'll get there in about 25 minutes.
If you have a meeting in town and you have your bicycle at work it's just so handy to
hop on the bike and meet a client when you're needing to meet someone across town there
is really no other way, no handier way to get to that client than to hop on your bike.
We used to work in a town in North Island, some huge percentage of people like 50% cycle
to work, it was a pleasure going to work, it was really nice especially on a nice day
just to have streams of cyclists going every which way. It was just so more laid back,
so much safer, so less noisy, so less stressful, I mean it made a huge difference.
You have to really love like being on a bike I guess you know because that's really what
it comes down to at the end of the day it's just you on a bike by yourself all the time.
When you first start like there's a lot of episodes of intense anger I mean you have
so many run-ins with like motorists like they yell at you, they call your names, they spit
on you, they throw things at you, I've had people hit me with rocks, cans, I mean anything
you can imagine.
As a courier you have to like have all your senses fully switched on all day long which
is, it sounds like something a lot of people might not even consider about the job but
I think it is one of the most important skills to actually be able to keep an eye on every
single pedestrian that's potentially crossing the road right in front of you.
We all know it's like we're all sitting there freezing in the middle of the winter and there's
nobody else that would be doing that. I mean we all think we're a bit mad sometimes.
Myself and Chris have been bicycle couriers for over ten years. Having worked for many
different companies in different countries we decided that it was about time to go out
by ourselves. Looking to Europe we saw that lots of companies were beginning to use cargo
bikes more moving larger goods around the city centre so we thought that would be a
good way to go especially where the traffic was in Dublin just getting worse and worse.
They can carry a lot more than a regular bike. They can carry up to 60 kilos and in the boxes
that we have we can carry up to four A4 boxes or two large file boxes so while we can maintain
the speed of a regular bike around the city we can also carry considerably more goods.
Well they are used fairly widely in Northern Europe especially and there's some cities
in the States that are used on a pretty regular basis as well now.
The thing is at the end of the day there just isn't enough space for the amount of people
that we have here so we have to look at alternate means of transport and cargo bikes fit that
perfectly in. An automobile is not as maneuverable as a
bike so don't swerve in and out of traffic follow a straight line and avoid being run
down. Well a lot of people get the fixed gear
bikes thinking that it's a cool courier thing to do or whatever I don't know they're the
fashionable bikes to ride or whatever but the fact is that they're quite tricky bikes
to ride as well and there is definitely a technique to riding them safely particularly
in a city. Fixed wheel bikes definitely allow maintenance
as well as that of riding in the first place. They are a much more pleasant cycling experience
because there's just a lot less kind of mechanical parts so to speak.
It's a fairly new phenomenon really because the bikes we ride they're fixed gear bikes
so they're not really made for doing tricks they're made for riding on a velodrome on
a track you know but we ride them on the street for our job because they're the most efficient
bike you can have really. So doing tricks on them is just kind of a new
thing that we kind of discovered recently like we've seen some videos people in the
America doing it and the internet and stuff obviously is exploded now so we can all watch
each other worldwide and see what's going on.
We started around two years ago, two and three years ago because there was the hard
time we needed to fix it, we started like two years ago in Dublin.
The first thing we just learn about the simple things like you know just tapping or whatever
and then you just start learning like how to jump, how to do some kind of tricks like.
We had the videos then you can find some videos on YouTube you can find some video on Vimeo
and of course on Facebook you can go to website WMessengers and we have videos in WMessengers
website as well then you just code easy to find them.
Try to reflect credit upon yourself, your parents, your school and your community. Remember
the bicycle rider of today is the automobile driver of tomorrow.
Bicycle culture is the culture what darts is to athletics in terms of it's like people
deluding themselves that there's some sort of culture.
Culture exists on the basis of socioeconomic relations, history, language, shared understanding
and stuff like that that's built in hardwired into people's DNA so you know the working
class people in Dublin can have a culture but I think that if you're doing track stands
and learning how to pedal your fixie backwards around Wolf Town that doesn't necessarily
equate to a culture.
Cycling like we do in Amsterdam is beneficial in more ways than one but what I think from
observing my fellow countrymen and women and families from fathers to mothers to grandfathers
etc and children is that they have fun with it, it's accessible, they can take the bike
at any time at any moment and go where they need to go which makes it very pleasurable
people know what to expect when they use a bike and when something is predictable you
can make it your own and when it's your own you can personalize it according to your needs
so that's why you see such a big variety of people and bikes in Amsterdam.
Well years ago there was always an awful lot of cyclists in Dublin and we say after 1965
when people started getting more wealthy they started to stop using the bike but there's
always been a hard core of cyclists there that are always cyclists anyway.
I remember me granny telling me when she was a young woman a long time ago she used to cycle
out to Bray Head and you know on the old three speed high delis and they used to just cycle
all the time so maybe it's kind of returned to a way that used to be but there's definitely
it's always nice just being on the bike you can just talk to other people on the bike
at the lights or whatever you're doing you know what I mean it's not like it's good
that there's starting to be a bit of a community about it.
I'm happy that people are cycling but I think that you should always in terms of people
getting into bike culture they should become aware that like it really it's bicycle and
it's for everybody and the way forward is to get as many people as possible on bikes
and using it for all sorts of reasons.
There's a lot of bikes in Dublin but it doesn't seem to be much of a it's not really a strong
bike culture I don't think you know so yeah it seems like people kind of bikes are just
considered to be like a you know a secondary kind of thing like you know whereas if you
go to like Amsterdam or different you know other European countries they they have a
lot more of a culture about bikes and people are a lot more you know I mean you'd see every
kind of person on a bike it's not just you know someone who can't afford a car.
There's a culture developing over in Europe and it's kind of feeds on the slow food movement
they have in Italy called slow travel or slow cycling where people they're not rushing around
the city like you see in Dublin people are just trying to look cool or trying to look
good and then just cycling around they've got the head up they're in no rush they're
just enjoying the experience that's what we need here.
Zine is like it's kind of like a homemade magazine the name comes from fan zine or zine
fan magazine but we started in zines there wasn't really much bike stuff finished but
there was references to cycling but there wasn't really a kind of a cycling culture
in zines starting a band or starting a record label starting a zine it was the same thing
with cycling cycling on a bike you take control of how you travel and get to A to B it's just
just what we do like it's more of a life kind of thing.
Set up this group a society called wheelsmobiles it was just kind of looking at different
forms of transport it was just really really interesting how this could be art because
it's almost like a completely separate way of existing about empowerment and how you
can just sort of take the means of survival from the streets or from public space.
It's about the extension of public property and public space and to be able to consider
as a citizen or user of public space you know where the lines are and you have a right to
claim public space.
17,000 people have signed up for it and they expected 2,000 to sign up for it so it's an
absolute runaway success and the city council would like to see 5,000 bikes.
The thing I really love about it is you see people in business suits or in high heels
or you know people that you wouldn't normally associate with cycling just hopping up on
the bikes.
I thought it was amazing it's wonderful it's fantastic and the fact that the council are
actually getting people to go out on the cycling and advocating cycling it's beautiful to see
as well all the bikes you know it's great but they should have really concentrated on
making the roads safer cyclists for the bikes game was introduced but it's still a step
forward for cyclists I suppose in Dublin.
Just getting JC the sale to pay for 420 bikes it means being ambitious and it means actually
putting like 5 or 6,000 bikes out there and putting bike racks so that people can cycle
from the town out to places like Tallah and Bali Firmit and Blanchett's town and Finglas
and beyond that small little city centre enclave which seems to be what they've started with.
Overall the double bike scheme is fantastic it would be great to see more bikes everywhere
more bike stands maybe they should supply helmets with the bikes it's a thorny issue
but the next time it's done it should be done just using city council money using tax payers
dollars and there shouldn't be any marketing arrangements with JC Dechal it's just fun
to own the bikes ourselves.
We can't afford using private cars the whole time anymore this is just done this is over
and this is very important and we can't waste the resources either and just waste the bikes
themselves.
Bike could be the invention that saves civilization it could be the thrust for oil in all directions
this has caused huge problems it's caused problems in Africa it's currently causing
problems in this country and people should look at what exactly corporations do in order
to get oil and the kind of human rights abuses that they inflict.
Obviously climate change is here it's upon us and we need to start acting yesterday and
one of the small token gestures we can do is to stop using cars apparently you know
some people or a lot of people use their cars to go to work within a few kilometres or people
use their cars because it's the culture of the car now in Dublin to go to the shop or
to bring their friends here and there and obviously we don't need to do that anymore
we have the bikes they've been around for a long long time they haven't changed and
they work well.
Remember take care of your bike so that when an emergency arises it can take care of you.
I mean you want to develop a sustainable geographic space that people enjoy using I mean think
about Dublin city centre it's just crowded with cars I mean it's baffled me sometimes
I cycle past somebody in the car and they could be sitting in the same place for half
an hour I mean why people insist on using the car given these circumstances and conditions
is beyond me.
Rohr was funded something like a year and a half ago the idea was to have some kind
of community development project around bicycles it started because I arrived in Ireland six
years ago and something that really shocked me was the amount of abandoned bicycles in
Dublin I mean you know bicycles without wheels or buckled wheels or without pedals or this
kind of stuff and I actually looked a little bit into it and I saw that there was nothing
done with those bicycles because I was working in community development I wanted to provide
training opportunities for kids from disadvantaged areas or it could be unemployed people or
asylum seekers and everything.
I mean bicycles do provide a lot of opportunities for those people you can train them on bike
mechanic or you can actually provide them with a free bike for asylum seekers for example
it would be a huge thing because they live on 19 years a week we have loads of volunteers
coming in for that you know they want to repair their own bike they don't really know anything
about it they learn with us by volunteering with us.
Secondly we have the bike maintenance workshops and that's the same but for the general public
so it's a four hours and you can learn how to fix the brakes the gears and everything.
We have cycling lessons I'm a cycling instructor so I would like to have Rohr as the main second
hand bicycle's retail it's very hard to find a second hand bike in Dublin that hasn't
been you know nicked but I would like it as well you know to be the main medium for inclusion
workshops.
If you have a space that's less concentrated on getting traffic through as more concentrated
on people transporting or transiting you'll get a much more beautiful public space.
The slogan of the Dublin Cycling Campaign is for safer greener quieter more social streets.
It just generally makes people more more mobile and like autonomous in their cities to go
wherever they want so you're not relying on a bus route that goes to a certain place at
a certain time and that way it opens up the city for people to interact with like at any
time.
I know it's a kind of buzzword but there's a critical mass the more people that do cycle
the better a city becomes.
Well it's not so much a case of if more people cycled I think it's more a case of if less
people drove really and then it would definitely open up more public space that's what cities
should be they're they're centres for people and populations and communities.
If you go to other cities in the continent where cycling trams and pedestrianised areas
are much more common there's there's more room to breathe in city centre there's more
room to interact people can relax more there's more park benches around there's more park
parks in the city centre you know all that space could be could be freed up in Dublin.
The Dublin Cycling Ben it started about 20 years ago it's a general advocacy group for
cycling.
The original aim was to stand up for the comfort and safety of commuting cyclists.
Obviously there's a hierarchy that we're looking for before we actually provide cycle
lanes it's reduction of traffic on the roads especially HDVs reduction of speed limits
and provision of wider lanes for traffic generally so that we have a shared shared lane.
The Dublin Cycling Campaign meets once a month the moment we meet in Temple Bar the second
Monday of every month seven o'clock we're in the Smock Alley Cafe in Temple Bar and
we have a website www.dublincycling.com on there it shows you what we do how to get involved
how to meet up what you can do if you don't want to come to meetings there's an awful
lot of work to do for cycling in Dublin.
The intent of Critical Mass was to highlight the bad roads that were in cycle friendly.
General cycling is pretty solitary you know it's just you and your bike on the road so
it's nice to make cycling something social and the Belfast logo is not stopping traffic
we are the traffic.
There's one or two people and you're surrounded by cars you're obviously going to feel more
safer if you have a few hundred cyclists out and showing that yeah you make the traffic
for the day so yeah there's actually a safety aspect to it.
Critical Mass is just a once a month thing the last Friday of every month in every city
and it shouldn't be the case you know the Critical Mass like the fact that we are traffic
that's what I'd envisage and that's what I'd hope it would be like every day you know.
I personally don't have a lot of belief or trust in terms of how change comes about if
you actually put it in the hands of others so I don't really think that lobbying or
campaigning has a massive effect it really is about people emphasising that the need to
actually get switched on to creating a proper bicycle infrastructure and creating a system
where we're not so dependent on fossil fuels.
Remember one out of three trips in the Netherlands is by bicycle and the government never talks
to these cyclists if these cyclists would change to car driving that would be a disaster
for the country.
The reason why the Dutch developed that cycling culture and that cycling city was true progressive
political will it required basically I think it was back in the 70s there was a political
party who championed the issue so if you have good political will good policies and good
local councillors then you know you can get so far.
Cyclists are not a huge lobby in this country or else we'd have much better facilities you
know the facilities that are in Dublin compared to other cities for cyclists are pretty poor.
The roads and the infrastructure is very much it's a matter for the authorities and it is
up to the authorities to take a lead and to put what's in place that would be required
then for safe cycling and for more people to cycle.
I suppose things like critical mass Dublin cycling campaign can push for these measures
and I think at the moment there's a pretty sympathetic Labour councillor Andrew Montague
who initiated the Dublin city council bike scheme so maybe if there's more people like
that on Dublin city council you know maybe it'll become a bit more like other European
cities.
The green dollar is a big dollar at the moment you know environmental capitalism it's trendy
to talk about alternative modes of transport when you're a politician.
The Green Party are a classic example they got into power and not only have they done
very little they've actually gone backwards you've got environmental disasters all over
the country it's Rassport, Tara, incinerators they completely sold out in Shannon so cycling
probably won't be much different.
At the end of the day the government has had a car policy and an encouragement car policy
for years.
For people who haven't cycled in a long time and it can be quite intimidating to get back
on a bike after 20 years and not being on a bike and then go out into Dublin traffic
so they should actually be doing things like having specific evenings where basically have
outriders and actually close off roads and have dedicated bike corridors.
Like the borough of Hackney in London I've learned has got free training for all their
residents they will give you two hours a year free training in safe cycling if you're a
resident of that borough and I think the costs to the borough must be minimal but I really
have to look at that in Dublin as well you know it would encourage people to cycle it
would make people feel comfortable cycling and would get a lot of people out of their
cars reduce congestion and it would make the people that are on the road causing problems
by breaking red lights and so on to be a lot better.
Proper education in schools and in colleges and everything else would be a huge huge thing.
There's a good sense of community among cyclists as with the bike maintenance thing we can help
each other.
People will all be cycled and because of global warming and everything else like we can't
afford to keep using cars the way we did like we'd have to stop, return to streets to the
people keep cars out of the city altogether.
If you could walk into Dublin on a sunny spring day and all you can hear is bicycle bells
as opposed to trucks, car horns, fumes all the all the mess that we actually encounter
now on a daily basis it would just be, it would be a whole new world, it would be the
start of a new world.
Take the fucking volume off.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40,
40, 41, 64.
You
