Author Archives: GerryD

St. Patricks Day Parade

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Well, we finally launched the Cycling without Age trishaw in  Maynooth at the parade on  St. Patricks Day. That was our goal from last September but although we thought that we had everything in hand, there were a number of last minute hickcups which threatened to spoil the occasion but everything fell into place in the final week – apart from the weather.

The rain held off for the early part of the parade but as we approached the viewing gallery, it turned very wet. We also lost our passenger.  We had planned to carry Peter but on the day he preferred to walk like most people in other groups so the trishaw looked a little empty with only the pilot on it.

We could see that the trishaw received a number of puzzled looks. Most people recognised it as a special type of bike which is what we wanted so we ended up happy with our efforts and a determination to have a bigger show for Bike Week which takes place in May from 13th to 21st. But that is for another day!

When the parade was over, we were even happier when wen learnt that Maynooth Cycling Campaign’s entry was selected by the Parade Organising Committee for the Best Portrayal of Environmental Awareness.

Here are some of the pictures from the day!

GUIDELINES FOR CAMPAIGN PARTICIPANTS IN ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE

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  1. Please take your positions no later than 10.30am.

2. There is a high chance of rain on Friday so please wear appropriate clothing.

3. Our position number is 18 and will be sprayed on the footpath. We must line up there.

4. Please note that we are lining up on the Straffan Road.

5. The road closures are from 10.30am to 12.30pm.

6. The parade will finish at Tesco.

7. The Awards Ceremony will take place in Manor Mills Shopping Centre at 1pm. Everyone  is encouraged to go there after the parade. There will be entertainment provided.

8. The Parade has teamed up with Maynooth Autism Friendly Town and there will be an Inclusive Quiet Zonefrom Silken Vale to the Train Station. This area will be clearly marked with Banners and Bunting. 

9. The Parade Stewards are:

Straffan Road: Naoise Ó Cearúil (086) 728 0050 Steve McCarthy  (085) 727 5711

Main Street: Paul Croghan   (087) 243 6973 Gerry Quinn (085) 777 66688

Public Meeting – 9th March

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Maynooth Cycling Campaign is holding a public meeting by Zoom on Thursday March 9, 2023 19:30.

Everyone is welcome! The agenda is as follows.

  1. St. Patrick’s Day Parade & Cycling Without Age
  2. Restructuring of Cyclist.ie
  3. NTA funding for Kildare – Implications for family cycling

To Join the Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85326955299?pwd=SThrVlM3blFpdzNCaVhoUENialZ1dz09

Meeting ID: 853 2695 5299
Passcode: 536452

Cycling Without Age is Coming to Maynooth

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Maynooth Cycling Campaign is delighted to reveal that before Christmas, it ordered a Danish trishaw as part of Cycling Without Age (CWA) in Kildare. Cycling Without Age is an international community based movement which enables the elderly or people with mobility problems to enjoy the pleasures of cycling by riding a trishaw although they may not be physically able to cycle on their own. A trishaw is a cross between a tricycle and a rickshaw which carries a pilot and two passengers. The pilot controls the trishaw and brings the passengers to a park,  along a greenway or just around their local town.

We are grateful for financial assistance from Kildare Sports Partnership, Kildare County Council and Healthy Ireland for its purchase. Delivery is due in March – before St. Patrick’s Day. We propose to use the trishaw at weekends so are looking for a number of people to volunteer as pilots. If you are interested, email us at maynoothcycling@gmail.com.  Training is provisionally arranged for early March. We have had preliminary discussions with Genil Training/St. John of God regarding use of the trishaw Monday to Friday. The one outstanding problem is somewhere to store the trishaw. We have raised the matter with Maynooth University and are hoping that they will grant us permission to store it in one of their secure bike sheds but to date this has not been confirmed.

Cycling Without Age was started by Ole Kassow in Copenhagen 2012.  Ole wanted to help the elderly get back on their bicycles, but he had to find a solution to their limited mobility. The answer was a trishaw and he started offering free bike rides to the local nursing home residents. It spread from Copenhagen across Denmark and then went international. Now it has a presence in more than 50 countries with over 3,700 trishaws and 35,000 trained pilots.

It was established in Ireland in 2017 by Clara Clarke in Dun Laoghaire but now there are over 70 CWA trishaws in locations including Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Blanchardstown, Clonakilty, Wexford Town, Cashel and Tipperary. Next month Maynooth will join that list.

Hangers as a Solution to Bike Storage

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On-street parking may be a given for cars, but for bikes, it is not an option due to the threat of theft.  Most homeowners will wheel their bikes around through the side gate for storage in a locked shed, but what are residents in terraced houses or apartments with perhaps shared or first floor entrances to do? The answer is either to store the bicycles in the house, wheel them through living areas or lock them to an outside railing and hope for the best.

For the recreational weekend cyclist, wheeling a very light bike through the house is not a problem, but for commuting cyclists, perhaps with multiple bikes for the school run, this is not feasible to do twice a day.

One solution that has been rolled out by Dublin City Council and more recently by Waterford Council are bike hangers (which are also known as bike bunkers). These hangers are designed to fit in a parking space, have space for eight bikes, and enclose bikes in a lockable hood to allow access to only those with a key.

A solution for Maynooth?

In Maynooth, most housing estates do come with side access, but there are a few areas of terraced housing and high density apartments that this solution is tailor made for. Maynooth Cycling Campaign have approached Councillors with a proposal for a trial installation at Leinster Cottages, just behind the Main Street, with the Councillors and area engineer responding positively with possibly the main barrier being the administrative burden.

There are other bicycle storage solutions in Maynooth at both Tesco and the train station; the one at Tesco is operated by a private company and so is pay by the hour, so unsuitable for long term habitual storage.  The train station lockers are based on a similar model.  Both of these models allot a large enclosed storage area for a single bicycle tenant, and so are aimed at the owners of expensive bicycles, as the alternative of chaining the bicycle to a rack is riskier but free of charge.  They are not a suitable model for households which may have multiple kids bikes and need to store overnight, every night.

Maynooth Cycling Campaign are currently looking for other suitable locations around the town with terraced houses or apartments without street access to a garden.  If you have need for a bike hanger and think that there is a suitable location near you, please let us know at maynoothcycling@gmail.com.

Proposed Cycle Scheme at Meadowbrook – Planning Reference: P82022.06

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I wish to make the following submission on the proposals for the Meadowbrook Cycle Scheme:

GENERAL

  1. Newtown Road, which links Maynooth town centre to Castle Dawson and other residential estates to the south west of Maynooth,  is a narrow regional road with inadequate footpaths and no cycle facilities. While it is outside the area of the proposed works, the proposals fail to address traffic management in the wider Meadowbrook-Newtown area which has implications for the junction radii and the road crossings by vulnerable road users.  The Council should bring forward plans for area wide traffic management in conjunction with cycle proposals for the Meadowbrook Road and Beaufield Close.

Click to access maynooth-meadowbrook-220415-final.pdf

Meadowbrook Link Road – Upgrade of Cycle Facilities

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Maynooth Cycling Campaign welcomes Kildare County Council’s (KCC) recent upgrade of cycle facilities on the Meadowbrook Link Road. This will allow cyclists to proceed from Meadowbrook Road to the Straffan Road junction off road instead of being unceremoniously dumped onto the road halfway along.

The existing width of cycle track on the Meadowbrook Link Road is 1.5m. While the Council maintained that width where space was limited, Maynooth Cycling welcomes that where space was available the Council increased the effective width to 2m. However, it was noted that the Council omitted to provide a kerb on the road side of the cycle track with the result that the quality of workmanship is poor in places. It was also noted that the original 1.5m width has been reduced to 1.4m due to the encroachment of grass. It would have been nice had the Council took the opportunity to cut back the grass.

It is regrettable that the Council maintained the shared path at the Straffan Road junction. Shared paths are opposed by both cyclists and pedestrian groups due to potential conflicts. Designs in Dublin, which now allow Dutch style protected junctions and separate path for pedestrians and cyclists, are long overdue in Kildare.

The Council  also  wasted an opportunity to do anything about the poor quality of the workmanship on the cycle track at the entrance to Hayfield Estate. Maynooth Cycling Campaign has complained about the flooding after every shower of rain but the Council failed to do anything about it.  The Council’s response was to the effect that repair works are required but there are no plans for the Council to do anything soon. The bigger question is why was the developer allowed to leave it in a substandard state.

In What County Do Cyclists Run The Greatest Risk Of Injury?

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Maynooth Cycling Campaign has for some time been trying to get data from the RSA on injuries (serious and minor) by county as we were interested in which was the safest and most dangerous county for cyclists.

We received the information recently and carried out a basic analysis of the data. To take the level of cycling in different counties into account, the number of commuting cyclists was taken from the Census 2016 reports. This was then divided by the average number of  injuries per year to estimate the risk of an accident to a commuting cyclist.

Ideally, it would be more useful to differentiate between serious and minor injuries and to have data over several more years. It would also be useful to separate out the number of single vehicle injuries ie where only a cyclist was involved as the figure would then reveal the injury risk to a cyclist from a motorised vehicle.  

The results found that the greatest risk to a commuting cyclist is in Leitrim where it is 1 in 24. The safest county for commuting is Dublin which the RSA categorises as one entity. Although there are more than 600 injuries per year in the capital, the risk of an injury is 1 in 93. In some ways, this should not be surprising as there is a greater expectation of meeting cyclists in Dublin than in a county like Leitrim. It tends to support the theory of “Safety in Numbers”.

Atr first sight, the results for Kildare appear quite good but there are of course a lot of qualifications. The numbers only refer to commuting cyclists ie people travelling to school/college or work so excludes recreational and many other utility journeys. It is not possible to draw any conclusions whether or not a particular local authority is getting more dangerous, less dangerous or the risk is consistent. Most importantly of all, the analysis only considers the risk of injury – not fatalities

The result for all counties is available below:

An Garda Siochana & Illegal Parking

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On 29th July last, there was a funeral at St. Mary’s Church, Maynooth. This is not an unusual event in itself but what was unusual was that the funeral was larger than normal and from early in the morning, drivers began to park their vehicles on the footpaths and shared paths on the Kilcock and Moyglare Roads.

Kilcock Road
Kilcock Road
Moyglare Road
Moyglare Road
Moyglare Road

Members of An Garda Siochana were observed on duty adjacent to Manor Mills. It was assumed that they were taking action on the illegal parking. However, it turned out that rather than actively enforcing the law, they were merely onlooking as drivers parked cars illegally as far as Aldi on the Kilcock Road and the entrance to Mariavilla on the Moyglare Road.

Such drivers have an inflated sense of entitlement to park wherever they want. It is not just a temporary inconvenience to pedestrians and cyclists – it has resulted in fatalities elsewhere. Parking on footpath and cycle facilities is illegal under Irish road traffic legislation and begs the question was there an alternative to the Gardaí acquiescing in drivers breaking the law? Of course there were alternatives. Drivers could have parked in any of the following locations:

  • In the Leinster Street carpark which was adjacent to the Funeral Home.
  • In Manor Mills carpark
  • In Aldi’s carpark
  • In the teachers’ car park attached to St. Mary’s Boys School
  • In the car park attached to the Maynooth Post Primary school grounds
  • In Maynooth University’s several car parks
  • In St. Patrick’s University several car parks
Maynooth University North Campus

St. Patrick’s College

Maynooth Post Primary School

Leinster Street Car Park

Admittedly, some of these premises are privately owned as opposed to publicly owned and others would not be available for much of a normal year. However, as can be seen from the above photographs which were taken on the day, several were available so the Gardaí could have directed drivers to park legally but failed to do so.

Since then, Maynooth Cycling Campaign has emailed the Gardaí in Leixlip on more than one occasion looking for information on how many tickets were issued for illegal parking in  Maynooth on the 29th July and more generally in Kildare in 2020. We  are still waiting a response or even acknowledgement. At the recent meeting of Kildare County Council’s Joint Policing Committee, Maynooth Cycling Campaign also raised the issue through a question to the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. Unfortunately, due to the meeting on Zoom rather than in person, the question was asked via a third party. This resulted in the question being inaccurately relayed to the Commissioner so his response failed to address the issue. On the bright side, according to the Chief Superintendent John Scanlan, the new Superintendent in Leixlip will be in contact with us in the near future.