On Your Bike
An enlightened approach helped kickstart the revolution, says John Greene
John Greene on how a simple idea kickstarted a revolution
CYCLING was in the news last week. There were protestors outside the Dáil calling on the Government to invest more money to make it safer for people to cycle on Irish roads. And inside the Dáil came news that there is a proposal to introduce new laws to stop motorists from passing cyclists too closely.
“A worrying amount of drivers seem to have a ‘no contact, no harm’ attitude,” said TD, Ciaran Cannon. “Over the last 24 months 20 cyclists have been killed on Irish roads. It is no longer acceptable to expose our cyclists to huge risks on our roads and this law sets out to significantly reduce those risks. A minimum passing distance law is essentially about creating a safe space on our roads for cyclists, a space where they feel protected.”
The bicycle has a fond place in this country’s lore. Many of us grew up on stories of our parents or grandparents undertaking the kind of hardship on a bicycle that even now seems scarcely believable — cycling out of necessity, not for fun, on the kind of unforgiving bikes few of us today could contemplate sitting on for anything other than a novelty. But for them, there was little novelty in the long distances travelled to and from work every day, in hail or shine, or to games in far-flung places on a Sunday.
And all this with no gears, or skinny wheels and tyres and, hardest of all to imagine for those of us who have returned to cycling in our middle years, no padded shorts to soften the journey.
All of which brings to mind Flann O’Brien’s great passage from The Third Policeman: “The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles . . . when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.”
Ireland’s relationship with the bicyle is different now. It has also been enjoying a major revival.
But most of all, bicycles have become something more than a bare necessity, they are now a lifestyle choice. Bikes are a means of getting to and from work for those who have long since tired of the relentless grind of traffic congestion. Bikes are a means of getting fit, of being physically active; and they are a great social outlet.
Every now and again a policy decision is taken in this country which proves to have a profound impact. The problem traditionally is that it is a rare occurrence. And this is especially true of policies around physical activity and promoting exercise as a lifestyle.
Yet, we do occasionally come up with a good idea; and sometimes we even manage to implement it; and sometimes we even manage to implement it properly.
One such idea was the Bike to Work Scheme, which has played a significant role in the dramatic increase in the number of cyclists in Ireland since it was introduced nine years ago. In Dublin, a recent survey by the National Transport Authority showed that over 12,000 people travelled into the city every day on a bicyle, compared to just under 5,000 10 years ago.
Critically, the impact of this legacy of the otherwise ill-fated Fianna Fail-Green Party coalition has been felt not just in the larger urban centres, but in rural areas too.
Since the scheme was introduced, membership of Cycling Ireland has increased dramatically; the amount of bicycles sold each year has increased; the number of people commuting to work has increased, particularly in the larger urban areas; and the number of people actively admitting to being leisure cyclists has increased.
By getting employers to think about cycling through running the Bike to Work Scheme, it has also changed attitudes towards cycling as transport, with employers improving bike parking, and even offering shower facilities in offices. Then there are the obvious health benefits which accrue to the employer by having more active staff.
The State’s coffers even benefitted: a report published just three years after the scheme was set-up revealed there had been a net revenue to the exchequer of around €19m.
This renewed focus on cycling is not — nor should it be — a purely urban phenomenon. But having led the way with the Bike to Work Scheme, and then the bike sharing schemes (currently available in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick), policy makers should continue to innovate. The biggest obstacles to expanding the benefits of cycling in other areas centre on safety issues and infrastucture (dedicated cycle lanes, etc) . . . all of which can be dealt with, so long as the will is there.