Council plans campaign to urge cyclists to be more careful when sharing spaces with pedestrians

For a year or so Dublin City Council has been planning a campaign aimed largely at getting cyclists to be more careful of pedestrians in places where they mix.

Independent Councillor Damien O’Farrell raised the issue at a meeting in June 2023, saying at the time that he was just back from visiting a family member in hospital who’d been injured by a passing cyclist while out walking.

Other councillors at that meeting of the North Central Area Committee backed O’Farrell’s motion. The council had a brainstorming workshop a few months later, in October 2023, and then council officials started developing a campaign.

By the first quarter of this year, they had two concepts in hand, according to a report presented to councillors at a meeting of the North Central Area Committee on 20 May.

But then the National Transport Authority (NTA) swooped in and, according to the report, informed the council that “they may need to take the lead on direction and running of this campaign”.

Councillors at the May meeting were not pleased to hear this.

“The arrogance,” said independent Councillor John Lyons. “I would suggest we contact the NTA and say, ‘Get on board with our work, rather than you delaying it for however long.’”

Sinn Féin Councillor Micheál Mac Donncha also wanted the council to send the NTA a message.

“I think there’s adequate grounds for the executive of this council to go back to the NTA and say, ‘You’ve exceeded your authority here,’” he said. “So, you know, butt out, essentially.”

But Martin Hoey and Mick Keegan, of the Public Participation Network’s Disability Thematic Group, say a behaviour-change campaign isn’t going to solve the problem anyway.

Creating spaces – greenways, paths, parks, whatever – where pedestrians and cyclists mix, inherently puts pedestrians at risk, especially elderly people, small children and people with disabilities, Hoey said.

“A poster campaign and a video campaign, it’s not going to work,” said Hoey. “Think of the Road Safety Authority and how many campaigns they’ve done and people still speed and people still drink and drive.”

Úna Morrison, spokesperson for the Dublin Cycling Campaign, also questioned the usefulness of a behaviour-change campaign.

The council’s time and resources would be better spent making everyone safer from drivers, who cause most serious injuries and deaths on the roads, Morrison said.

Yes, people who are cycling should be careful and respectful of people who are walking, for sure, Morrison says. But cyclists wouldn’t need to share spaces with pedestrians if streets and cycle lanes were safe, she says.

The birth of the campaign

At the meeting last June, O’Farrell proposed a motion that the North Central Area Committee is concerned for the safety of pedestrians (and cyclists) in and near shared cyclist / pedestrian spaces”.

The discussion of the motion revolved around conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians.

“There is a problem, people are fearful,” said Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney. “I had a constituent, an older gentleman, requesting that something be done about the Clontarf promenade, cyclists are booting past pedestrians, it is quite dangerous.”

“Some cyclists – and I’m a cyclist myself – there’s an element that thinks, ‘Listen, I’m the main man here and I’m just going to tear into work and get there quicker than the guy in the car,’” she said.

Social Democrats Councillor Karl Stanley suggested that some people’s fear of cyclists might be out of proportion to the danger they actually pose. He pointed to a February 2023 survey commissioned by insurance company Aviva.

A found that 21 percent of respondents over the age of 55 thought that cyclists were the most dangerous road users.

“There’s an interesting question though about perception versus reality,” Stanley said.

An analysis by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) of serious injuries and deaths of pedestrians in 2018–2022, found that drivers were vastly more likely to have been involved than cyclists.

Of 1,352 vehicles involved in collisions where pedestrians were seriously injured, 74 percent were cars, 12 percent heavy or light goods vehicles, and 3 percent buses, the report says. And, said an RSA spokesperson Tuesday, 2.6 percent were pedal bicycles.

The same RSA report shows 163 pedestrian fatalities. These people died in collisions involving cars (61 percent) and heavy or light goods vehicles (31 percent), it says.

“The remaining 8% of vehicles comprised of 6 P.S.V. ( bus), 3 Two Wheeled Motor Vehicle,  1 pedal cycle [0.6 percent], and 4 other vehicle types,” the RSA spokesperson said Tuesday.

Zooming out, across the European Union in 2021, in urban areas 2,538 pedestrians died in collisions, according to a European Commission report.

Of those, 2,387 (94 percent) involved motor vehicles – mostly cars. Of the remainder 26 (1 percent) involved bicycles, and 125 (5 percent) “other/unknown”.

Morrison, the Dublin Cycling Campaign spokesperson, said “I think we need to think about who causes the most harm – and it’s cars.”

“The reason they [cyclists and pedestrians] are mixing is to keep cyclists safe from the cars and HGVs,” she said. “If there was a good segregated cycle network, people wouldn’t need to use these spaces with pedestrians.”

If given a choice, many cyclists and pedestrians say they’d prefer not to have to share spaces.

Fine Gael Councillor Naoise Ó Muirí said “The concept of a shared space doesn’t really work. We just need to be designing that out.”

Christopher Manzira, deputy director of the council’s Active Travel Programme Office, said that they’re doing their best with the road space available.

“We will try as much as possible to design out shared spaces for pedestrians and cyclists if the space is available but there are instances due to constraints where that might not be possible,” he said.

“And our approach in those areas is to try and provide a facility that does not encourage cyclists to speed,” he said. “That way it means they are moving at sufficiently low speeds that they are able to respond to conditions and people moving around.”

However, he said he realised not all road users act with due respect to others, so he’d be on board with running a campaign to improve their behaviour.

The committee adopted an amendment from Labour Councillor Alison Gilliland to O’Farrell’s motion, broadening it out to include drivers too.

“That Dublin City Council explore the possibility of launching a campaign with regard to safely sharing space, (to include drivers), that we drive and cycle and walk with care across the city,” it said.

The NTA swoops in

And that began the effort, which led to the workshop, and then the two concepts for a campaign, before the NTA intervened.

After councillors at the 20 May meeting vented about this move, John Gillick, acting administrative officer at the Active Travel Programme Office, responded to their concerns.

All that had happened so far was the NTA got in touch to get an update on what Dublin City Council had done on the campaign so far, and they had a meeting.

“They haven’t vetoed our campaign or vetoed our work,” Gillick said. “They obviously are looking at things from a national perspective … and looking to integrate what we are planning into any campaign that they would run.”

Gilliland, the Labour councillor, said she’d rather see Dublin City Council move forward with its own campaign for Dublin city.

“If you are a Dubliner and you’re cycling or walking around Dublin there is nothing more effective than seeing your own junctions or your own spaces on a video highlighting safety,” she said.

A spokesperson for the NTA said that it feels the need to get involved because, “Given that there are 31 local authorities across the country, it was recognised that individual communications campaigns on these issues, by individual local authorities would not represent the most effective approach.”

What is the campaign the NTA is planning, with what budget, and on what timeline?

“We are continuing to engage with DCC and other stakeholders with a view to a campaign going live later this year,” the spokesperson said.

Hazards of shared spaces

“From a disability point of view, from the beginning of shared space, we’ve been against it,” said Martin Hoey, who in addition to being a member of the PPN’s Disability Thematic Group, sits on the council’s transport committee.

He says separating drivers from cyclists and cyclists from pedestrians is the best way forward. Like along the new Clontarf to City Centre route, which is good, Hoey says. “That’s a cycle path next to a footpath,” he says.

An example of what not to do, Hoey says, is the cycle path that runs along the footpath on Finglas Road, past Glasnevin Cemetery. “It’s a shared space, a cycle path on a footpath,” he says.

He also pointed to Capel Street, where the carriageway has been made car-free, and now has a mix of pedestrians and cyclists moving along it – while the footpaths remain (primarily) for pedestrians.

Mick Keegan, who is also part of the PPN’s Disability Thematic Group, and is a wheelchair user, pointed to a part of the Navan Road near where he lives, “where they put the cyclists on the footpath”, as a problem area.

Keegan says he already finds it hard enough to get around the city in his wheelchair, navigating physical obstacles, and pedestrians. Add in faster-moving people on bicycles, and “I have to be really extra careful, because I could get hit by a cyclist”, he says.

“I am thinking of getting wing mirrors for my wheelchair,” Keegan said. “I know it sounds funny, but they come up on you so fast, and silent.”

Says Hoey: “I know cyclists need to be kept safe from cars on the road, but that shouldn’t mean they make it unsafe for vulnerable pedestrians.”

Morrison, the Dublin Cycling Campaign spokesperson, said that clearly, pedestrians and people with disabilities and children are the most vulnerable people on the road “and need to be protected”.

But better designing shared spaces would be more effective than behaviour-change messaging, Morrison said.

For example, there’s a strip of open roadway straight down the centre of Capel Street, a design that encourages people on bikes to buzz through at speed, Morrison says.

In contrast, cycling through Grand Canal Dock, past the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, there’s sculpture – those big red sticks – and benches and planters. “You have to go slowly.”

The idea: to slow down cyclists on Capel Street, rather than putting up posters or running ads online telling them to slow down, redesign it so it’s a bit more like Grand Canal Dock.

Solutions

Critics of shared spaces say their preferred solution is to segregate footpaths from cycle lanes from roads for motor vehicles.

But Manzira, from the council’s Active Travel Programme Office, says that’s simply not always possible. And Hoey says he accepts that.

“I’d love to see lovely segregated cycle paths and footpaths all over the city but we know it can’t happen,” Hoey says.

So he and Keegan both proposed reopening the traffic school in Clontarf, where, they say, schoolkids used to go to learn the rules of the road.

There’d be go-karts, and bikes, and a course with roads and pedestrian crossings. Gardaí would explain the rules of the road, and then put the kids through their paces on the course.

The school’s been closed since 2006. In 2019, the council was talking about setting up a new one, but it hasn’t happened yet.

In September, Green Party Councillor Donna Cooney proposed a motion to open a new traffic school.

Council executive engineer Rossanna Camargo said that they were still looking for an appropriate location for a “mobility educational school”. “Of course, space is a problem in our city,” she said.

Hoey, of the PPN and the transport committee, pointed to delivery riders moving fast on electric bikes as a particular safety concern in shared spaces.

They might be in more of a hurry than other people who cycle, as they’re pushing to make a delivery in time, and get on to another so they can earn as much as they can in what is a low-paid job, Hoey said.

But if they were more identifiable, and so could more easily be held responsible if they should be involved in a collision with a pedestrian, they might be a bit more careful as they hurry on rush to their next destination, Hoey said.

He suggests mandating that each delivery driver wear a bib with a number on it while at work, like what a marathon runner might wear.

Isn’t cyclists being killed by cars and HGVs a more urgent problem – which needs to be addressed by getting them off the roads and into safer spaces – than cyclists frightening pedestrians, though?

Yes, cyclists need to be protected from motor vehicles, but the danger they pose to vulnerable pedestrians is underestimated, Hoey said.

And dangerous behaviour by a person on a bicycle is less likely to be reported to the guards, Hoey says.

“If a cyclist hits a pedestrian and goes off, how can they report it or catch them?” he says. “So there’s a real under-reporting of it.”