So as I’m currently in between finishing
off a few longer blog posts on some of the cycling infrastructure around the city and
suburbs and working insane hours (amazingly the two aren’t the most
compatible!) I just thought I’d throw up something really quickly this evening.
I found the following on the Evening Echo site via Facebook regarding a two
year action plan to revive Cork City Center.
Go to that link, here it is again:
Hit CTRL+F
Individually, type all the following:
Cycle
Cycling
Cyclists
Bikes
Bike
Bicycles
Bicycle
Seriously. Where the f*ck are all the above?
Type that last one for giggles. It provides one less result than the most popular result above.
Seriously. What numbers, individually or combined (you
get to choose!) do you see?
Are you as surprised as I was?
Now. How about a snazzy graph showing an actual revival:
You'll notice a word there that doesn't show up in our council's plan. However it correlates with "retail sales sky-rocketed". Did you guess rockets? I did at first. But second time around I got it.
Oh oh…. If you’re still there - Try this
for size… an actual report. With words. And stats. And research based evidence
of what is working:
http://archinect.com/news/article/91832887/protected-bike-lanes-strengthen-city-economy-report-finds
There's one recurring theme in that report regarding improving a cities economics.
And if you’re not a reader of longish
articles, just read this point:
“Cyclists are great for retailers.
People who use bikes to run errands tend to stop by retailers
more often, spending at least as much
(if not more) money than any other customer, plus they require less parking
space. Overall, proximity to protected bike lanes can increase business traffic and potential
spending.”
Emphasis is mine. But wasn’t business what the Gardaí said they
were concerned about when speaking to cyclist.ie?
“Cyclist.ie added: “We tried to impress on them the real safety
issue of dangerous overtaking of cyclists and how drivers were skimming
past riders in bus lanes and general vehicle lanes but the response
was that it’s the given space we all have to operate in and drivers have to go about their
business even if it meant squeezing dangerously past us. They
maintained that this problem is the responsibility of the design engineers
in road authorities.”
Oh no… just the usual shifting blame to someone else for dangerous driving behaviour. And also emphasising the importance of the 'driver business'. My bad. The
ones with the money and spending power to keep our cities alive. Although I
think I saw a report somewhere saying otherwise . . .no. . . it's just the tiredness kicking in and dreams starting . . .
*dream links zzzzz
http://www.peopleforbikes.org/statistics/category/protected-bike-lane-statistics
zzzzz San Francisco using the same report as above to argue for protected lanes zzzzz https://www.sfbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Protected_Bike_Lanes_Mean_Business.pdf
zzzzz end dream links*
