Where are these cycle lanes taking us?
WE HAVE decided to start a column taking a wry look at some of the happenings in Dundalk, and perhaps the timing could not have been better for I was stopped on Jocelyn Grove last week by a fellow Dundalkite who asked me what the almost completed works there were for.
I explained that it was to provide a cycle lane for the nearby primary school, only for him to then ask the obvious question - but how do you get on to it?
It is something that has been puzzling me as well, and I had visions of parents driving up in their cars, humping bikes out of the boot so that their offspring could cycle a hundred metres to the school.
It also struck me in our safety conscious society, that as part of the particular works that a number of parking spaces have been eliminated on the Ramparts where parents could pull up to drop their offspring to use the back entrance to the school, resulting in quite a number of parents parking on the opposite side, and having to escort their children across one of the busiest roads in the town, especially in the morning when people are going to work.
A good idea has been the drop off spot at the Tennis Club car park, the rationale being that it will encourage children to walk from there to school and get some more exercise at a time when we are worried about childhood obesity, but where is there a pedestrian crossing to enable them get to the school as no matter what route they choose, they still have to cross a major road.
The logic of it escaped me, and equally so in Stapleton Place, which used to be one of the finest streetscapes in the town, but has now been narrowed dramatically to facilitate a cycle lane to the Grammar School, which again is all very fine, but you either have to walk or drive with your bike to get on to it.
There is clearly an issue with safety for students attending many of the inner town schools because of the big numbers going to them, and parents arriving within a very short space of time to drop them off for school, which leads to congestion, as we highlighted with St. Vincent's last week.
When the schools were located there it wasn't envisaged that these sorts of problems would arise, and so solutions have to be found, with the 'Smarter Travel' programme being promoted as the way forward to tackling the issue.
But what puzzles many townspeople is if we are putting in these cycle lanes, are they to be eventually joined up, and when?
Maybe in the meantime a better solution would be to put more energy into promoting the 'walking bus' idea which the CBS Primary School has adopted, whereby parents drop their children at a designated spot, from where they walk to school supervised by parents, thus getting much needed exercise and alleviating the congestion at schools.
