Limerick has a complete road network with zero “accidental” discontinuations. It is black.

Limerick does not have a walking network (a walking network would not put you in ad hoc danger of vehicles).

And Limerick officially does not have a cycle network.

One obvious criteria we can have for our cycle network is:

Limerick’s cycle network will be unmistakably red, because a red network doesn’t have breaks in it.

You can’t mistake a continuous red line.

You can’t argue that a red line is not broken if it is broken.

When you implement this principle, it forces the road engineer to think in terms of “don’t break the red line”.

What Limerick needs is a network of wide red lines, unbroken.

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In the Hague in the 1970s, there was contention over cycle paths being red.

A person trying to reduce their effectiveness said at an information meeting:

“Wherever this route may be built, please don’t make it red! Red means danger and don’t we all seek peace and security?” The so-called “Municipal Road Laboratory” had a different view: “the route will be red because that will increase recognisability and it will give the route a friendly appearance”. What a shock it must be, to this person, that almost all the cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands is red now.

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P. S. In 2019, this is Limerick’s newest cycle path. You can be confident that it is not part of a network:

P. P. S. For the sake of disclosure, the image featuring a red cycle way was only red at the junction. I took the photo in Maribor, Slovenia. The standard of red tarmac is more applicable in the Netherlands, although I don’t know if they use paint at junctions. Our solutions in Limerick must work for Limerick, and that means an absolutely explicit cycle, and pedestrian, network.