We could implement these changes within a year, if we decided to change our priorities.
Based on these principles…
- Principle: we’ll favour walkers first, cyclists second, deliveries third, and drivers fourth
Changes we can implement today
- Declare the city to be pedestrian-priority
- Declare ebikes to be the future of inner-city commuting
- Issue parking tickets for any car partially parked on footpaths
- Change traffic light timings to prioritise walkers (i.e. next phase will be a green man after you press a beg button)
- Close inner city to traffic Sunday 6am to 11pm
- Declare inner city roads to be 30km/h
- Declare residential areas to be streets, not roads
- Declare the road should only be as wide as needed, everything else if our public space
Changes we can implement this year
- School-friendly cycle network throughout the city
- Re-assign Roads Engineers roles to Community and Street Designers
- Have these designers walk with a resident of the city to the nearest shop weekly
- Employ a cycling officer with veto powers
- Reduce all inner city roads to one lane per direction of vehicle traffic
- Implement slow zones for all residential areas
- Any Council road works proposed would be required to implement DMURS
- Have Bus Éireann mark each bus stop, with a time table
- Plan Coke bikes for residential areas around the city
- Flip our triangles around
Why are these difficult? They challenge our very assumptions of our public space. Who has a right to travel through that space? At what speed? At what cost? Let’s keep that discussion going.