Perhaps the most bizarre but persistent policy in our current government’s playbook is the relentless promotion of bicycles, particularly in and around Dublin City. For the past few years, the government – and many of the smaller councils – have been producing one project after another, labelling them all with the prefix “bike” with the same enthusiasm that Batman feels when naming his utilities.
Of course, this policy stems largely from the climate-activist ideas held by our representatives. Thanks to this policy, we have been blessed with bike paths, bike shelters, bike access points, bike racks, rental bikes, etc., all in the name of saving the environment. Are we any closer to this goal? The National Transport Authority might have us believe as much, as it published a report earlier this week which has made the surprising claim that over half a million car journeys are avoided every day, and substituted with cycling or walking journeys.
According to the report, this impressive statistic is drawn from measurements of the number of people who have access to a car who have made “purposeful” journeys by walking, wheeling (i.e. moving in a wheelchair or similar device), or cycling to destinations that could have been reached by car.
This seems logical enough at first, but nonetheless overlooks some key factors. The report hinges mainly around the definition of the term “Trips that could have used a car”. These are defined by the report as “trips to a destination (and exclude walking trips for enjoyment or fitness and cycling leisure trips) by adults who have at least one car or van in their household”. “Trips to a destination”, as mentioned above, then include any kind of trip that is not conducted for leisure, but is done with the specific purpose of going somewhere to do something.
Basic common sense suggests that this may be producing an overestimate. If the local shop is a two-minute walk away, most of us would walk (at least if it weren’t raining) for smaller purchases. Between finding the car key, pulling out, driving there, possibly dealing with traffic and lights, and parking, the whole endeavour would probably take longer than walking. You could say that walking there has avoided a car journey, but has it really?
The truth is that, for many “purposeful journeys” made by those who own a car, taking the car is simply an unnecessary hassle (although one could argue with some force that the councils have done their best to make it so). To say then that a car journey is being avoided is questionable, and to say that cars are actively being taken off the road is a stretch at best.
Even putting aside details such as this, however, there is a fairly simply observable truth that most people who live in and around Dublin have probably recognised: our bike lanes are empty. It seems that every week there is a new local project to tear up half of a road to make space for more bikes, and yet – in my experience, and the experience of many others with whom I have spoken on the subject – there never seem to be any bikes in them. If this were not bad enough, one it is not uncommon to see a cyclist on the road, or even on the footpath, instead of using the bike lane provided to his (and it usually is his) exclusive use.
Of course, I am not suggesting that the bike lanes that are choking up our roads are never used, but their usage, at least from the perception of the average person, is so small that it is set completely off balance with the amount of space they take up. Hardly anyone uses these lanes, and yet we are forced to swallow it when an entire lane from a road is sacrificed – often with the result of creating an infuriating one-way system in the area – to make space for more bikes; the same bikes that seem never to fill the lanes they are currently provided with.
The powers that be love bicycles, but the people seem less sure. The simple truth is that there are still many people who have to use a car. Often, this is because they need to transport younger children. Even moving one small child on a bike is challenging; moving three is impossible. Another point, not often remarked upon, is that while the bike may be a practical rain-or-shine getting-to-work option for bald 30- and 40-something men with a shower in the office, it is less convenient for anyone whose appearance for work is risked being spoiled by our notorious weather. Although cramming our roads with bike lanes may discourage some from driving, the vast majority of people will keep it up out of necessity. And they will face major congestion and longer routes, leading overall to far more time on the road than would otherwise be spent. Even if one were to overlook the inconvenience to and frustration of the drivers, it seems like an outcome in diametric opposition to the climate agenda that is pushing for these policies anyway. The longer a car spends on the road, the more emissions it produces. Not only are drivers being forced to sacrifice their comfort, time, and convenience for the sake of a tiny minority who hardly use their precious bike lanes anyway, but they end up producing more CO2 than they would otherwise have done. The result is a small reduction of cars on the road at best, more emissions coming from these cars than otherwise, and very disgruntled drivers.
A more basic question is whether this supposed increase in cycling and walking is making any difference to anything? Even if 660,000 car journeys are avoided daily in our largest cities, we are still making little to no impact on the climate at all. The result of all these abandoned car journeys is supposedly approximately 120,000 fewer tonnes of greenhouse gases being produced. This accounts for roughly 0.000002 percent of worldwide emissions (as of 2024). To put this into perspective, if the entire world’s emissions could be measured as one centimetre, the emissions saved by these journeys would be roughly 0.02 micrometres in length, or roughly 1/5000 the width of a human hair.
If you enjoy cycling or walking, or if they are simply convenient to you, that is perfectly fine. However, the fetishisation of cycling should not take precedence over the vast majority of the population who rely on cars over bikes or similar vehicles. It is time that we – and more importantly, our government – acknowledge this.
_____________________________
Patrick Vincent writes from Dublin