I've been cycling around Dublin for over 40 years. My Dad taught me how to cycle and I can still remember the Friday evening that I
mastered it. That night in bed all that I could think about was getting back on the bike the next morning. It was a funny sort of bike. I have never seen the likes of it since. It was sort of tiny and had very unusual handlebars, neither straight nor crooked. When
Dad was teaching me how to cycle he would push me and then let go and then just in a moment on that Friday evening I took off. Forty years later I am still in the saddle. Once on wheels I could cycle to the shops in Rathgar and to Mass in Terenure and that was real excitement. But the idea of cycling to school in Synge Street was not on. It was too far and too dangerous. That was bad enough but my friends, who were younger than I, were allowed to wheel it down the
Rathmines Road whereas I, the now proficient cyclist, had to bus it.
But all that changed when I was in sixth class in Synge Street. There was a bus strike, the Army lorries were called out and my Mum and Dad had a council of war and it was agreed that I would be allowed cycle all the way from Orwell Bridge to Synge Street, which is off the
South Circular Road. That must have been around 1963. The lorries the
Army used during that strike were the ones they had on display for the funeral of the soldiers killed in the Niemba ambush in the Congo.
Association of ideas is a funny thing; in any bus strike since then when the Army has been called out my mind has always gone back to the funeral of those UN soldiers who were under the command of young
Lieutenant Gleeson that day.
Eight bicycles
I have gone through eight bicycles since then. After the one with the funny handlebars my parents bought me a brand new blue Rudge and that did me until Leaving Cert. It had conventional handlebars and those metal brakes - remember them? On leaving school I got myself a straight-handlebars bike with cable brakes. That was some sophistication; even better, it had a three-speed. The bike I now use has 18 gears, but the handlebars are like my original bike; sort of crooked. Most people would call it a cross between a conventional bike and a mountain bike. I'm attached to it and it's my main means of transport around Dublin. I have another bike in Kerry which I
sometimes use to get me from the station in Tralee out the Dingle
Peninsula to Castlegregory. But that's another day's story.
Back in 1963 my parents were very slow in letting me cycle to school. If I were now living near Orwell Bridge and had children going to Synge Street, not in a thousand years would I let them cycle to school. It's another world and it's not just the increase in the volume of traffic or the speed - the traffic is probably going more slowly now. But what would frighten me is the aggression, the rage that the poor old cyclist experiences every day. And if it's not the rage of the motorists it is the crass stupidity or lack of thinking of the pedestrian. Did you ever try to cycle through the traffic lights at the GPO on Dublin's O'Connell street if you have the lights in your favour and there are no cars coming? Pedestrians just stroll across and if you as much as look crooked at them you could be in serious trouble, helmet or no helmet. It's a very dangerous business cycling around dear old Dublin.
Within the inner city I am not aware of one cycle-path. I know of no German city which is not awash with cycle-paths. We take all their technology for our trains and cars, but when it comes to thinking of the cyclist, forget it. Dublin is most unfriendly to its cyclist population and that includes Dublin officialdom and an awful lot of drivers. Would it not be possible to have at least one or two cycle-paths in central Dublin? They could even experiment with one down Dawson Street. On the northside, a cyclepath along Dorset
Street connecting with the short one already in place on Drumcondra
Road must be feasible.
Same old story It really is the same old story all over again;
those with the power use it and feel nothing wrong with being brutal to get their way. Okay, people complain about cyclists crashing lights, cycling up one-way streets, but this is in context, all harmless fun compared with the brutality and rudeness of so many drivers.
Recently I was cycling down Ormond Quay in a bus-lane and this bloke, the mobile-telephone-user-while-driving-type, drove up behind me. I could feel him on top of me but in a moment of anger and madness I refused to move out of his way. Why should I? After all, I
was quite entitled to be there. He was out of bounds. He kept provoking me, so when we got to the next set of traffic lights I went up to the car and told him this was not his space. He got mad with me, got out of the car and hurled my bike on to the pavement. Passers by could not believe what they were seeing. A bus driver was so incensed that he took his number and told me to report it. My immediate reaction was of course to report it. I never did. Yes, that was extreme stuff, but in many ways it is symptomatic of what cyclists have to endure every day in Dublin.
Magic city for cycling
And it is all such a pity because this is a magic city to pedal about. There are no great hills. Okay, out to Tallaght is a gradual pull but it's not too bad. Cycling within the canals is just a cinch.
And you can do things on a bike you would never dare do driving; you can talk to people, you can very easily start up a conversation with fellowcyclists or pedestrians. I ended up one day having a serious conversation with a bus driver on Dame Street and every time I see her now we have a great smile for one another. You'd never get that close in a car.
Watching the new TD for Dublin South-East cycle about Dublin does give some glimmer of hope. But the car-madness we are perpetrating every day in this land of ours has to be offthe-wall stuff. There can be no sense to what we are doing. A future generation will look back at us, scratch their heads and wonder how we could ever have been so mad.
Just imagine, not being able to jump up and take off. I'm still thanking my Dad for giving me the final push that Friday.