Courtesy traffic system campaigner seeks green light

IRELAND may get its first “traffic light-free” city centre if the ideas being pitched this week by a UK campaigner come to fruition.

Equality Streets is the brainchild of Martin Cassini who believes that replacing the constraints of traffic light systems with common sense and courtesy will lead to less congestion, fewer carbon emissions, improved road safety and billions of euro in savings. Read more

Public transport in Dublin as bad as Sofia

INADEQUATE PUBLIC transport has pushed Dublin down the rankings in a table of Europe’s top shopping cities according to a survey published this week.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Globe Shopper City survey found that while Dublin performed strongly when the number of shops was considered and did well on the length of its sales seasons, the city scored poorly in terms of public transport and this pushed it into 14th place out of 33 European cities.

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Smart health and transport planning is key

OPINION: THE PRIORITIES set out in the Government’s Infrastructure and Capital Investment 2012 – 2016: Medium-Term Exchequer Framework report of supporting enterprise, health and education are absolutely laudable. In a time when exchequer revenues are outstripped by expenditure, needs must.

But when one examines the transport stratagem against the three objectives it becomes clear the proposed investment does not deliver, nor on one other key criterion: maximising value for money. Most especially it will not promote public health, something that is increasingly linked to our level of active travel, to the best possible degree.

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UK: NHS part-funds city 20mph limits

Liverpool’s Primary Care Trust is to part-fund the implementation of 20mph speed limits across residential roads in the city. The PCT will contribute £400,000 towards the £1.4m anticipated cost of the council programme to implement 20mph signed-only limits over the next four years. The Trust will also fund a £265,000 programme of perception surveys and community engagement work. Continue reading UK: NHS part-funds city 20mph limits

Boris Johnson’s cycling policies: putting the motorist first

Guardian Bike Blog video

Boris Johnson’s jolly-good-fun image is so bound up with cycling that it’s easy to forget that his road management strategy as London mayor has always deferred to the London motorist. His 2008 transport manifesto led with pledges to “put the commuter first” by “making traffic flow more smoothly,” and it was clear long ago that the Conservative mayor had no intention of allowing his cycling policies to result in car, van and lorry drivers slipping down the road-user hierarchy. This video clip showing a section of one of Boris’s “cycle superhighways”.