Dublin cycling officer loses job after funding cut

IRELAND’S ONLY local authority cycling officer is to lose his job before Christmas, after Dublin City Council was instructed by the Department of the Environment not to fund the position any further.

“I am due to leave next Thursday,” said the council’s cycling officer, Ciarán Fallon. A Facebook campaign has been started by outraged cycling campaigners in an effort to reverse the decision.

FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor. Read more

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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