Irish cities were once filled with bicycles. Two wheels and public transport were the main options used by people who could not afford to run a car.
In recent years, public transport has revived; light rail has opened in Dublin and bus fleets have been expanded. However, cycling, in spite of its obvious health benefits and low cost, continues to decline. Although up to 30 per cent of journeys in some European cities are made by bicycle, the corresponding figure for Dublin is 4 per cent and for other Irish cities just 1 per cent.
There are many reasons for this. Cycling is perceived as a dangerous way of negotiating our traffic-choked streets and uneven road surfaces. The Irish climate is considered inimical to this form of transport. An increasingly affluent population is less prepared to engage in physical activity - however light - and views the bicycle as a relic of earlier times of economic hardship. For years, too, little was done to promote cycling as a sustainable mode of transport.
The Velo City conference in Dublin last week showed that not all these perceptions accord with reality. Cycling is relatively safe, although there is a specific problem with truck collisions. This will be resolved, hopefully, when the Dublin Port Tunnel, due to open next year, takes most heavy vehicles off the capital's streets. The introduction of dead spot mirrors on all trucks by 2007 should further improve safety.
Neither is the weather as bad as both motorists and cyclists perceive, according to research prepared for the conference. Weather records show that a cyclist can expect to be rained on just once in every 20 trips, and will get seriously wet just once out of every 200 journeys.
Dublin now has 300 kilometres of cycle-lanes, though the network is disjointed and incomplete. However, the design and maintenance of many tracks is sub-standard and the preparation of a new design manual is long overdue. Growing urban sprawl is a further challenge. Many people now live too far from a city centre to allow for commuting by bicycle, let alone on foot. Other cities, such as Washington DC, provide for the transportation of bicycles by bus and train and Dublin would be advised to follow suit.
With a majority of motorists expressing an outright reluctance to switch to two-wheeled transport, regardless of what improvements are made, cycling is not the sole answer to the traffic congestion afflicting our cities. However, it does have the potential to form part of an integrated and sustainable solution to urban transport problems.