Sir, – Justin Bakker writes about cycling to school and says what can change overnight is attitude (Letters, September 15th). Having spent time in several European countries, I still find it startling that able-bodied Irish adults default to the car for a journey of under 2km.
Fifty-five per cent of Irish primary school children are driven to school, up from 24 per cent in 1986, for a journey that averages 12 minutes.
In the Netherlands two-thirds of children that age walk or cycle. Same distances, same rain, same working parents. Opposite result. It is not only the school run: half of all Irish journeys under 2km are made by car. Bakker’s neighbours cite “the hill”. Others cite the bus. Safety is the reason we give most often, and it is real. But none of it explains a parent driving a kilometre on a 30km/h estate road.
Some of it is habit: we drive because we drove yesterday. Also, which car you pull up in at the school gate matters here in a way the Dutch might find baffling. In Utrecht a surgeon and a student arrive on the same kind of bike and nobody looks twice.
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The infrastructure will improve slowly, as it has in Rathfarnham. The attitude could change tomorrow morning. – Yours, etc,
STEPHEN KEEGAN,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
