Madam, – There has been a recent explosion in the number of people biking – and particularly mountain-biking – in Ireland. This isn’t solely because it’s fun, relatively cheap and good for you. The Green Party (under their bike-to- work scheme) deserves much credit, as does Dublin City Council for its Dublin Bikes scheme. Coillte has also led from the front, building many dedicated family and mountain bike trails throughout the country.
The payback on such relatively small investments is massive. To give an example, the recently opened Ticknock trails outside Dublin – featured on your own front page a few weeks back – cost a mere €100,000 to build, and are already attracting large numbers of visitors to the Dublin mountains.
I have travelled to Wales and Scotland in recent years for mountain-biking holidays. We have some way to go in Ireland, but there’s no reason that with further investment the flow of travel will be reversed, with obvious benefit to our economy.
Apart from the tourism aspect, there are huge health and knock-on financial benefits of having increased numbers of people biking. For example, cycling 20 miles or more a week can cut the risk of heart disease by 50 per cent. In the UK, it has been calculated that a 20 per cent increase in biking numbers would reduce governmental health costs by £250 million per annum. In London there has been a 90 per cent increase in cycling since 2003 – this translates to a £382 boost to the economy per new cyclist. Obvious environmental benefits include reduced national dependency on fossil fuel imports and reduction in carbon emissions – both of these have financial and economic benefit.
So to the Government and policy makers the message is, let’s continue the good work and have more investment and bike trails please. – Yours, etc,