I’m Louise Heavin and here is my solution for addressing inequality for walking and cycling on rural roads.
Walking along the road I grew up on in Mount Temple, I’m struck by how it hasn’t changed too much. This is the road my mum, my grandfather and his sisters would have taken to walk to school. Indeed as a teenager I often met my friends for a walk or made my own way to training along this road.
For the past number of decades the road has become increasingly unsafe. I certainly wouldn’t send my childern off to school on it. Cars and tractors are bigger and faster than they were 50 or 100 years ago. There’s more houses on the road and more people travel to work than the farming generation of my parents childhood.
These issues are not unique to this road but to many roads across Longford Westmeath and indeed rural Ireland.
So, whats the solution?
I have two.
First, we need to slow down traffic. The speed limit on this road is 80km/h but i know i don’t feel safe and prepared to meet a car unless im travelling at 50 or 60 kph… and at bad bends 30kph. So speed limits must match the road design, if two cars at 80kph can’t meet and pass safely the speed limit must be reduced.
On road design, many rural roads have no markings and are wide, wide enough to feel like to could meet and pass a car safely at speed, but these types of roads feel particularly unsafe for vulnerable road users such as people walking or cycling.
Denmark are successfully using a system called a two plus one road. A car driving in either direction drives in the middle of the road and a bike lane is either side. If a car meets another they both pull into the bike lane. Cars tend to travell slower on this type of road, so it’s all round safer. This could be implemented on straight wide country roads allowing people to once again cylcle with ease.
Our rural villages were built around walking cycling and horses. Cars have made our communities unsafe but they are here to stay. It’s now time to give our childern and ourselves a chance to enjoy our rural areas once again, the way my parents and grandparents would have.
