Cycling campaigners in Ireland have criticised a politician’s “bizarre” claim that “massive” cycle lanes are “taking over” a town’s streets, pointing out that only one kilometre’s worth of cycling infrastructure has been built in the last decade.
Last week, Peadar Tóibín, the leader of conservative party Aontú, posted a video on social media criticising the traffic policy in Navan, Co Meath, which he claimed was harming local businesses by removing parking spaces and introducing “overengineered” projects such as overly large cycle lanes.
“Increasingly, it’s becoming more difficult to do business in Navan and also to get around,” Tóibín, who founded Aontú in 2019 after resigning from Sinn Féin over the party’s stance on abortion, said in the video, titled ‘The traffic policy of Meath County Council in Navan is damaging the life blood of the town’.
“And that’s happening for a number of reasons. First of all, there has a been a disappearance in the number of parking spaces in this town… we’ve lost 94 car parking spaces in Navan in just six years, and the council actually plans to get rid of another 29 parking spaces in the next number of years. And that’s an incredible situation.”
The Meath TD also claimed that Ludlow Street in the centre of Navan was “empty” due to the loss of “footfall shops”, while criticising projects which involved the redirection of traffic and “continuous construction on our roads”.
“There seems to be an overengineering of very simple projects happening,” he continued. “In terms of cycling, I cycle myself and I like to see cycle lanes. But the cycle lanes that are being put in currently are massive, they’re taking over the streets.
“And they’re also taking a long time to build, which leaves the town and the streets full of traffic congestion.”
Tóibín concluded by arguing that there should be a review of the county council’s traffic policy, and called for more parking spaces to be introduced in the centre of Navan.
However, the Aontú leader’s intervention provoked a critical response from local cyclists, who instead argued that more active travel infrastructure is necessary to make Navan an attractive place to visit, following years of “accommodating private motor vehicles”.
The Navan Cycling Initiative, a local campaign group, also pointed out that, despite Tóibín’s claim that parking spaces are disappearing in the town, drivers can still avail of almost 3,600 spots in the centre of Navan alone, including 2,000 within a short walking distance of Ludlow Street.
According to the campaign group, Navan also isn’t being overrun by oversized cycle lanes either, with the county council building just one kilometre’s worth of bike lanes in the past decade, with the infrastructure in question two metres wide, the “basic desirable minimum width”.
One new active travel scheme is currently under construction in Navan, which will see a two-way, 3m-wide cycle path built alongside a carriageway measuring 6.5m, and around 13 metres at some junctions.
Introduced as part of the Martha’s Bridge to Circular Road Cycle and Pedestrian Scheme, some sections of the cycle lane will measure between 3.5m and 4m (within the recommended range for cycling infrastructure in Ireland), but only in places where the carriageway is above 6.5m.
In a comment posted under Tóibín’s video, the Navan Cycling Initiative said: “Hi Peadar, sorry but this is really disappointing to hear. Especially from someone who cycles regularly as yourself, which we know you do.
“For years and years, Navan was built to accommodate private motor vehicles, with decades of underfunding in public transport and active travel, with no bus lanes, no cycle lanes, no pedestrianised areas or civic spaces.
“It is inevitable, then, that as the town grows, that we have to reclaim some of that and reallocated road space to accommodate other modes of transport. There is simply no other choice.
“Yes, parking spaces have been lost, but there are still almost 3,600 parking spaces in Navan town centre, with approximately 2,000 spaces within a minute’s walk of Trimgate Street (two multi-storey car parks, Fair Green, Abbey Road, Kells Road). There are also 180 new parking spaces on Moathill Park and Ride.”
The group continued: “It is also just bizarre to claim the cycle lanes are ‘massive’. Massive in what way? In Navan town centre, we have seen only 1km of dedicated cycle lane schemes built in over a decade, on the Trim Road.
“The cycle lanes themselves are 2m in width, which the basic desirable minimum width (they could have been 2.5m). As a cyclist yourself, what other ways would you like to see cycle lanes built?
“There are endless studies which prove that in order to revitalise town centres we must put people first. Cars don’t shop; people do. An official survey in 2022 showed that only 54 per cent of all shoppers to the town travel by car. Of those, 87 per cent of people who visited Trimgate Street parked in other areas.
“We must pedestrianise more streets, we must build more active travel infrastructure, and we must make our streets more attractive and make Navan a must-visit town located in the heart of the Boyne Valley. It has so much potential.”
