We need to make Cork city walkable

It is insane that children in urban areas are “driven to school from across the road,” Green Party deputy leader Róisín Garvey said at its think-in recently.

“As somebody who relies on a car in rural areas, I get that. But in urban areas, it is insane that we still have kids being driven to school from across the road.

“A quarter of our nine-year -lds are overweight. That’s because they have to be driven everywhere. We have to take this seriously,” she concluded.

Finally, some plain speaking about the horror that is the way we have normalised sedentary behaviour among children and young people in towns and cities across Ireland.

And Ms Garvey is factually correct. Data published in June from the Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI) 2022-2023 found 17.7% of children in Ireland live with overweight and obesity. The prevalence rate is even higher in low-income areas with one in four children attending DEIS schools reported as living with overweight and obesity.

Minister for Finance Jack Chambers was quick to respond: “We need to be careful not to overly-simplify what is a complex issue in health policy.”

Obesity is a complex issue intertwining multiply factors including diet, sleep, income as well as physical activity. But it is important to distinguish complexity with lack of political drive or ambition. 

In terms of prioritising active travel in cities over the rights of car owners, political ambition is way below what is needed, and what is being seen right across Europe to make cities more liveable.

A study in Nature Cities this month highlighted that Dublin was one of the most walkable cities in Europe. So why is it not teeming with infrastructure to make that a reality?

The study found just a tiny fraction of 10,000 cities worldwide can be considered 15-minute cities. The researchers used open data to work out the average distance people must walk or bike to reach essential services - such as supermarkets, schools, hospitals and parks - and calculated the proportion of residents who have the necessities at their fingertips.

“When we look at the results, we are amazed by how unequal they are,” said lead author, Matteo Bruno, a physicist at Sony Computer Science Laboratories in Rome.

The researchers selected 54 cities to explore in detail and found the most accessible were mid-size Europeans such as Zurich, Milan, Copenhagen and surprisingly Dublin. These had essential services that could be accessed in 15 minutes by more than 95% of residents.

At the bottom of the rankings were sprawling American cities with a high dependency on cars, such as Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta and San Antonio. This is not that surprising - many European cities were built long before cars - with narrow cobbled streets and wide piazzas. American cities on the other hand were built to be travelled by car.

Small cities tended to have higher scores. Notable exceptions included Paris and Berlin where more than 90% of the residents live within a 15-minute walk of essential services.

The authors say the study is limited by the quality of the open data, and how practical it is to walk some cities. Heavy traffic, high crime and steep hills may discourage people from walking even geographically short distances.

Heavy traffic is certainly an issue in major cities in Ireland like Dublin and Cork. High crime is also an issue in sections of our cities. But these problems are not insurmountable.

Chris Bruntlett is International Relations Manager at the Dutch Cycling Embassy, a public-private partnership that represents the best knowledge, experience and experts from the Netherlands - a global leader in how to do active travel well. Author of Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in our Lives, he asks how can cities support a dynamic and multi-modal transportation network?

“It’s not just about painting in or adding bike lanes, but about crafting smart, people-centred street design that makes cycling the easiest, safest, and most practical choice for meeting daily needs.”

His 5-Step plan to more liveable cities is politically ambitious while remaining eminently pragmatic.

• 1. Start with a Plan. Cycling networks should be carefully planned as a fine-grained mesh, making it possible to cycle “from anywhere to everywhere”. These grids connect where people live, shop, and play - offering a truly practical alternative to driving.
• 2. Don’t give up at the intersection. Protected intersections are designed to slow down cars and prioritise vulnerable users. This ensures people of all ages and abilities can happily navigate exchanges, trusting fellow users to act in a way that is anticipated.
• What it does not mean is that cycle lanes disappear at an intersection or a roundabout leaving cyclists stranded or vulnerable.
• 3. Every mobility plan needs a car plan. Offering an attractive alternative must be complemented with efforts to make driving indirect and inconvenient. By pushing traffic to other arterials, cities prevent cars cutting through residential areas, giving cyclists safer, direct routes. In recent years in Cork, car parking has become increasingly difficult, making the prospect of driving into town far less attractive than the alternative - hopping on a bus or a bike with most parts of the cities within a ‘stone’s throw’ of the suburbs.
• 4. Design for the behaviour you want. The desired speed is achieved not via education or enforcement, but actively engineering means that force drivers to slow down and pay attention. If a street has too much misbehaving it’s seen as a design failure and reengineered to be safer.
• Cork’s newly refurbished Victorian Quarter, is an example of an area designed to minimise traffic and maximise an urban experience focused on liveability, where the well- preserved 19th century architecture and rich heritage can be appreciated and enjoyed. It is a living breathing community with a heart.
• 5. Use cycling to feed transit. By connecting infrastructure networks to bus, train and tram stations providing secure and free bike parking, the bike-train combination acts as one seamless mobility option.

As cities grapple with rising emissions, congestion and public safety concerns, shifting away from car dependency is essential. Through people-centre road design, we can see social and environmental benefits far beyond transport.

Much of this kind of thinking is evident in the Cork City Development Plan 2022-2028. Aligned with ambitious plans for the develop of the North and South Docklands prioritising active travel over the next decade, there is room to be hopeful that active travel and the liveability of the proud city will be transformed.

All that is needed is the political ambition and determination to see it through.