Cork Views: Cork is not pedestrian-friendly - just read my own experience
He zipped across the road to the opposite pavement, mounted it, and disappeared.
Three of us were walking along the pavement on the Opera House Bridge towards the pedestrian crossing on the city centre side – an elderly lady, my husband and myself – when the e-scooter came on us without warning.
The driver zipped up fast and silently, driving close enough and suddenly enough to startle us all.
When he came to a stop at the pedestrian crossing, my husband touched him on the shoulder.
The man turned around. He was, I would estimate, in his late twenties with an irritable expression on the puffy, stubbled face beneath a woolly hat.
He made a great show of taking out his smartphone, pressing stop, and then pushing up the hat to remove the earbuds from his ears, in order - sigh - to listen to what my husband had to say.
“You’re not allowed to drive that scooter on the footpath,” my husband observed.
“It’s a cycle-way,” the man argued.
We all looked at the broad pavement traversing the Opera House Bridge. No cycle-way markings.
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“You’re supposed to travel on the road.”
“I don’t give a sh***e” what you say,” he said coldly.
The lights changed. He scooted off across the road, and, yes, without any hesitation, mounted the opposite pavement on his e-scooter, and disappeared around the corner in the direction of Academy Street.
The old lady sighed.
“They’re all doing it,” she said. “There’s nobody around to be stopping them. They do what they want. You have your heart in your mouth doing your bit of shopping around town these days.”
At this point, my husband and I had been criss-crossing the heart of Cork city centre for nearly three hours, completing a list of jobs.
Not once had we seen a Garda.
But we had seen plenty of e-scooters and bicycles travelling on the footpaths, making life extremely uncomfortable for pedestrians.
And here’s something else in Cork city that makes life difficult for pedestrians:
Very quickly, unimaginably quickly, it’s back to red to allow the traffic to move. The traffic is the real priority, you see.
I decided to test just how quickly the lights change.
I started to count aloud – at a steady, medium pace - between the time the green man started flashing and the time he turned into a red man.
I got as far as four before green went red and all those waiting engines revved up.
I witnessed, on separate occasions in the city centre that day, an elderly nun, a man with a limp, and a mother pushing a buggy with shopping bags swinging from the handles, all hurrying across junctions in the face of a tsunami of impatient, revving traffic.
A city centre needs people. But, knowingly or unknowingly, Cork City Council is prioritising the needs of cars, e-scooters and bicycles above those of pedestrians.
These changes, it says, are aimed at “making the city a safe, inclusive and pleasant place for residents, shoppers and visitors, to support local business and make Cork an attractive and desirable place to be”.
But it’s not enough. Because despite these amenities, practically speaking, the entire workings of Cork city’s infrastructure default to the convenience of cars, bicycles, and e-scooters.
1. E-scooters and bicycles are supposed to travel on roads. Yet in Cork city cyclists and e-scooter users are allowed to traverse pavements and pedestrianised streets at will, at speed and in large numbers, startling and unnerving pedestrians, putting us all in harm’s way, and creating serious fall risks for elderly people.
A smiling, middle-aged woman cycled at me on a pedestrianised street last Saturday. I think she fully expected me to immediately jump out of her way. I was laden with shopping bags and didn’t, so she had to swerve, no longer smiling.
Cycling and using e-scooters on footpaths has become so much the norm in this city, that everyone thinks they have the right to do it. And nobody’s making them think otherwise.
None of this leads to the safe, inclusive or pleasant experience for shoppers and pedestrians that Cork City Council talks about.
2. There is not the slightest attempt to enforce rules banning bicycle or e-scooter use on pavements for the safety of pedestrians.
3. I saw no gardaí on-foot patrols around the city centre - if the gardaí were a regular feature of street life in Cork city, they’d be doing something about this.
4. I saw no large signs warning cyclists and e-scooter users that driving on pavements is banned in the interests of pedestrian safety.
5. I saw no large signs warning cyclists, e-scooter-users, or indeed, motorists not to use mobile phones while travelling, again in the interest of pedestrian safety.
So, pedestrians are effectively on their own when confronted by entitled twits like the nasty little man on the e-scooter who was using a mobile phone while driving his scooter along a pavement and who told us he didn’t give a sh*** how much we protested. How pleasant or safe does that make us feel?
6. Last, but very much not least, the barest heartbeat of time allocated for pedestrians who need to cross even large junctions in the face of waiting, revving, city traffic is heart-stoppingly short.
The experience of merely crossing a road in Cork city can at times be terrifying.
7. The cost of parking so that you can safely leave your car and put yourself at risk of being knocked down by bikes or e-scooters is beyond ridiculous.
Given all of the above, and the fact it cost us more than €5 to park in the Paul Street multi-storey for under three hours, I wouldn’t be rushing back to shop in Cork city centre.
It’s no wonder shoppers increasingly either order online or head for the large suburban retail centres and outlets, where car parking is free and there’s no fear of being knocked down by entitled twits zipping around pavements on e-scooters and bikes.
Are you listening, city council?
App?
