One reason that puts people off cycling is the condition of the roads – both the physical state of road surfaces, and the actual infrastructure that in places puts motorists and cyclists in conflict. I believe in a “spot it, sort it” approach, so I think we should all contact our local authorities and ask them to fix these issues.

If your cycle brings you through the Dublin City Council area, you can use the Citizen Hub to report a Road Maintenance Request. Just go to https://citizenhub.dublincity.ie/service/Road_Maintenance_Request and it will allow you to drop a pin on the map, and report the issue. You can also make a street cleaning request to have the road or cycle lane swept. It is best to register with an e-mail address and password as you can then keep track of your requests, and the council staff can follow up with you if they need more detail.

The Dept. of Transport has issued guidance on better design for roads so that cycling (as well as walking and even driving) can be safer. This guidance is often overlooked by local authorities, but again there is nothing stopping people for asking for fixes to be implemented on their routes. You can see this guidance in the Design Manual for Urban Streets (DMURS) at https://www.dmurs.ie and in the NTAs Cycle Design Manual at https://www.nationaltransport.ie/publications/cycle-design-manual https://www.nationaltransport.ie/publications/cycle-design-manual/. There are some good design principles in those and they should be used in all projects were roads are involved.

Again, Dublin City Council’s citizen hub can be used, but this time you need to use the Traffic Request Form: https://citizenhub.dublincity.ie/service/Traffic_Request. These can take alot longer to be processed, but your local councillors will have oversight of the list which they will get an updated copy of at their area committee meeting, every month. If you keep a note of the reference number, you can also ask your councillor to help move things along.

It would be great if there was some sort of system where these things just happened, but unfortunately it takes alert citizens to keep the council on their toes, point out the problems (and the solutions) It is also worth keeping an eye on public consultations being run by the councils on active travel and other road schemes – it is free to make a submission, and the work on the best solutions has already been done for you in the DMURS and Cycle Manual mentioned above. You just need to ask for them to be implemented, and encourage all your friends to as well.

I haven’t been able to find how you can get service requests looked at in Fingal, where I commute to work some days every week, and I don’t know much about other areas, but if you do, or if you have any handy tips, please use the comments field below. Together, we can make our cycling infrastructure safer so that it’s easier for more people to get on their bikes!