Hi,

I am a resident here on Whitehall road. While I'm sure the idea of the cycle lane is well intended, the planners clearly do not have an idea of Whitehall road. It is a road with hundreds of residents living on the road, held to hostage by a handful of cyclists.

My points are as follows:

• The road is very narrow as it is especially when large vehicles pass each other such as busses, bin lorries etc.
• The road is 5ft narrower than Wellington Lane carriageway.
• I am a cyclist by the way. I find this proposal ridiculously unsafe
  • Turning left on a bicycle coming onto Whitehall road from Kimmage Road West is madness. Do you seriously think a cyclist will dismount, walk across the road to cycle on the correct lane of the dual-lane cycle track? Cyclists do not have to use cycle lanes by law. Heck, the majority of cyclists don't even stop for red or amber traffic lights on their own side of the road! Expecting them to stop, dismount, cross-the-road and continue their cycle is just ridiculously naive - it clearly wont happen. We will be left with a dual-lane cycle track with cyclists cycling on the far side of the road ANYWAYS! Hence the road will be further restricted and will result in frustrated road users which will cost lives.
  • Since we operate on the left side of the road in Ireland, the dual-lane cycle track will have cyclists cycling contra-flow to large vehicles driving by them. The road is too narrow to expect large vehicles with mirrors that extend by 1.5ft or so to swerve dangerously to the opposite side of the road. You will end up with a lot of decapitated cyclists! Or you will have cyclists swerving to the other cycle track or onto the footpath causing an accident. Point being, it is hugely unsafe on such a narrow road especially if 2 large vehicles have to pass one another.
• Where/how will road users swerve to make way for emergency vehicles? There is nowhere to pull over to which will delay emergency vehicles and will cost lives.
• Getting out of driveways will be much more difficult and very dangerous given the shallow driveways of a lot of houses on Whitehall road.
• No parking on the cycleway. How long will businesses last without customer parking?
• No parking up near the Pines businesses with staff that travel in from Kildare and the North of Dublin City. Where will the staff park? This will cost livelihoods for a handful of cyclist.
• Traffic will be a lot closer to footpaths on the side of the road opposite to the cycle lane.
• BusConnects will bring 12 extra buses per hour onto Whitehall Road totalling about 18-20 per hour. This will add heavily onto an already narrow road. Making it narrower will not help road users and will make traffic congestion worse.
• The Wellington Lane roundabout is an utter disaster. Tail-backs all the way down all roads that lead to it at peak hours. Adding hardly used cycle-tracks will only make this worse.
• The cycling lobby, while loud, are very small giving their number - most of who proclaim to be Fianna Fail and Fine Gael voters. Let's be honest,  those parties are heading the way of the dinosaurs at the next General Election (GE). This move will hugely annoy the local residents and push them into Sinn Fein arms. Councillors of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, your parties are dying - are you sure you want to exacerbate your annihilation at the next GE with this ludicrous plan? Is this really the hill you are willing to die on?
• Using "climate change" as an excuse is just that - an excuse! Fact checks have shown that Ireland contributes around 0.1% of the  global emissions: https://www.thejournal.ie/factcheck-ireland-carbon-emissions-4992542-Feb2020/ 
  No one is saying climate change is not important, it is, but let's fight it where we can actually make a real difference (China, USA and India are top 3 by a mile!) Why do we need to use it to make ludicrous decisions like this cycleway?
• This really is a situation of "the tail wagging the dog" here. The disruption this will cause to local residents and businesses for a vocal minority is not fair. At which point do we stand up to these bullies?

Hopefully common sense will prevail on this.