Car-free in Cork: the first week
It's the first week of a car-free month for Ellie and the weather gods are not smiling, but cackling maniacally....
The move to drastically reduce personalised motor transport in Ireland is underway.
Transport Minister Eamon Ryan’s plan to reduce the number of cars on the road by 20% by 2030 is being met with a mixed response, though, with rural commentary that there simply isn’t the public transport network in place to replace cars in the lives of many.
At a local level, Cork City Council have been pursuing an infrastructural approach that prioritises and incentivises active travel, reducing car lanes in favour of installing bike lanes and wider footpaths.
And then, of course, there’s Bus Connects, the National Transport Authority’s plan for a segregated bus lane network which, they say, will slash travel times and make public transport reliable and efficient.
It’s a plan that has already proved controversial and we’ve reported on it several times in these pages.
I think it’s emotive because how we get around has a massive impact on our lives. Many people have made decisions to tolerate long commutes, have balanced the books and opted for more affordable accommodation at a greater distance from other elements of their lives, and have become more car-reliant in doing so.
It’s also emotive because of the astonishing lack of tolerance being displayed by basically nearly everyone in the conversation for each others’ choices.
At a Cork City Council meeting before Christmas, when councillors were urging the roads department to do something about the frustrating traffic jams clogging up the city, Chief Executive Ann Doherty weighed in: the answer, she said curtly, was for people to start using active travel and public transport.
A problem emerges when the public sees one rule for them and another rule for those making the rules: after I broke the story that Cork City Council was actually the employer with the largest number of city centre parking spaces, back when the new Pana Ban was a topic of conversation in 2018, Ann Doherty was interviewed on local radio and asked if she herself drove to work.
She said she did, and then, with an astonishing lack of self-awareness, she said that she had to because, you see, she had childcare commitments and was coming from outside the city.
I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the cycling advocates that are so vocal on social media, so fervently in favour of cycling infrastructure over everything else, have a partner who is doing the school run, shopping and ferrying kids to after school activities by car.
Sticks and carrots
At this month’s city council meeting, a Green Party councillor was the only voice of objection to a proposal for a free city bus pilot scheme: other councillors were quick to accuse Eamon Ryan of policies that focus on behavioural “sticks” - making driving more expensive and difficult - over “carrots” like free public transport.
There are many public representatives that counter all talk of active travel with a litany of downsides: Cork is hilly, Irish weather is bad, public transport is unreliable, no-one wants to arrive for meetings all sweaty, etcetera etcetera.
It’s true that driving feels comfortable and nice compared to cycling in bitter cold rain with cars beeping at you and splashing you with gritty puddles. Or compared to having your arms pulled off you hauling your weekly shopping home from the bus.
You can arrive at your destination dry and clean, and without hair reminiscent of Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. You can store all sorts of personal belongings in your vehicle, listen to your favourite podcast if you get stuck in traffic.
But driving is nice in the same way junk food is nice: it feels good, but it’s not good for us. Our increasingly sedentary lives are doing us no favour.
The rise in private car ownership in Ireland has coincided with a rise in obesity, diabetes, hypertension and other health indicators of a sedentary lifestyle. Of course, there are other factors like diet and screen-time at play.
But the number of licensed vehicles in Ireland increased from 960,000 in 1989, the CSO tells us, to 2.7 million in 2017. And at the same time, 11% of the population were obese in 1990 while 23·4 % were in 2011; today, 26% of Irish adults are obese.
I’m ditching the car
The reason all these things are preying on my mind is because my vehicle has broken down and I’ve decided, for the time being, not to replace it.
I started cycle-commuting at 26 and for many years, my children and I did the school run by bike, cycled for leisure at the weekend. For a lot of that time, we lived near Dennehy’s Cross, and then the city centre. But a year ago, we moved to the Northside, a ten minute walk from the last stop on the bus 208 route, perched on the steep limestone ridge overlooking the Lee Estuary, between Glanmire and Mayfield.
It is amazing how much a geographic feature like a large hill makes a difference: over the past year I have become more car-dependent than ever before.
My nearest supermarket is around 2km away, but again, on a hilly route: sometimes I cycle it if I’m feeling energetic, but often I drive, especially if I’m doing a big shop or buying heavy or bulky items. Time is an issue here: I can nip to the supermarket between interviews if I’m working from home and if I drive.
As a freelancer, my time is my money. I just don’t have time for the vagaries of waiting for the bus in my day-to-day life. My bike will get me into town in 25 minutes with no waiting around, and this is what I am going to rely on most, I decide.
But my life is adapted to a certain amount of personalised transport: for work, I frequently am on the road, off interviewing in other parts of Cork county or further afield. On a personal note, for the foreseeable future, my partner lives separately from me, in Co Waterford where he works, and we have been spending the past year converting two double decker buses into tiny homes: normally, whatever time I can finish work on Friday, I drive to Waterford.
If I’m lucky and I can get down early enough, we’ll do a couple of hours on the bus on Friday evening, a full day Saturday, a half day Sunday and I’ll be home again to prepare for the week’s work.
Since we moved to our big hill, I also like to give my daughter a lift to school in the mornings. She makes her own way home, but she has to get up almost an hour earlier in order to get the bus: she’s in Leaving Cert year now and also has a part-time job on weekends; it’s not spoiling her rotten just to give her the extra time in the mornings, and it’s one way of guaranteeing that we actually spend a little time together every day.
It’s how I ensure I get regular exercise: after I drop her to school, I like to go to the pool and swim a kilometre before I start work. Otherwise, not well suited to a sedentary job, I suffer from insomnia as well as lower back pain from an old injury.
So how am I going to handle doing all this with a combination of bike and public transport?
The first week
Monday: After a morning working from home, I cycle into town to run some errands. It’s lashing rain, and the errands take longer than expected. Leaving Blackpool with a heavy pannier bag full of shopping at around 5pm, I opt to cycle the North Ring road past The Glen instead of going back through the city centre.
The North Ring has a 60km speed limit, but drivers treat it like a dual carriageway and I’ve never seen a single Garda on it. There’s one particularly dangerous bit for cyclists, after a set of traffic lights where the road takes a sudden uphill bend at the same place where the lane from the N20 merges: you have to get in to the left of the merging lane so you don’t end up stranded in between two lanes of vehicles that are travelling very fast.
When the lights change, I indicate and, heart pumping with exertion, make my way into the road position I need to be in. A woman driving a Ford Focus comes up behind me and starts leaning on her horn; she’s tail-gating me too, revving her engine aggressively, the hood of her car bonnet looming in and out of my peripheral vision. What the hell is she doing? Is it impatience? There are traffic lights on the hill right above us: when she makes it past me, she has to stop within about 50 metres. Now my heart is pounding with adrenaline as well as effort, and I’m angry.
In the interests of good driver-cyclist relations, I try not to get into confrontations on the road, but this time, I knock on her window at the lights. She winds her window down.
“Why did you do that?” I ask her, slightly out of breath.
“It was for your own safety,” she screeches at me.
“For my safety? Do you have any idea how dangerous what you were doing was?”
“It was for your safety!”
Confession, reader: I swear at her. I really shouldn’t and I’m not proud of it. But, shaking with fright and anger, I do.
Tuesday: I have a meeting at 10.30am, luckily in Mallow, accessible by train. The train costs €8.80 return. I get soaked and sprayed with mud cycling on the Lower Road on the way to the train station, and because Mallow town is a handy stroll from the train station, I lock my bike in Kent station before getting the train. I leave home at 9am and make it home at 1.30 to resume work. I’ve lost about an hour and a half from my morning.
Our coal delivery has arrived, though: our house has no central heating and so I’m in the habit of lighting the fire in the early afternoon so my daughter gets home to at least one warm room. And there’s no way for me to haul coal on my bike. So I’ve ordered coal to be delivered; the unit cost works out lower, but you have to order in bulk.
Wednesday: I’m working from home all day, but meeting a friend in town in the evening.
My NeighbourFood delivery arrives: this isn’t a cycling adaptation but something I’ve been doing for over a year. When Cork city’s NeighbourFood started a delivery service I jumped at the chance - the very best farmer’s market produce arrives fresh to your door each week, a godsend. It’s a great service, and if you don’t load up your cart on high-end products and keep it simple, it’s also good value. I get a €40 fruit and veg box, milk in glass bottles from Gloun Cross, eggs.
For my evening outing, I decide to put on some make-up, pay some attention to my hair, dress up a little. Not heels or anything drastic like that, you understand: just enough to make me look as though I haven’t been audio editing in my pyjamas all day.
To add to the sense of civilised adult life, I decide to get the bus instead of cycling.
As I gingerly apply the mascara wand, the weather gods rouse themselves: first a few murmurs, a “should we?” And then some open chuckles and finally, as I’m leaving the house, they let rip a hearty guffaw along with an example of some of their finest work.
I sprint across the shelterless expanse of playing fields between me and the first bus stop, marvelling at the sensation of being soaked through and sweaty at the same time, and mercifully see the bus heading down to turn in the estate below. There’s no shelter at the bus stop. But at least there’s a bus - the last time I was at this stop, before Christmas, I was waiting 45 minutes, with an elderly lady who kept telling me how much her legs were killing her.
I arrive on time to meet my friend, drenched to the skin and sporting a magnificent example of hat hair. After dinner, my friend offers me a lift home, which I take with gratitude.
Thursday: I’m meeting someone for an interview in Cork city centre at 3.30, so I decide to skip lunch and go to the pool: this is the first time I will have made it to the pool this week, because of all the extra time I’m spending getting around.
I set off from home on my bike at 1 o’clock. The weather has been beautiful all morning but as soon as I leave, it starts raining. Cycling in on the Lower Road, there’s a ferocious head wind, accompanied by icy, stinging rain. I make it to the pool for half one. After my first interview, I have a meeting but not until 6pm, so I stay in town and eat a bowl of ramen for dinner. I am losing some working time: I make it home for 8.30, tired and cold.
On my way home, on McCurtain Street, a gentleman in a black SUV who has been illegally parked pulls right out in front of me. “Didn’t you see me?” I ask him through his open window. He’s apologetic. There’s no swearing.
Friday: I work from home all day, and catch up on some much-needed housework in the evening. I also have a nap: I am tired, and hungry all day. Clearly, even without swimming, I’ve been expending a bit more energy than I’m used to.
Saturday: I have to get to Dun Laoghaire for a speaking event: I’m doing a walk and talk with artist Rachel Doolin of her beautiful Heirloom exhibition at 2.30. But I also need to get to Waterford and at least get a couple of hours in on the bus. Usually, for such a big round trip, I would almost certainly drive.
I probably would have gone to Waterford Friday evening and driven up and down from there to Dun Laoghaire on Saturday. Instead, I set off from Cork on Saturday morning on the train to Dublin. My darling man has some business in the Big Smoke to attend to and says he’ll collect me from Dun Laoghaire and we’ll head to his house.
A single ticket one way to Heuston costs €32.99 from Cork. The Dart is impressively low at €2.65, and I can take my bike, so I put my bike on the train and cycle from Heuston to Connolly. Inexplicably, the train from Heuston to Waterford is less than half the price of the train to Cork, so even if my partner hadn’t collected me, in terms of cost, the round trip would work out about the same as it would at the petrol pump: €70, including the cost of an Expressway bus back to Cork at the end of the weekend.
I leave home at 8.45: I wouldn’t have needed to leave until 11 if I had been driving, but I get two solid hours of work in on the train and so the time saving of driving is a bit of an illusion too: the time you lose is not time in transit, it’s the time waiting for scheduled departures, or waiting while switching from one form of transport to another. Collected from the gallery by my partner, we’re in his house by around 7pm.
We watch The Man Who Wanted To See It All on Netflix: the subject of the documentary, Heinz Stücke, is a German man who spent 50 years cycling around the world. In his eighties, he has now retired to the town of his birth to get his affairs, his mementoes and his 100,000 photographs in order, in preparation for his demise. “I don’t want to be like Heinz,” I tell my partner on our way to bed.
Sunday: After a chilly morning dip at a picturesque pier, we work on the bus, doing final bits of finishing and sanding on the reclaimed scaffolding board countertops we’re installing in the galley kitchen.
I know I’ll be tired from the day’s work and I can’t face the rigmarole of getting to Waterford city for an evening bus to Cork, which is often full of students returning home after the weekend. There’s the hassle of stowing my bike and pannier safely, and then the long uphill cycle in the dark: If I made it to the 7.30 bus, I would be home around 10.45.
So I decide to stay another night in Waterford, cycle the 13km from Tramore to Waterford in the early morning and get the 9am bus back to Cork: I might be able to answer my morning mails on the bus but I won’t be home until 11.30. It’s €14.30 one way for the bus, but Bus Eireann charge a fiver to transport a bike.
At the end of the week, I have spent just over €65 on transport, which, factoring in a portion of annual road tax, insurance and maintenance costs on a car as well as the petrol, is slightly less than what the week’s travel in a personal vehicle would have cost me.
I feel good, despite slight sniffles which I’m putting down to the repeated drenchings. I miss my swims for their meditative, restful quality, but I’m probably getting the same amount of exercise from cycling.
The biggest loss has been my time, my inability to efficiently streamline my choices when it comes to various different appointments and responsibilities. This requires far more organisation and pre-planning. And I’m worried about the impacts on my work and my ability to get around to interviews in coming weeks.
One thing is for certain - my energy levels are stretched. If I had younger children with more transport demands, or if I were pregnant, or reaching retirement age, or suffering a chronic condition, or working a physically demanding job, I don’t think that what I’m doing would be possible.
Food for thought, but we’ll see what transpires in week two.
A very honest account of going car-free in Cork. But ... starting in early January? Very brave or daft! Well done.
Brilliant article Ellie !!