Tripe + Drisheen: The Friday View 26/08
As summer winds down and school bags fill up it's time to think about school and how we get to and from it.
The return to school is around the corner, if it hasn’t already started for some. And for many students and their parents across Cork school is physically just around the corner, or a few corners. Close enough to walk, cycle, scoot, or run if you slept through the alarm.
These forms of transport fall under what’s called active travel, and while it sounds jargony, it probably helps to have a category name for when data is being pulled together to get a better idea of the numbers of parents, guardians and kids who use active travel to get to and from school across Ireland.
As recently as 1986, far more students were travelling to primary school on foot or by bicycle (49%) than by car (24%). Coming in third place was using some form of public transport (19%). Fast forward to 2016, and the picture has been flipped. According to CSO figures, 60% of primary students are piling in and out of the car to get to school (and likely many of them are making slow progress in the morning rush hour, a misnomer, especially if you’re sitting in traffic).
Meanwhile, active travel (on foot or by bike) has fallen under 25% and public transport has fallen to 10%.
No Cork town or suburb featured in the national top ten for primary school students cycling or walking to school in a 2016 ranking by the CSO.
For secondary school the pattern is similar. Car is king, with more than 40% of all school trips completed by car. Walking fares better, with nearly 20% of journeys completed on foot. As for cycling? Barely 2% of students cycled to secondary school across Ireland.
What gives?
Correlation does not imply causation, but as the figures clearly show more students are travelling by car, with fewer opting to cycle or walk. Cycling has a “subjective safety” problem, the fear that because of the high volume of cars on our roads, the condition of roads and the speed of cars on our roads, there is a fear that something bad will happen while cycling. In survey after survey, non-cyclists, especially, see roads as too dangerous for cycling.
The Lord Mayor Deirdre Forde told me as much for a news story last year when she said that while she used to love cycling she would “probably need some practice and quiet roads to build up my stamina and courage.”
The bicycle school buses which are popping up around the city are one way to get kids back on bikes en route to school. It’s an unequivocal fact that kids love cycling to school. They also enjoy walking (or running to school), which could be transformed into walking school buses (which originated in Japan). Getting out of the car takes a culture change, but it also takes infrastructural changes.
This week Cllr Dan Boyle shared data which showed that Cork City and County councils both have significant funds to draw from for active travel. In 2021, Cork County Council had nearly €6m in funds to spend on active travel but claimed less than €1.2m of it. The City Council fared better, claiming nearly €20m from a pot of €30m. This year the budget has increased to €46.2m for the City Council, with only 10% drawn down as of May as Cllr Boyle pointed out. The goal here is obviously not just to draw down all the money, but to make the changes necessary that we go back to the future, and drive up active travel, and drive down driving to school.
Who knows, it might even have the intended consequence of getting our Lord Mayor out of her car and getting into “active travel” more often.
-JJ
News in brief
The "CityTrees", installed by Cork City Council to filter and cool air and to gather data on air quality in the city centre at a cost of €350,000, turned one year old this month. They generated quite an amount of controversy when they went up (What was their purpose? What about planting real trees in their place?), which we covered in-depth at the time. This week, The Irish Examiner reported that the data they collect won’t be released until at least March 2023. So we’ll have to wait a while longer to see what effect, if any, the “Robo-trees” are having. Cue the usual and justified complaints from city councillors that that’s a lengthy wait. In the meantime, the Robo-trees are being well used as a place to park your arse. Who knew, but people like to lounge about in public spaces!
There was a lot of activity in the Port of Cork this week, especially down at the docks in Cobh (see pic above), where three massive cranes were being assembled for transport across the Atlantic to the Port of New Jersey and New York. If you weren’t able to see them in real life there was plenty action on Cork Twitter, as people documented the voyage out of the harbour and westward aboard the Big Lift. Tom MacSweeney, the former RTÉ marine correspondent, said on Twitter that the three cranes, designed and constructed by Liebherr in Killarney, “have been described as the biggest ever export by sea from Ireland.” RTÉ‘s Jennie O’Sullivan has a few shots below from her report.
A story about a possible Michael Collins statue in the city centre popped up in the Echo last week, but it’s more speculation, at least in that piece at this stage, especially on who would unveil the statue that’s not yet built. (In fact there’s no firm plan to create one at this stage). There is however, a bust of Collins in Fitzgerald’s Park, by Seamus Murphy, one of Cork’s greatest stone carvers and sculptors. Murphy’s depiction of Collins presents him as stoic and defiant, staring out across the park.
Planning watch:
Watfore Ltd, a subsidiary of dairy giant Dairygold, is back in the mix again with the news that its planning application for the former CMP site on the Kinsale Road has been granted. You may recall from our piece in the T+D print edition that Watfore Ltd applied for a planning extension of five years in 2014 for the “Trinity Quarter” site at the end of South Terrace which it sold to UCC for €17.25m in 2019. Despite the grand plans Dairygold had for Trinity Quarter they never materialised under Watfore Ltd.
Interestingly, Watfore is now investing in the health care industry. On its planning planning application it states it has an “agreement in principle for an Agreement for Lease with the HSE to deliver a major primary care centre” on the “strategic site.”
There’s more to it though than a health centre with six GP practices. Separately there is an application for 609 dwellings - a mix of private and commercial units - which are subject to a strategic housing development planning application.
Photo of the week
Out + About
🖼 100 Seconds to Midnight is a new exhibition from Cork-based designers The Project Twins which opens next week at the Crypt under St Luke’s. We profiled the twins earlier this year ahead of a Dublin exhibition which you can read here. 100 Seconds is inspired by the Doomsday Clock and features a series of monumental paintings on canvas tarpaulin.
Time, date, place: Thursday – Saturday, 11am – 4pm, September 1 until September 24, The Crypt, St Luke’s.
🌸Get creative. The volunteers behind St Luke’s Community Garden are holding a sign writing workshop this Sunday. All the materials will be provided, what they need is ideas and creativity to make signs for the garden.
Time, date, place: 11am-1pm Sunday, August 28, St Luke’s Community Garden
🧶Cork Craft Month heads into its final week, but there are still some excellent events and exhibitions to take in. Aspiring bookbinders can enjoy a workshop with Barbara Hubert to learn the basics of bookbinding, the importance of measuring, folding and grain direction. Contact Barbara at the following address hubertbookbind@gmail.com for more information and booking
Time, date, place: 10am –2pm, Saturday, August 27, No.20 Tobin St, Cork
🏛“By a Treaty Divided - the Civil War in Cork” opened this week upstairs at the Cork Public Museum and it chronicles how the Civil War unfolded in Cork. The significant exhibition includes artefacts belonging to Michael Collins, as well as an unfinished portrait of him.
Time, date, place: Tuesday - Friday 10am- 4pm, Saturday 11am - 4pm, until summer 2023, Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork.
🎶The Life and Music of Donal Ring exhibition at Blackpool Library will finish up this weekend having been extended for an extra week. The exhibition, containing various items of memorabilia and reminiscences from family and friends of the late musician well-known to many in Cork finishes this Saturday
Time, date, place: until August 27, Blackpool Library, Blackpool Shopping Centre.
🎤Belfast hip-hop outfit Kneecap are taking over Connolly’s of Leap this weekend for the Michael Collins Revenge Party. The two day event also includes Lisa Oh, Ispini na h’Éireann, Jelani Blackman, Mango, John Francis Flynn and Arveene. Tickets and more information here.
Time, date, place: Saturday, August 27 from 2pm and Sunday, Auhust 28 from 4pm, Connolly’s of Leap, Leap.
This week on T +D
On Monday we published a news story about the civic reception for a new exhibition on how the civil war unfolded in Cork which is now showing at the Public Museum in Cork.
On Tuesday we wrote about a new citizen science experiment to measure air quality in Cork.
On Thursday Ellie’s weekly Arts+Culture podcast was an interview with Laurie Uprichard and Yvonne Coughlan of Dance Cork Firkin Crane. Dance Cork Firkin Crane celebrates 30 Years in Dance on Saturday, August 27 with a free public programme from 5pm to 9pm.
Our long read will come out tomorrow, so stay tuned.
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That’s it for this week’s Friday View. Any tips, news or events you’d like to share with Tripe+Drisheen, you can contact either of us at jj.odonoghue@gmail.com or emailellieobyrne@gmail.com. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity. Get in touch.
