[Colm Moore]

http://cuffestreet.blogspot.com/

There's been a good take up of the Cycle to Work scheme by Irish Rail employees. 230 applications have been made from the 4,500 staff who work for Irish Rail. That's a 5% take-up rate, which is pretty impressive, given that so many of their staff live a short walk from rail stations. I went on to discuss the bikes on trains issue. I've been in endless correspondence with the company on this one. With the elimination of "guard's vans" it's been difficult in recent years to get your bike onto trains. Mr. Fearn says however that all inter-city trains are once again taking bikes. There's space for three on three carriage sets, and six on six-car trains. I raised the cost of travelling with a bike which can be as much as €8 on a single journey. Mr. Fearn pointed out that the three bike places involved the elimination of four seats, and that the spaces have to pay for themselves. One bit of good news is that from June it will be possible to pre-book space for bikes on the Irish Rail web-site, which is welcome news. Hopefully the website will provide better information on this topic, and API so that people can build better timetable or realtime info apps as @Ciaran_Lee suggested to me on Twitte . I still believe more needs to be done for cyclists. In Holland, 40% of train journeys involve a cycle to or from the station. A simple improvement would be to provide better cycle parking at stations. There are improvements underway at Connolly, but almost all other stations could benefit from improved cycle parking. Cllr. Mark Deary asked me to mention the need for secure bike-parking at Dundalk Station, and Mr. Fearn said he would investigate this. The Government's Smarter Travel document recommends that bikes should be taken off-peak on suburban rail, and Mr. Fearn said he will introduce a pilot scheme on the Maynooth and Drogheda services shortly. I urged him to implement this recommendation on the DART as soon as possible.