An Evaluation of the Safety of the Cycling in Dublin City for DIT Students

Cycling as a mode of transport offers many benefits including a cheap, cost effective, healthy, fast, mainly congestion free and environmentally friendly means of getting to and from places of employment and education. Given the central location of Technological University Dublin campus buildings this would seem an ideal option for its third level students, but on the contrary, a DIT online travel survey conducted in March 2014 found that only 7% of students chose cycling as their primary mode of transport. Concerns about cyclist safety were a major factor cited by students who chose alternative modes of transport. Based on this feedback, DIT BSc Spatial Planning and Environmental management students undertook a study to evaluate the safety of cycling in Dublin City for DIT students As DIT campuses are located throughout Dublin City, the extent of the study area included all of the local areas managed by Dublin City Council. Historical cyclist collision data for years 2006 to 2012 was provided by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) and used with visualisation cluster analysis tools available in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology to identify spatio-temporal hot spot areas more susceptible to cyclist collisions. Based on preliminary results focus was placed on collisions that had occurred between small motorised vehicle and pedal cyclist, with emphasis on roads with on street cycle lanes as these were identified as being major contributors for a large percentage of cycle collisions during the study period