Two weeks into my sustainability challenge and I’m clearly starting to notice the systems in place to aid people travelling around the city no matter what mode of transport they use. They range from bus and taxi lanes to cycle lanes or even just the availability of footpaths or walkways throughout the area. Considering my challenge involves walking to and from college I’ve been more aware of the footpath systems. Overall they provide all the infrastructure necessary to walk to and from college but one thing I have noticed is that in certain areas along my regular route the footpath is in poor condition. This isn’t too much of an inconvenience for but for a cyclist it may cause problems and may be a reason why people would not want to cycle around the city. One way in which I could try and influence this system would be contacting the county council and alerting them to the problem but change would only occur of they seen the problem as large enough to require investment which could link in with the economic system and the funding available to improve transport links. Other than that I cant fault the system in place in Dublin as I’m still yet to face any structural challenges as I reach the halfway mark of my challenge.
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Darren Clarke commented on Day 15: Day 15: My Sustainability Challenge 4 years agoHi Donal. Well done on reaching the half way point of your experiment and for managing to embrace it by not taking any form of public transport. It's been great talking to you in class and reading your posts about some aspects of your experiment which have been easy and some which have been more challenging. It's also fantastic to hear that you've been talking to others and trying to influence their behaviours too - talking about change is one of the key aspects to influencing others as otherwise we can become complicit to reinforcing the unsustainable systems that are already in place e.g. private cars, some forms of public transport etc. You raised a very interesting point about the quality of the roads for other road users in your last blog (e.g. cyclists). This is a constant challenge and just this morning I had a tyre puncture on my bike as a result of broken glass on the road and poor road repair on my journey into college. You very keenly observe that some of the infrastructure for walkers/cyclists could be improved and that local authorities could make this happen. There is a great website that you can report poor road conditions to your local authority actually so that they can be notified of poor road/footpath conditions and address them. It's called fixmystreet.ie. I'd encourage you to report future issues you see with poor footpaths/roads/lighting. It could make your journey and others journeys to college safer, sustainable and more enjoyable in the future. Given you're embracing the experiment so well I'm wondering if you have you ever wanted to stand up for something in the past, but didn’t? What stopped you and why did you give up? Looking forward to reading your posts for the last few weeks. Darren Respond
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