Letter: ​Unnecessary bilingual road signs in west Belfast won’t improve safety for motorcyclists

A letter from Martyn Boyd:
The Boyne Bridge on the edge of Belfast city centre, the closure of which is believed to have contributed to the city's traffic woesThe Boyne Bridge on the edge of Belfast city centre, the closure of which is believed to have contributed to the city's traffic woes
The Boyne Bridge on the edge of Belfast city centre, the closure of which is believed to have contributed to the city's traffic woes

Since 2005, motorcyclists have been allowed universal access to all bus lanes in Northern Ireland, except two in Belfast, for technical reasons.

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Rider groups, principally the Motorcycle Action Group UK (www.mag-uk.org), lobbied for this to improve safety for motorcyclists. It’s one of the few measures the authorities have ever taken which positively improves motorcyclists’ safety, and we are grateful for it.

Unusually, this is something on which Northern Ireland leads the way as this access is not common in Great Britain and is absent in the Republic of Ireland.

Letter to the editorLetter to the editor
Letter to the editor

Now, because of the chaos caused by the closing of Durham Street/Boyne Bridge and Glengall Street, coupled with other road works and the public realm works associated with Grand Central Station, the Department for Infrastructure wants to allow more classes of taxis to use bus lanes to reduce the traffic congestion in the city centre.

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The whole idea of restricting bus lane use to buses, cyclists, motorcyclists and a limited number of taxis was to improve the flow for those vehicle types and - crucially - improve safety for motorcyclists and cyclists who are officially designated as Vulnerable Road User Groups whose safety requires extra consideration, or not as is often the case for motorcyclists.

This traffic crisis is due to the institutional ineptitude of the Department for Infrastructure, and Minister John O’Dowd cannot wash his hands of responsibility. Allowing more vehicles to use bus lanes, even temporarily, to hopefully alleviate a problem of his making will do little, if anything, to reduce congestion - but it will adversely affect the safety of motorcyclists and cyclists and do little for bus service punctuality.

Motorcyclists and cyclists face many of the same hazards on our roads. Apart from constantly contending with inattentive, distracted and disdainful drivers who cause the greatest number of road collisions, there is the shameful quality of road surfaces containing many defects that are especially hazardous to two-wheeled vehicle users.

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So it is somewhat insulting of Minister O’Dowd to smugly champion spending taxpayers' money on utterly unnecessary English/Irish bilingual road signs in west Belfast when he and his department chose to utterly ignore the safety needs of motorcyclists in the latest NI Road Safety Review.

MAG-UK made a detailed and reasoned submission to the DfI’s road safety consultation. However, not a single thing we suggested to enhance our safety was included in the final strategy. That is institutional disdain for an entire road user group comprising 3% of road traffic, which is equal to the number of HGVs on our roads.

He has given us a two-fingered salute by spending £50,000 on a party political project, which enhances no one's safety. He’s telling us our safety and lives don’t matter.

That money could and should be used for the benefit of all road users, not just for political oneupmanship.

Martyn Boyd, NI representative for Motorcycle Action Group UK