Secret Cyclist: 'I loves me county, boy.' Waterford Greenway an attractive place for cyclists 

It's easy to cycle around the city too

The Railway Viaduct at Kilmacthomas which is now part of the Waterford greenway. Picture Dan Linehan. 

I’ve been spending more time in Waterford city of late. It’s hard not to like Waterford and it seems the feeling is not just mine. Last year, the Irish Times crowned the city the ‘Best Place to Live in Ireland’. The factors that swung the decision in favour of Waterford ranged from its size, ‘not too big and not too small’, to its walkable city centre, and the Greenway. These factors, including many others, suggest to me that Waterford is on track to becoming the most bike-friendly city in Ireland by the end of this decade.

Waterford has a lot going for it to reach this accolade. Its scale is almost perfect for cycling. You can easily cycle into the city centre within 15 minutes and if you give yourself 30 minutes, you could probably cycle across the city without breaking as much as a sweat. Although it’s not a flat city, it doesn’t have the long climbs that feature in Cork. As for the weather, surely there is some truth to the sunny south-east slogan?

I popped in to see Eamon Barrett at his bike shop ‘Altitude’ in Ballybricken to find out more about cycling in Waterford. Altitude is a lovely-looking shop from the outside and it doesn’t disappoint inside either. Eamon opened the shop when I was still wearing a nappy. I asked Eamon about what it was like for him growing up in the city and he recalls when he used to cycle to school as a teenager. "I remember cycling up the avenue to the college [De Le Salle] and the entire front of the building would be completely covered in bicycles. When you parked your bike to run up to class you were trying to find somewhere to park up amongst the sea of bicycles."

Eamon now lives in Ferrybank and although he likes to cycle to work on his cargo bike with his two dogs onboard, he’s not cycling to the shop as much as he had hoped due to the lack of safe cycling infrastructure. I can empathise with Eamon on this point. There are many places in my hometown of Cork that I wince at if I need to go there on the bike during peak travel times. As for cycling to school, Eamon reckons much has changed since his schooldays; "I fear if I went up to visit De le Salle during the school day you wouldn’t see a handful of bikes."

21/10/2021. Works have commenced on the extension of the Waterford Greenway from Bilberry to the City Centre and are expected to be completed within 18 months. The project will help augment the user numbers along this section of the Greenway and, in addition, provide users with a safer and more comfortable cycling and walking experience as they approach Waterford City Centre. Picture: Patrick Browne

Waterford shares many characteristics with other Irish cities when it comes to the existing provision of safe cycling routes. Most cycle lanes in Waterford are of the painted and not protected type and they seem to stop and start at random. I encountered many vehicles parked up in cycle lanes and bus corridors on my cycles around the city. A spokesperson for the Waterford Bicycle Users Group (BUG) told me that illegal parking is a major issue in the city: "Every route is blocked at least by one vehicle every morning."

Like other Irish cities, Waterford currently has access to record levels of funding to develop new cycling infrastructure. James Murray is a senior engineer for Waterford City and County Council’s Active Travel Team and he was kind enough to provide me with an overview of current and planned projects. These include: a new cycle facility linking the South East Technical University to the city centre; a new safe route to school for Glór na Mara National School in Tramore; and a 14km cycle link between Tramore and Waterford city.

Everyone in Waterford agrees on one thing: the Greenway has been a game changer. "The Greenway has proven that if the infrastructure is there, people will use it," Eamon tells me. The Waterford BUG feels that the positive effects of the Greenway even go beyond the official route, "since the introduction of the Greenway there has been a marked improvement in the attitude of drivers towards cyclists."

The council is stepping up to the mark also and is currently extending the Greenway right into the heart of Waterford City Centre. Groundworks are also underway for a new sustainable transport bridge to Ferrybank which will connect the Waterford Greenway to the new South East Greenway that is currently in construction.

Creating a bike city often requires changing the public realm. This is a fancy way of saying "taking space away from cars." Any visitor to Waterford will be impressed by the works done in the Viking Triangle in recent years to create an attractive, walkable Waterford. "It’s of world-class standard," Eamon informs me before adding he would like to see a similarly progressive approach to help people traverse the city by bike.

The draft Waterford Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy recently finished public consultation. The strategy seeks to see a rise in cycling from 2% of all trips in the city at present to 10-15% by 2040. Waterford BUG would like to see higher levels of cycling for a city that is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2040.

The development of the Greenway and the Viking Quarter have put the wind in the sails of Waterford. If the Waterford city region is to continue to thrive, its next goal will be to bring the bicycle back into the fabric of the city.