Michael Moynihan: Practically every pavement in Cork city has an obstacle blocking the way

View at the western end of MacCurtain Street where footpaths are being dug up for strret improvement works. Coburg Street is closed to traffic as works are underway there. Picture: Larry Cummins

IF YOU’RE going to write about a city you have to bow to the master of the topic. And the master told us everything we need to know about the city a century and a half ago.

“Chairs everywhere. Chairs up the river, among green aits and meadows; chairs down the river, where they roll defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Chairs on the marshes, chairs on the heights.

“Chairs creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; chairs lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; chairs drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats”.

OK, I cheated. Dickens didn’t write any such thing when he gave us the greatest opening to an urban novel of all time — Bleak House (better even than the start of Underworld by Don DeLillo, the only part of the latter book anyone ever reads).

Instead of chairs he was talking about fog, but — and the difference here is an important one — Dickens didn’t experience the Cork of 2023, where chairs are reproducing, infesting the city, where every footpath is an obstacle course of seating units, where the day does not break without a herd of chairs storming Patrick Street like — (On with the motley, please — ed.)

On my most recent trip through our fair city I found practically every pavement in Cork chaired within an inch of its life. 

Chaired, my lords and ladies; chaired, right reverends and wrong reverends of every direction; chaired, men and women with compassion in your hearts; chaired and chairing thus around us every day.

Parking the Dickens a while, as directed, it’s noticeable that every few yards in places like Oliver Plunkett Street and MacCurtain Street there is a little colony — another outburst, another plague. 

And not just chairs of course — seats of every kind, tables high and low, planters and stools and bins. All sorts.

Cllr Michael Paul Murtagh (Cork County Council) in a borrowed Rebel Wheelchair with wheelchair users and Cork City Council engineers, on the Passage Railway Greenway at the South Link Road flyover last year, to highlight the severity of the flyover gradient for users with a disability.

This is not always welcome or helpful. If you are pushing a pram, or in a wheelchair, if you are wheedling toddlers along or if you have sight loss — if your mobility is in any way compromised, in fact, then getting around Cork is a good deal more difficult than it needs to be.

Just last week I pointed out here that a private organisation — the Freemasons — had annexed a portion of public space, in Bishop Lucey Park, for its own use.

On all known evidence this is an unwelcome development, but as a reader pointed out to me in the following couple of days, the Freemasons had at least gone through the appropriate planning channels to do so.

The performance of Cork City Council in granting permission for that development is another day’s work, but the Freemasons deserve credit for not simply taking over a slice of public property simply for their own use.

That is happening all over Cork, however. What appear to be public footpaths are well and truly colonised by private organisations in all parts of the city — cafes, pubs and restaurants which are not solely reliant on al fresco customers, at that.

Augmenting the indoor space is an understandable objective, but at the cost of public convenience?

It’s two years since businesses were warned about this very issue. In April 2021 this newspaper reported Joan Carthy, the Irish Wheelchair Association’s advocacy manager, saying: “Last year there were a lot of problems. Some of the things we were coming across was the wheelchair accessible [parking] spaces were being taken over...and tables were put into them to give extra space.

“We found there were tables put out in very small paths so people with disabilities couldn’t actually get past and were being forced onto the road or were knocking against things.

People with disabilities still have to be taken into account; they have to be able to access all areas.”

Ms Carty’s point about people being forced onto the road is one readers will readily identify with. If you walk the streets of the city you will encounter plenty of stretches where the only possibility is to leave the footpath to pass the obstacles in one’s way.

How much more difficult are such journeys for those in wheelchairs and with sight loss?

June Tinsley of the National Council for the Blind, made this point two years ago also: “The reality is if street furniture goes right to the kerb then people will have to walk on the road, and people who are blind or visually impaired may not see cars, and with the increase in electric vehicles, they may not hear them either.

“It’s just a question of planning. We need to ensure that the way it’s organised still leaves way for people who are not customers to get through and injuries are not caused.”

Is street furniture in Cork organised in that way, allowing people to get through? Not to this observer.

Accessibility 

Over the last couple of years a few people have asked why I return to the point of accessibility in the city.

One obvious answer is that a city which is amenable to those in wheelchairs and with sight loss — and to children — is, by definition, a city which is accessible to all its citizens.

The less obvious point is that if the city is not accessible to all then it is telling some of its citizens that they worth less than others, and it’s their own tough luck.

I would have thought Cork was better than that, but the signs are not good. For instance, just a week or two ago residents on Summerhill North protested about the proposal to create three lanes of traffic along that route as part of — yes — BusConnects.

Part of the proposal for Summerhill North would make footpaths narrower by as much as 50%, reducing them to just 1.18m in places.

Hugh Lorigan of the St Luke’s Residents’ Association told this newspaper — even though the National Roads Authority recommends a minimum width of 1.8 metres for pavements on newly constructed roads, while the Irish Wheelchair Association says a two-metre pavement permits two-way accessibility, with a minimum of 1.5 metres for a wheelchair to pass safely.

The yellow line narrowing the footpath on Summerhill North, Cork when the BusConnects proposals are introduced. Picture: Dan Linehan

As an aside, there seems to be no problem in Cork that BusConnects can’t make worse, but this is a particularly terrible message.

To tempt people out of their cars we’ll narrow the footpaths, and just to put the cherry on top we’ll make sure that wheelchairs won’t have enough room to pass each other on those footpaths: they can take their chances in the three lanes of traffic.

The only bright spot is that those wheelchair users who’ll have to hopscotch off footpaths like those on Summerhill North will have plenty of practice from the city centre; they’ll be well used to dicing with death as they face oncoming traffic while dodging around chairs and tables blocking their way.

Leave it to Charles D to sum it up for us all over again: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. At the moment leaning to the latter, though.