Dr. Lorraine D'Arcy:

There is much we can do in relation to access to bicycles. We spoke to people about what would help them to make those changes. There are great Bike Life studies being done at the moment. We worked on a European project called DIAMOND where one of our topics was around surveys on gender and bicycle sharing. One of our key findings was that women of low or no income said bicycle sharing gave them one of the greatest opportunities, because for €20 per year they had access to the equivalent of a Dublinbikes or city bikes. They asked for more child seats or cargo bike options. They said they could not afford to buy a car or bicycle.

The bike to work scheme is great but it is incentivised in a way that the more someone earns, the better the discount they get. We are not reaching everyone in society and we do not reach our students. We have to look at people's life change stages and talk to them about how we can get them on bikes. We need to make it safer for people who are reluctant to cycle because they have a child. How can we get someone who moves to a new city on a bike? We have to think about those behavioural issues and individual concerns as well as the infrastructure. As I said, urban greenways and filter permeability are some of the quickest, easiest and cheapest things we can do.