Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy mentioned Colombia. One of my heroes is a former mayor in Colombia, Enrique Peñalosa, who transformed the city of Bogotá into a cycling and walking city. He is like something out of a Mario Vargas Llosa novel, a romantic. He has said that pavements are for kissing and that man and woman are to walking what fish are to swimming. He had a romantic vision of how cities and streets should be designed. It is a social project because it is a project for everyone.

On the matter of the hierarchy approach, every tier must be designed around people with disabilities. This is the case for public transport, pavements and other infrastructure. When one designs for people with disabilities, one also designs for parents with a buggy and two or three kids, for older people and for people like poor old Deputy Chambers, who currently has a broken foot. When one designs in that way, one gets better transport systems that work better in every way. They are more efficient and more effective. That is the metric. One starts with disability and works from the pedestrian and the cyclist up, just as Deputy Lahart has said.

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