Stephen McNally

DFI punched in the face over its active travel strategy…

Stephen McNally on January 31, 2026, 8:36 am

| Readers 1696

2 boxers sparring in ring, black and white.

For two decades, the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) published unchallenged plans regarding its Active Travel strategies. Like Tyrell Biggs’ pre-fight plan to defeat Mike Tyson, their plans eventually met reality on September 29, 2025. In 1987 Tyrell Biggs said he had a plan to beat Mike Tyson. Tyson famously responded, “everyone has a plan until they get a punch in the face” and then proceeded to punch Biggs repeatedly in the face until his plan fell apart. The Department for …

Bounced cheques. People want their investment back…

Stephen McNally on June 20, 2025, 7:30 am

| Readers 1176

The Department for Infrastructure produced their Bicycle Strategy 10 years ago. It promised a revolution in transport. It’s delivered nothing. It now feels like a rather large bounced cheque – some people are angry and want their investment back. Government policy and strategy documents are like cheques – promissory notes given to the public, promising to deliver something of value at specified point in the near future. A minister signs-off the document giving it credibility and pledges to honour it …

Can we learn to walk again?

Stephen McNally on April 12, 2025, 11:00 am

| Readers 1178

In the 1950s American writer Ray Bradbury predicted earphones, flat screen TVs, self driving cars and ATMs. In his 1951 short story – The Pedestrian – Bradbury also predicted a future where you might be arrested for walking. For air, to see, and just to walk Set in Los Angeles in 2053, Bradbury’s short story features Leonard Mead – a man who likes to walk around his neighbourhood after 8pm. “In ten years of walking by night or day, for …

Road deaths – An acceptable level of violence?

Stephen McNally on February 4, 2025, 9:15 am

| Readers 1555

Between 1969 and 2001 3,532 people died during the troubles. During the same period 7291 died on the roads. The Troubles are a constant reminder of the suffering caused by violence and a context for understanding the tragic consequences of road death. Crashed lives A series of harrowing interviews on the Crashed Lives website prompted the research for that statistic – struck by the similarities with interviews recorded for Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland. Families bravely recounting the …

Belfast’s transport system is currently flat on its face with acute congestion…

Stephen McNally on December 17, 2024, 8:33 am

| Readers 6438

We talk of cities in human terms. They’re the ‘beating heart’ of an economy with ‘arterial routes’ into the city. Cities have financial ‘nerve-centres’ and a ‘circulation’ of people and traffic. People are the ‘life-blood’ of a city. When people flow freely they work more efficiently, spend more, exercise more, live better livers and produce a thriving, healthy, vital city. When people stop flowing the city gets slow, stressed, fat, clogged, angry… until it eventually falls flat on its face! …

York St. Station – the Appendix of North Belfast…

Stephen McNally on July 19, 2024, 2:16 pm

| Readers 5211

John O’Dowd stepped off the train and onto the new York Street Station like a heavyweight boxer striding towards the ring. An entourage of personal assistants, journalists and photographers trailed in his wake as he made his way to the foyer to cut the ribbon on the new £17M station Train stations in Northern Ireland are as rare as… well… train stations. Few ministers have opened one in the last 60 years. If all goes to plan O’Dowd will open …

They all end up on the hard shoulder…

Stephen McNally on February 1, 2024, 10:07 am

| Readers 1533

A red car parked on a dirt road Description automatically generated

They’re about to jump start the Executive again. We may see a new face behind the wheel at the Department for Infrastructure with fresh ideas about how to get us out of our cars and back on our feet. It’s a good time to glance in the rear-view mirror and see what we can learn from the last comeback. After driving the peace process for almost 30 years, the SDLP found themselves stranded on the hard shoulder post Good Friday …

From Craigavon to Copenhagen: NI’s Failure to Build Soft Bike Infrastructure…

Stephen McNally on September 12, 2023, 7:00 am

| Readers 3229

The draft for a Belfast Bicycle Network was launched in 2017 by the Department for Infrastructure. In 2022 the delivery plan finally arrived. It’s due for completion in 2031. The £100 million project is currently decades off schedule and nothing has been constructed. Copenhagenize Look up “the best cities in the world to live” and Copenhagen always features in the top 3. Search “the world’s best cycling cities” and it’s permanently embedded in first place. This isn’t a coincidence. Cycling …

Hill St Blues – The ongoing debate over car restrictions…

Stephen McNally on May 25, 2023, 7:00 am

| Readers 2194

In the run up to the local elections, John Manley’s Irish News article on Hill St. in Belfast added more fuel to an ongoing debate over car restrictions. But why does a tiny cobbled back street in Belfast warrant a quarter page in one of NI’s biggest daily newspapers and continue to generate a running commentary on other media outlets? Hill St. is located at the back of St Anne’s Cathedral in the old print district – and runs through …

The politics of parking..

Stephen McNally on April 20, 2023, 11:13 am

| Readers 1465

top view photo of red and blue convertibles on asphalt road

Heading into the local elections in Northern Ireland, we’ll hear about health, the climate crisis, the housing crisis, anti-social behaviour, dereliction etc. We’ll hear very little about parking. But we should, because it affects all of us and contributes directly to those issues. The word “parking” has its roots in Washington DC. In 1871, the Washington Parking Commission was established – not to park cars as they didn’t exist then – but to to plant trees, bringing shade, birdsong and …