LAST UPDATE | 12 Jun 2018
SIXTEEN NEW ‘CORE bus corridors’ are being planned for Dublin, and their construction will require the removal of gardens and of land in front of commercial properties.
On-street parking will also need to be reduced. Tree and sections of footpaths will need to be removed along some affected routes.
The routes are all radial bus routes (travelling to and from the city centre) and are part of the National Transport Authority’s (NTA) BusConnects plan.
At a briefing to outline the planned project this morning the NTA said that around 1,300 front gardens would be impacted.
On some routes, up to 200 gardens will be affected. On other corridors there will be virtually no gardens impacted.
There is expected to be significant impact along the route from Rathfarnham to the city centre and along the Greenhills route. On the other hand work along the Malahide Road, which is already a wide dual carriageway, will be relatively low key.
Where parts of gardens are being acquired the NTA will purchase the land from property owners via Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO).
The authority will also oversee new landscaping and replanting of the gardens where appropriate “as well as providing compensation for the garden portion loss and disruption”.
The discussion document, published this morning on the NTA’s website, proposes a continuous bus lane in each direction as well as maintaining two traffic lanes on the 16 affected routes. Cycle lanes will be segregated from other traffic.
Discussion document
Journey times will be greatly improved as a result of the new corridors. CEO of the NTA Anne Graham said traffic in the city would “grind to a halt” if the bus system was allowed continue without an overhaul.
Two traffic lanes may not be maintained everywhere along the routes. In order to create more priority for buses and cycling “some roads may become one-way, new bus-only sections will be introduced and in some places general traffic will have to take new routes in and out of the city”.
Pedestrian crossings will also need to be added and moved in some areas.
The planned routes are:
Why are gardens being removed?
Because there is so little unused space along these busy roads, according to the discussion document, “it will often not be possible to accommodate the bus lanes and cycle lanes in the width available”.
“In order to achieve the required space it will be necessary, in places, to acquire parts of front gardens and land in front of commercial properties to allow the bus and cycle lanes to be provided.
“This would require rebuilding new garden walls a short distance back from the existing road boundary.
“Because the roads we are widening travel through residential and business areas there will be a need to reduce the amount of on-street parking to accommodate the new layout.
As with the need to remove some parts of front gardens and footpaths, there will be also be a need to remove trees along some of the corridors. The Public Consultation stage later this year will have details and locations of the trees and lands impacted, once the initial designs are developed.
Road works and construction
The construction phase will include “excavation of the existing roads, plus parts of gardens and footpaths where needed”.
“There will be resurfacing, kerbing, replanting and landscaping.
“During the construction stages, the construction sites will be localised and managed on a road by road basis.”
Dubliners can expect “a certain level of noise, dust and temporary traffic diversions”. According to the document:
The size of each work site and the hours of working will have to take into consideration the residential nature of many of the roads. Traffic management will be very important to keep the traffic moving and ensuring local access for people and deliveries is always maintained.
Criticism
A full public consultation on the 16 routes will begin in September or October, according to the NTA. Detailed impacts of the project, on a road by road basis, are expected to be revealed then.
Fine Gael TD Noel Rock released a press statement early this morning lambasting the communication approach taken by the NTA. Today’s discussion document, he said, “doesn’t outline exactly which properties will be affected by the acquisition; rather it only outlines the roads affected”.
This means instead of 1,300 households being informed on this matter and becoming concerned due to the lack of direct engagement from the NTA, it will be a multiple of several times that.
He said he had asked the chair of the Oireachtas transport committee to call in the NTA to discuss its plans.
- With reporting by Rónán Duffy
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