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Dublinbikes.jpgDublin to make city centre car free, aims for 15 per cent cycling share
Dublin City Council is aiming to ban cars from much of the centre of the Irish capital and is also aiming for cycling to account for 15 per cent of journeys there by 2017.
Under plans unveiled last week by the council and the Republic of Ireland’s National Transport Authority (NTA), the north and south quays alongside the River Liffey as well as College Green will only be accessible by people on bike or foot or by public transport.
The plans which were revealed this week in the Dublin City Centre Transport Study will also see St Stephen’s Green North and Suffolk Street turned into pedestrian zones.
The council’s report, which is currently open to consultation, highlights the growing problem of congestion with the city centre.
It says that while the number of people travelling into it by car has fallen by 17 per cent since 2006, that has not been accompanied by a similar fall in the number of such vehicles, because a higher proportion now have just one occupant, the driver.
The study also says that from 2006 to 2014, the proportion of people travelling by bike to work in the city centre more than doubled from 2.3 per cent to 5.4 per cent.
Currently, the overall mode share for cars is 33 per cent, with 48 per cent reach the city centre by public transport and 16 per cent walk or cycle – the latter boosted by the city’s cycle hire scheme.
Under the new plan, targets have been set for 2017 of 55 per cent of people coming into the city centre to be on public transport, those in private cars to number 20 per cent, 15 per cent to be on bicycles and 10 per cent of trips to be on foot.
The council’s chief executive Owen Keegan said: “Dublin City Council and the NTA are making these proposals because we cannot meet the expected growth in commuter traffic over the next decade through more car journeys.
“The city centre can only continue to function effectively if we offer those working and living in Dublin, as well as visitors, more choices in how they access and move around the capital”.
The plans are now open to consultation until 16 July.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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2 comments
I'd hardly call closing a few streets 'pie in the sky'.
The centre is a very small area, it's almost closed to private vehicles at the moment around College Green; it's an obvious next step to make it closed.
Survey after survey shows businesses thrive in motor-free environments. I'm old enough to remember carmaggedon in Grafton Street - ask any of the thriving shops there now if they think their businesses would be better with cars clogging the street again and shoppers unable to reach them, like it was in the good ole days.
Overall mode share is 33% for private cars. They are the minority but take most of the road. The time has come to tackle that inequality.
Go for it Dublin, us in London are looking at yeh.
Pie in the sky...making the quays accessible only to peds, bikes and public transport...is not going to make it (any) better for cyclists...the public transport system is inadequate at the moment for a start...IMO that will be the biggest increase in traffic along that way. This will not encourage more cyclists.
It would also be the death knoll for many shopping establishments, car parking facilities etc. It would be a financial disaster.
They need to upgrade the infrastructure too much, too quickly for these proposed figures. 2020 would be more of an achievable target date.
The DART and LUAS are currently well used public transport, so it's not just buses and taxis under that moniker.
They'd also be better off looking at improving rural access to the city by public transport, that would cut down many single occupancy car journeys.
I wonder if the proposals include segregated bike lanes and not just sharing those that currently exist, or perhaps routing the cycling lanes away from the motorised transport as the current lane filtering coming off in and around Heuston Station is just a free for all. I certainly wouldn't want to be there at any busy times...and I'm a fairly confident cyclist in heavy traffic.