Bord Pleanála has reversed its position and has approved plans for a controversial 28km cycletrack to be laid alongside a road linking Camp and Dingle in County Kerry.
The National Roads Authority (NRA) has welcomed the decision and said it now opens up the possibility of cycle lanes being added to other national secondary roads across the State.
What started as the N86 improvement scheme became controversial when the NRA and Kerry County Council added a cycletrack to a 3.5km stretch of the route.
The pilot stretch was welcomed and opened by former minister for transport Leo Varadkar in the summer of 2013 and the National Roads Authority and the council asked Bord Pleanála to approve its development along the entire section of road from Camp to Dingle.
However, opinions were split between the roads authority and the county council and the then minister on one hand, and Cyclist.ie, the lobby group for cyclists and local concerned groups such as Meitheal Fhorbairt Inbhuanaithe Chorca Dhuibhne, on the other.
The cyclists and concerned groups said the design of the road was flawed for a number of reasons, not the least because the route placed a tourist cycling path directly beside comparatively high-speed traffic. The road is a route between Tralee and Dingle.
While the pilot project was small enough not to require approval from Bord Pleanála, the Board rejected its extension along the full 28km, in a decision delivered in September 2013.
In this decision the Board said the cycleway would widen the land taken for the road and represent an excessive “intrusion in the landscape”. It said this would have an “unacceptable detrimental impact on the visual amenity and landscape character of the area”.
But in a further twist the county council sought a judicial review of the Board’s decision and this was heard earlier this year and resulted in the Bord deciding to re examine the scheme. In a decision posted to the parties on November 11 the Board decided to reverse its earlier position and approved the development of the cycleway as part of the full Camp to Dingle scheme.
The board said it had had regard to relevant national policies in the area of tourism and sustainable transport and national and regional cycling strategies, among other issues.
Attempts to contact cyclist.ie were not successful last night.
