Sir, – In "Sandymount residents seek Bord Pleanála intervention in cycle trial" (News, January 11th), you state that 56 per cent of respondents of the public consultation responded strongly in favour of proceeding with the Strand Road cycle trial.
Unfortunately the consultation was flawed from the start.
No traffic modelling or planning was carried out in advance of proposing this scheme. The information was only provided after the consultation had closed and the widespread adverse impacts identified.
Voting was mainly done online, which allowed certain lobby groups to skew results by promoting it heavily for their members to vote. There was no mechanism to record where respondents were from, or their interest in the scheme.
The public were not asked to either approve or disapprove the scheme; instead they were asked to share concerns or suggestions for the scheme.
It is interesting to note that the article mentions the desire to “reduce the current community divisions”. This will be almost impossible to achieve because any mitigation measures proposed by Dublin City Council will pit street against street and neighbour against neighbour. Closing one road to traffic will simply push it into the next road. – Yours, etc,
ALAYNA JOSEPH,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.