Plans to reform how traffic works across the “entire city centre” in Dublin will be published next Monday, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has said.
The publication of 35 “pathfinder” projects for sustainable mobility is set for early next week, with a scheme to remove traffic from Dublin’s College Green set to take centre stage.
However, on his way into an event outlining an active travel network for the capital on Friday morning, Mr Ryan said the pathfinder projects would take in more than just that one area in the city centre.
“The city centre in Dublin is one example of that, and it’s a critical one — and it isn’t just College Green,” he said.
“If you look at what I call this gyratory transport system we have, this big one-way multilane system around Beresford Place, Pearse Street, Stephen’s Green, the quays — they’re not good for sustainable mobility in the city centre. We need to address the entire city centre and not just College Green,” he said.
Mr Ryan said the pathfinder projects would be “right across the country” and aimed at “reallocating space so we make it better to walk and cycle and take the bus and rail”. He said there would be projects in “Cork, Galway, Waterford, Limerick and in our towns across the country”.
The active travel network unveiled by Dublin City Council aims to connect people living in the capital to a network of walking and cycling routes. Over the next nine years, it aims to grow the “active travel network” from an existing 10 kilometres to 310km across the city. “This will offer a network of projects that are safer, inclusive and more sustainable,” the council said.
Some 47km are planned to be added before 2024 across 25 projects, and another 83km across 27 projects, and another 80km from 28 projects from 2027 “onwards”. Interim schemes will provide measures to “expedite the delivery of the active travel network”.
The council intends that 95 per cent of people in the city will be within 400 metres of the network when it is complete.
