{"id":1893,"date":"2025-01-10T15:58:58","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/?p=1893"},"modified":"2025-01-28T22:41:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T22:41:22","slug":"busconnects-dublin-good-news-on-recent-bus-corridor-planning-permissions-but-nta-needs-to-commit-to-providing-attractive-alternatives-to-car-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/2025\/01\/10\/busconnects-dublin-good-news-on-recent-bus-corridor-planning-permissions-but-nta-needs-to-commit-to-providing-attractive-alternatives-to-car-use\/","title":{"rendered":"BusConnects Dublin: Templeogue bus corridor approval is good news but NTA needs to commit to providing attractive alternatives to car usage."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Planning approval for the Rathfarnham\/Templeogue – City Centre bus corridor has now been granted as of December 2024. News that 10 of the 12 planned bus corridors have been approved by An Bord Plean\u00e1la is to be warmly welcomed, but the NTA now needs to ramp up the next stages of delivery and get shovels in the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Dublin being one of the most congested cities in Europe rapidly needs to cut its car dependency and transport emissions which have risen enormously in recent decades. To make public transport more attractive to a larger number of people, every unnecessary 2-3 minute delay to the bus journey times needs to be cut out to deliver the most streamlined and efficient service possible, particularly for those travelling across the city or long distances. Only by doing this will the bus service be able to compete with the private car and encourage more people to ditch it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bus corridors will deliver faster more frequent bus services for people throughout the capital by removing the need for bus passengers to compete with private cars who disproportionately clog up limited roadspace in areas like Phibsborough and Rathgar. These bus lanes combined with more priority signalling, park & ride locations, bus gates and enhanced ticketing should collectively make a substantial improvement to journey times throughout the capital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the network redesign, it is clear the the National Transport Authority is severely behind schedule, likely in part as a result of persistent difficulty in attaining enough staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the upcoming F spine as part of the network overhaul, now over 18 months behind schedule, we would like to see enhanced usage of Cypress Grove Road and Wainsfort Road to provide this public transport blackspot with better options on a key artery into the city, with potential for a Part 8 on Wainsfort Road to facilitate safe bus\/cycling facilities along here. Wainsfort Road is significantly constrained in terms of its actual carriageway width. As things stand, it is not safe for cyclists to travel on the Wainsfort Road as the painted cycle track overlaps with general traffic lane at various points. Given this constraint, a Part 8 might be required from South Dublin County Council in order to widen the road a small amount in order to provide the minimum 4.5m width for the shared bus\/car lane and cyclists on each side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We would also like to see the implementation of our S5 orbital route<\/a> along the R112 (Templeville Road) from City Edge Walkinstown to Blackrock to connect the different spines and Luas lines to one another.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Likely course of travel for incoming M50 vehicular traffic after BusConnects implementation. Bus Gates marked with blue arrows
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The combined bus gates at Kimmage Road West, Templeogue Road (inbound) and St Marys College Rathmines will make driving into the city centre less attractive, forcing some to rethink their mode of transit. However, the addition of a Park and Ride on the N81 near the Spawell, as we suggested back in 2021, would help enable people to switch modes. As for city bound drivers, the most direct route for traffic coming from the M50 through Templeogue Village would be to travel down Springfield Avenue and take a left at the lights where they can then have a straight run at Harolds Cross and onto town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Providing for quality public transport will help safeguard the area against projected traffic increases to due planned\/upcoming housing developments, such as the City Edge project and those currently being planned for Kimmage Road West and Fortfield Road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Carlisle, Kimmage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Terenure College<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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City Edge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Improved public transport options will reduce and safeguard against congestion for those who really need to drive and reduce neighbourhood rat-runs at peak traffic times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Green space:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another issue that has come up on this corridor is the removal of green space at pinch-points Rathfarnham Castle Park and Bushy Park. The Rathfarnham Road plan has plans for bus priority lighting but the NTA seem to have determined that this is not sufficient at Rathfarnham Castle Park perhaps due to the short distance between junctions here and need to keep general traffic moving along this connecting road. At Bushy Park the drawings seem to indicate the addition of an outbound bus lane which we assume would necessitate a boundary wall change to Bushy Park. Again a bus priority light outbound at the junction of Templeogue Road and Rathdown Park (Terenure College main entrance) may have been ruled out here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

BusConnects has enormous potential to improve connectivity for Dubliners, cut air pollution and congestion in villages and improve social mobility, particularly for young people and those who cannot drive. Travelling by bus is an efficient mode of transport for a low-density city with urban sprawl and low to medium population density. Improved public transit and transit oriented development helps free us from our over-reliance on fossil fuels and precious metals like lithium whose extraction wreaks havoc on our environment. We must believe in it to build it. And if we build it, they will come.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Safe<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A note:<\/strong> We understand that not all journeys can be made by bus or public transport and wish to remind our readers again that nobody is suggesting this<\/strong>. These all-or-nothing fallacies are common. Statements like \u201cWe can\u00b4t all take the bus\u201d, \u201cPublic transport is not reliable\u201d etc.. are valid. We all know these issues exist and that there is some fear and mistrust towards the institutions tasked with resolving these issues. However, we have also seen that this mindset can drown out the possibility of having real productive discussion about imagining solutions for a cleaner more connected city. We encourage our readers not to fall for these patterns of thinking. We also understand (and there is data supporting it) that there are a significant minority of road users in Dublin who rarely ever use public transport and some who, more importantly, are opposed to using it at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Planning approval for the Rathfarnham\/Templeogue – City Centre bus corridor has now been granted as of December 2024. News that 10 of the 12 planned bus corridors have been approved by An Bord Plean\u00e1la is to be warmly welcomed, but the NTA now needs to ramp up the next stages of delivery and get shovels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public-transport","eq-blocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2017,"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions\/2017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futureofdublin.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}