The most significant changes to Dublin city centre traffic since the introduction of the Luas cross city line seven years ago came into force on Sunday.
The continuous flow of traffic along the city’s quays has finally been staunched with a ban on private cars and commercial vehicles travelling directly east or west along the Liffey at either side of O’Connell Bridge.
The restrictions are the first step in the implementation of the Dublin City Centre Traffic Plan, published almost one year ago, designed to end the dominance of the private car on Dublin city’s street by 2028.
The plan aims to “remove traffic that has no destination in the city”, with 60 per cent of motorists currently passing through rather than stopping in town. While its first measures came into force on the quays from 7am on Sunday, they will face their first real test in rush-hour traffic on Monday.
On the north quays, cars and commercial vehicles on Bachelors Walk will have to turn left onto O’Connell Street and cannot go straight ahead onto Eden Quay towards Dublin Port. Private traffic is already banned from turning right from Bachelors Walk onto O’Connell Bridge to head to the south of the city.
On the south side, motorists will not be permitted to drive straight from Burgh Quay to Aston Quay. The left turn from Westmoreland Street to Aston Quay is also restricted to public transport and cyclists only.
Drivers on the southside will still be able to cross O’Connell Bridge either by turning right from Burgh Quay, or continuing straight from Westmoreland Street to O’Connell Street. In a new concession, motorists will also be able to turn right from O’Connell Bridge on to Eden Quay, a manoeuvre which had been reserved for public transport.
To access Temple Bar from the south quays, drivers will turn left into D’Olier Street, right into College Street, in front of Doyle’s pub, and right again on to Westmoreland Street, to access the left turn into Fleet Street. This facilitates access to the Fleet Street car park, and some private car parking spaces in Temple Bar as well as business deliveries.
The restrictions will be in place from 7am-7pm daily, but even during their hours of operation, all of the north quays remains open to private traffic, and just a 50m section of Aston Quay, a stretch of three buildings closest to O’Connell Bridge, will be inaccessible to cars.
In addition, all of the city’s car parks remain accessible, and motorists will still be able to cross any Liffey bridge currently open to cars.
In effect, the city will remain open to motorists planning to park and use its amenities and services, but the use of the city core as a through route to drive somewhere else will be so convoluted and slow that drivers will opt for alternative routes, or the council hopes, will chose alternative transport.
“In the city development plan the councillors put a requirement for us to reduce general traffic in the city by about 40 per cent and encourage public transport, walking and cycling. We do also have a number of projects coming towards us, BusConnects and Metrolink, which will require a reduced traffic environment,” the council’s head of traffic, Brendan O’Brien, says.
“We fully understand people still need to access the area by car for a variety of reasons, but what we are saying is if you’re just driving through here to get to Kildare, please think of a different way of doing it.”
The transport plan, which also includes the long-awaited development of the College Green Plaza, new civic plazas at the Custom House and Lincoln Place, and the elimination of traffic from Parliament Street, was published last September.
More than 80 per cent of 3,500 submissions supported the plan. Opposition came from car park owners and some other city businesses, including retail and restaurant traders worried about the potential effect of private car restriction on custom.
Other businesses had specific concerns about the logistics of operating in the city with restricted quay access. This was a particular issue for Guinness brewer Diageo, which uses the quays to bring beer from James’s Gate to Dublin Port. Forcing its lorries to take circuitous routes to the port would result in increased journey times with associated additional transport emissions and costs, it said.
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Some city residents raised concerns, mostly not that restrictions would impede their ability to drive around the city, but rather traffic could be displaced from the quays into their communities. A view was also put forward that the plan did not take into account the needs of disabled people using cars, with suggestions they should be permitted to drive in bus lanes.
Those opposed might have supposed this would be enough to quash the plan, or at least see it shelved for the foreseeable future. This had, afterall, worked in the past.
In 2015, the council had proposed removing traffic from Bachelors Walk and George’s Quay. The following year it dropped the strategy.
“Back in 2015 when we did our consultation there wasn’t a lot of support for it, in fact there was a huge amount of opposition, including political opposition, but it’s very different this time,” Mr O’Brien says.
This time, all parties on the city council support the plan. However, what really moved it from the realms of dust-gathering shelf adornment was when a date was set for its implementation.
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In February, the council and Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan announced the first measures would be introduced in August and then opposition kicked into action.
The most strident was from an organisation called the Dublin City Centre Traders’ Alliance, formed in 2015 by car park owners opposing traffic changes, but bolstered now by retail and restaurant representative groups and Brown Thomas/Arnotts.
The group questioned the legality of the measures and secured support from Minister of State Emer Higgins who asked council chief executive Richard Shakespeare to consider an economic analysis the alliance was commissioning and to delay the implementation of any measures until next year.
Mr Shakespeare did review the economic report but decided to go ahead with August implementation. As a compromise however, the 7am-7pm limitation has been introduced and the restrictions have been reduced so that, particularly with the needs of disabled private car users in mind, all of the quays, apart from the three buildings on Aston Quay, remain accessible by car. This has the knock-on effect of not changing access to the Arnotts car park from the quays.
The council cannot give a dispensation for holders of disabled parking permits to use bus lanes, Mr O’Brien explains, as such a move would require the introduction of new legislation by the Government.
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It is a month since Mr Shakespeare announced his decision to implement the plan and no legal challenge has emerged. In response to queries in recent days, the traders’ alliance said it remained concerned about the “cumulative impact” on retail of the plan as a whole, but confirmed it did not intend to take any action ahead of the introduction of the measure of the quays.
Diageo said it would “continue to assess the most appropriate and efficient routes from St James’s Gate to Dublin Port as the Dublin City Transport Plan comes into effect”.
Those supporting the plan, which include Dublin Bus, business group Dublin Chamber, Dublin Commuter Coalition and numerous environmental and health organisations, might have been disappointed by the watering-down of the measures, but all have welcomed the council’s decision to press ahead this month, seeing it as an important first step in the rollout of the plan. Which, Mr O’Brien says, is exactly what it is.
“If we can reduce some of the traffic in the core of the city centre, that will start to radiate out and allow us to give some of that space back for public transport, walking and cycling. It’s a rebalancing, it is a gradual evolution.”
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