Councillors representing the southeast of Dublin city have clashed over the future of the Strand Road cycleway in Sandymount, following last Friday’s court ruling which enabled its development.
The Court of Appeal last Friday overturned a High Court judgment that had blocked the implementation of the six-month trial of the path on the coastal road. The High Court had ruled in 2021, in a case taken by Independent councillor Mannix Flynn and Peter Carvill of the Serpentine Avenue, Tritonville and Claremont Roads group, that the council should have obtained planning permission to run the trial.
The Court of Appeal determined this was an error and the council could have implemented the measure using its own powers under the Road Traffic Act.
The project, first proposed in August 2020, involved replacing a lane of traffic with a two-lane cycle path. This would result in a one-way traffic system with cars allowed to travel southbound only as far as the Merrion Gates, a distance of about 2.5km.
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At a meeting of the council’s southeast area committee on Monday, newly co-opted Fine Gael councillor David Coffey put forward a motion that “all active travel measures for the Strand Road should be done in tandem with the Sandymount Flood Relief project with the aim of delivering an off-road cycleway”.
Council officials had previously rejected this option in part because the flood defence work will not be completed before 2030.
Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Coffey said he was a cyclist himself and he supported the work the council had done developing cycle infrastructure “where appropriate and in the right areas”. However, he said: “I do not support a one-way solution on the Strand Road.” The area was “gridlocked at the moment as it is”, he said.
Cllr Flynn said he hoped and had confidence “Dublin City Council won’t railroad this along”. There remained, he said, “opportunities to go to the Supreme Court” or to the European courts, but he said these were “situations I don’t particularly want to go down”.
He added that it was “very immature for the Dublin Cycling Campaign to go out gloating on the day of the judgment down around Sandymount”. Cyclists gathered on Strand Road on Friday evening to celebrate the court decision.
Green Party councillor Hazel Chu noted the flood defence scheme was only in its early stages. “The flood defences won’t happen for at least another five years, then we’re waiting another five years, having waited already five years,” she said. “Why are we willing to wait so long to provide for more sustainable travel?”
Green Party councillor Carolyn Moore, said she found the motion “incredibly cynical” as incorporating cycling infrastructure into the flood works “would see it go back on the long finger for possibly the guts of a decade”, she said.
“The reality is a lot of people who don’t feel safe cycling in the area are taking short cyclable journeys in their cars, and that’s what’s contributing to the traffic situation there.”
Labour councillor Dermot Lacey, who chairs the committee, said it would be surprising if the committee didn’t discuss the court’s decision but he was recommending against voting on the motion.
“I feel like we’re back in the civil war that divided the area,” Cllr Lacey said.
He said there had been an unnecessary clash between council officials at the time and the local community.
“The voices of leafy Dublin 4 were set against officialdom and officialdom wasn’t going to be beaten by the leafy residents of Dublin 4, and I think that’s how it mushroomed into the big issue.”
Claire French, senior executive engineer, told the meeting the flood relief scheme was at “a very, very early stage”. “You’re talking five to 10 years minimum before you see anything there,” she said. The design brief for the flood scheme did not include cycling infrastructure, she added. The council’s traffic and engineering department needed time to digest the judgment before coming back with further suggestions, she said.
