The final BusConnects corridor has been approved by An Bord Pleanála almost two years after the application was made and more than 10 years on from the project being announced.
The Kimmage to Dublin city centre route is the last of 12 corridors to receive permission under the €4 billion scheme to transform the capital’s bus services.
However, six routes remain the subject of judicial review proceedings.
The BusConnects programme has two strands: a network redesign and the 12 bus corridors. Unlike the redesign project, which involves the reorganisation of services on existing road infrastructure, the corridors require construction to achieve segregation of bus and cycle lanes from traffic.
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This, in some instances, necessitates road widening, the acquisition of property, including parts of front gardens, and the felling of trees.
The route from Kimmage in southwest Dublin to the city centre, via Harold’s Cross and Clanbrassil Street, is one of the shorter corridors at just 3.7km, but it has been the longest in the planning system.
A complex route, it involved the design of four “bus gates”, two of which ban private traffic on a 24-hour basis, while the others are to be in force during morning and evening peak times.
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The bus-only sections of road, which will involve diversions for private traffic, were introduced to the designs following local protests over the original scheme, which involved significant annexing of parts of front gardens and the felling of a large number of trees.
The scheme, which now involves reduced property acquisition and tree removal, includes two new footbridges over the Grand Canal in Portobello and a pedestrian/cyclist boardwalk over the river Poddle in Kimmage.
The route was the subject of three rounds of public consultation before the application was made by the National Transport Authority (NTA) in July 2023.
More than 80 submissions were made to the board after the application was lodged, and while several were supportive, many residents objected to the traffic diversions that would be imposed through the use of bus gates.
Of the 12 corridors, five now have “full” planning permission and can no longer be challenged in the courts. These are the routes from Ballymun/Finglas, Liffey Valley, Ringsend, Tallaght/Clondalkin and Lucan.
Judicial review proceedings are ongoing in relation to six schemes, these are the corridors from Clongriffin, Belfield/Blackrock, Blanchardstown, Templeogue/Rathfarnham Swords and Bray. It remains to be seen if legal action will be taken against the Kimmage scheme.
Construction of the first two corridors had been due to start this autumn, but the NTA now says it expects to be in a position to move forward at an earlier stage. Work is due to start on the Ballymun/Finglas and Liffey Valley routes by the middle of the year. Each route is expected to take about two years to complete.
“Reaching this milestone on the BusConnects infrastructure programme is a very positive development,” a NTA spokesman said. “It’s good news for bus customers, good news for communities and good news for the city. It is also welcome from the cyclists point of view, with 200km of cycle tracks to be delivered across the 12 schemes.”
Plans for a system of segregated, continuous bus lanes for Dublin were first announced in 2014. In 2017, the NTA published the potential routes for these core bus corridors – which it hoped to have completed by the end of 2019.
The government gave the NTA sanction to seek planning approval for the routes in March 2022 and the first applications were made from mid-2022. The Liffey Valley corridor was the first route to secure planning permission in December 2023.
