A 24-hour bus lane stretching for two kilometres on one of the most heavily congested roads in Dublin has not carried any scheduled bus services for more than two years, Dublin City Council has confirmed.
The council is maintaining the empty Quality Bus Corridor (QBC) on the N32, which runs from the M50/M1 junction to the Malahide Road, while thousands of motorists sit in long tailbacks each day in single-lane traffic.
The QBC has not been used as a bus route since the termination in March 2005 of the privately owned AerDart service, which ran between Howth Junction Dart station and Dublin airport. The council said last year it intended to remove the QBC once the Dublin Port Tunnel was opened. However, it has yet to withdraw the bus lane restrictions.
"The scheduled bus service has been withdrawn, but the lane is being used by taxis and some private coaches and Dublin Bus could use it as an alternative route to the airport, if it needed to," Brendan O'Brien of the council's traffic department said.
The QBC had been created from the hard shoulder of the road, Mr O'Brien said, rather than by removing a lane of traffic. The council had intended to remove the QBC, he said, but was now in negotiations with the National Roads Authority (NRA) to make the road a dual carriageway in both directions.
"The easiest thing for Dublin City Council to do would be to take the bus lane out, but we're leaving it in place for the moment so that the buses and taxis can use it, pending new plans for the whole Malahide Road area."
AA Roadwatch said the road is one of the busiest in the city, with traffic at a standstill during rush hour periods. "It's busy for the most part of the day, but at rush hour it is one of the first routes to build very acute volumes of traffic. It's predictable that there will be bad traffic on it, particularly approaching the M50."
