Homes should be built on top of Dublin’s bus garages, including Donnybrook and Ringsend, once the fleet has been electrified, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has said.
He was speaking at his final Oireachtas transport committee meeting in advance of his retirement from politics at the forthcoming general election.
Mr Ryan has previously argued city bus depots should be moved from Summerhill, Conyngham Road, Broadstone, Ringsend and Donnybrook to locations outside the city so the land could be used for housing. However, he said the electrification of the fleet, due to be completed over the next decade, meant the buses could stay and apartments built in the space above the garages.
“We have to think about how we use our depots, including Donnybrook and Ringsend. Could we not build over the bus station? If it’s going to be an electric bus you don’t have fumes, you don’t have the same noise, and there are really good continental examples,” Mr Ryan said.
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“The likes of Ringsend – that’s really good land beside the Grand Canal Dock. We should be building above the bus depot there, still retaining the bus depot, because it’s an important part of the public transport infrastructure, but getting housing in at the same time.”
Urban villages such as Donnybrook and Ballsbridge had become “distributor roads” for city-bound cars instead of hubs for the community, he said.
“Ballsbridge village, and I use it a lot as a pedestrian and a cyclist, it’s horrific,” Mr Ryan said. “It is dismissive of the pedestrian, it is, completely. The timings to cross the road are awful and dangerous, it is completely car-dominated.”
The BusConnects programme would make a substantial difference to ending the dominance of cars on the city’s roads, he said. This was particularly true of the 12 core bus corridors which will provide bus and cycle routes, which are for most of their length segregated from other traffic.
“I think one of the things that will benefit us is BusConnects. It will give an opportunity to calm the whole of [Ballsbridge] village down and change it from being a car distributor route into the city centre into a high quality public transport, cycling and walking route,” Mr Ryan said.
An Bord Pleanála has approved nine of the 12 routes, and while some are subject judicial review proceedings, the project could completed within the next four years, Mr Ryan said.
“There is no reason we should not complete BusConnects in the next four years and really transform the city,” he said. “We have allowed our urban areas to become car parks and car transport systems… it just does not work.”
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