Electric vehicle charging ‘gantries’ would detract from ‘character’ of streets, Eamon Ryan says

Widespread use of electric vehicle (EV) charging “gantries” which project out over the public footpath would “take from the character of our streets,” Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has said.

Some Dublin households, mostly living in period properties, have installed a Dutch-designed “charging arm” which projects a charging cable across a footpath at a height of approximately 2.3m from a post installed on the homeowner’s property.

The device allows households with no driveways, who are reliant on on-street parking, to charge their EVs without trailing electrical cables across the footpath at ground level.

However, Dublin City Council said the device is not authorised for use. “It needs permission as it is a permanent structure to the front of a house,” the council said.

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Consent from the council’s environment and transportation department is also required “for extending onto the public footpath” but due to the “high risk to public liability” the council “will not give consent for structures like these to reach across the public footpath”.

Mr Ryan said he wanted everyone to be able to use electric vehicles and he “can understand absolutely frustration of residents in areas where they can’t do charging in the driveway”.

However, he said: “I don’t envisage in the end we will have inner suburbs where every house has a gantry effectively over the pathway.”

Whether or not the charging arms were permitted in a particular area was a planning issue for the local authority in question he said, “but if every single house on every street had that sort of gantry out onto the roadway, I think it would take from the character of our streets”.

Mr Ryan was speaking in Dublin on Monday at a conference on sustainable transport.

He said solutions would have to be delivered for houses with no off-street parking as well as apartment blocks so that everyone could use electric vehicles.

“We will start by looking for the local authorities to provide on-street charging and we are going to fund and support that,” he said.

“We are also looking to use some of the climate fund, the carbon tax fund we have, to fund mobility hubs. We want to build about 200, particularly in those sort of areas, inner city type areas, where either the people are in apartments or in terraced housing where they can’t charge on the street.”

These hubs would provide “communal car sharing and charging facilities, and bike charging and sharing facilities,” he said. “We have to find solutions, leaving those communities out is not good enough.”

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