Motorists to be temporarily barred from Clontarf coast road

Parts of north Dublin's coast road will be inaccessible to motorists from next month under plans to complete the €5 million Clontarf cycle path by the end of this year.

The controversial 2km path has been under construction since May 2015, but had been planned for more than a decade to fill in the missing link of the Dublin Bay cycle route.

Work had been due for completion last July but progress was hampered by a row between local residents and the council over the height of a flood defence wall being built as part of the cycle path project. The dispute was resolved last April when the council agreed to reduce parts of the wall by 30cm.

The council had planned to maintain traffic access along the coast road during the works, reducing it to one lane, with a stop-go system at certain times. However, it now plans a 24-hour shut down of the road in two-week phases in an attempt to complete the project by the end of this year.

The first phase would see the road in front of St Anne’s Park, from the Causeway Road to Mount Prospect Avenue, closed from October 10th to October 24th. Two more closures are proposed before the end of November, one between Mount Prospect Avenue and Dollymount Avenue and another from Dollymount Avenue to Wooden Bridge. In the case of the latter two closures, access would be facilitated for residents, but no through traffic would be permitted.

Local Independent councillor Damian O’Farrell said the work needed to be completed as a matter of urgency.

“While there is no doubt that the finished cycleway will be a tremendous asset to our area, there are a series of road closures planned along the James Larkin/Clontarf Road in order to complete the substantial works before Operation Freeflow begins in early December,” he said.

The reduction in height of the sea wall will be undertaken as a separate project. Due to environmental restrictions, the earliest time this work can be carried out would be May 2017, the council said.

The cycle path was put in place in the early 1990s but a gap was left between Causeway Road and the Wooden Bridge because no solution could be found to building on the environmentally sensitive lagoon. The path under construction involves reducing the width of the road to facilitate the cycle route.