More than €240m allocated for cycle and walking routes

More than €240 million has been allocated for cycling and walking projects around the State, almost half of which will be spent in Dublin.

The College Green Plaza, the Liffey cycle route, and a permanent cycle path along Dublin Bay through Sandymount, are among the schemes which will secure the National Transport Authority (NTA) funding.

In total 468 projects will be funded across 12 local authorities and a number of educational and hospital campuses. Funding will focus on the four Dublin councils as well as the three counties in the Greater Dublin Area – Meath, Kildare and Wicklow, and the local authorities covering the regional cities: Cork City Council, Cork County Council, Limerick City and County Council, Galway City Council and Waterford City and County Council.

The work will principally involve the reallocation of road space from motorists, which will include segregated cycling lanes and widened footpaths, cyclist parking, raised pedestrian crossings and reducing road width at crossing points.

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The four Dublin local authorities have been allocated more than €119 million, with the largest tranche of almost €50 million to be spent by Dublin City Council. The biggest single sum in the city will go to progress the Clontarf to city centre cycle route, a scheme the city council has been planning for eight years, which will run through Fairview to Connolly Station. It has been allocated €6 million of its €20 million total cost to kickstart work.

The long-awaited College Green Plaza project will receive €1.7 million. More than 90 per cent of respondents to a recent public consultation process were in favour of plans to double the size of the proposed plaza, extending the traffic-free zone to South Great George’s Street. The city council intends to submit a fresh application to An Bord Pleanála for the extended plaza by the summer.

Significant funding will also be allocated to complete the Dublin Bay cycle route. This route, originally known as the S2S or Sandycove to Sutton route, currently runs along the seafront from just south of Sutton Cross to Clontarf/Fairview. It is has been rebranded the East Coast Trail. Funding of €1.8 million has been allocated to the city council to advance plans to extend the route from East Wall Road to the Liffey and from the Liffey to the city’s boundary with Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council.

A six-month trial of a two-way coastal route on Strand Road in Sandymount will begin next month, with the road to be reduced to one way from March 1st. However, it has not yet been determined if the permanent East Coast Trail scheme will adopt this approach.

Funding has also been allocated to Fingal to extend the trail from Sutton to Malahide, and to Dún Laoghaire to bring it from the Merrion Gates to Seapoint, to join with the coastal cycling route established last year as a Covid -19 mobility project.

Dún Laoghaire has secured more than €34 million in total, while Fingal will receive just under €15 million and South Dublin more than €20 million, more than €7 million of which will be spent on the Dodder River Greenway.

Outside Dublin significant projects include an allocation of more than €5 million to Kildare County Council for the Royal Canal Greenway; just over €3 million to Cork County Council for the route from Dunkettle to Carrigtohill; €2.2 million to Waterford City and County Council for the Dock Road and Abbey Road infrastructure works; and €1.2 million to Wicklow County Council the Strand Road cycle route.