People living along the north Dublin coast, from Howth and Sutton, to Kilbarrack, Raheny and Clontarf, are facing traffic chaos within weeks, as Uisce Éireann begins the process of replacing 6km of water mains, parts of which are more than 100 years old.
This is a vital infrastructure project that will safeguard supplies for more than 160,000 homes and businesses and provide capacity for the construction of 12,000 new homes. However, it does require the coast road to be dug up, and Uisce Éireann has acknowledged it will result in inevitable traffic disruption for up to a year.
For more than four months, 1.5km of the coast road on the city-bound side will be closed and at other times there will be stop-go systems in place restricting traffic. Motorists will divert onto the Howth Road, and potentially as far inland as the Malahide Road, worsening already dire traffic congestion across much of north Dublin. For the same city-bound commuters who endured daily traffic jams during the recent construction of the Clontarf to city centre cycle route, this must seem like a particularly unjust blow.
Undoubtedly it will be a painful year locally, but it is a project with a definite end in sight. Not so for the other major construction scheme planned for the north Dublin coast, the Clontarf flood defences. On the same day details of the Uisce Éireann works were published, it emerged that this Dublin City Council project, promised after major tidal floods in 2002 - with various start dates proposed and abandoned since- will not be in place until 2033 “if all goes well”. That’s 30 years after the requirement for them was identified.
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Given the increasing frequency of storms and floods hitting the coastline, the lack of flood defences and the lack of urgency in their development is a bigger threat to many than the short-term, though admittedly difficult traffic disruption. That said, there is one reasonable question for residents to ask: could the two works not have been coordinated and done – as far as possible – around the same time? That would at least have avoided disruption on the double
