Sir, – John FitzGerald (Business This Week, Opinion, January 13th) rightly points out that while cycling should be encouraged, it cannot replace most car journeys, and that reallocation of street space needs to be away from cars and first to buses, then to active travel modes. We are committed to emission reductions by 2030, and we need to be focused and practical in organising our transport so that we can achieve it.
Government policy, as interpreted by the local authorities, is priority to active travel, secondly buses and finally cars. Many schemes for encouraging active travel are being done without considering the negative impact on bus services.
In some of these schemes this may be more than the positive impact of active travel, so they will not reduce car journeys.
We need a change of focus if we are to achieve our commitments. Facilitating bus travel must be at least as important as active travel. All active travel schemes need to include bus impact in their planning.
BusConnects is planned for both active travel and buses.
But there are many other active travel projects that are not.
Three examples in Dublin demonstrate my point.
Dundrum town centre cycle plan required a diversion of cross-city route 14. This has resulted in less reliable service, not only to users from Dundrum and Churchtown, but also across the city in Beaumont.
The Fairview/North Strand part of the Malahide Road corridor has been planned by Dublin City Council as a cycle scheme, independent of BusConnects. It includes a reduction from nine bus stops to five, so stops are too far apart. The stop connecting Beaumont hospital to Connolly station has been removed. There was no advance consultation or notice of bus stop changes.
Fingal County Council has a preferred route for a greenway from Donabate to Balbriggan, following detailed consultation. Yet there is not even a mention of the fact that a bus route needs to be changed. This is included in “traffic”, as if bus services were no more than just more vehicles on the road. Why was it not considered as an important factor from the start of this project?
Facilitating the speed and reliability of all bus services, to make them more attractive for car users, needs to be higher in the priority of our councils, and at least as important as active travel schemes. – Yours, etc,
BOB LAIRD,
Skerries,
Co Dublin.