COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

Monday, October 12, 2009

QUESTION NO. 22

QUESTION: Councillor W. Lavelle

To ask the Manager to report on the background and statutory provisons underpinning the council's current policy on not installing traffic calming on roads classifed as distributor roads, including those distributor roads with direct access house-frontage? To advise why there are some distributor roads in the county with direct access house-frontage which already have traffic calming ramps and to also ask if and how this policy could be reviewed and possibly amended by the elected members?

REPLY:

The Roads hierarchy is such that distributor roads are used for inter-regional traffic facilitating local inter-connectivity and are designed to carry significant volumes of traffic, including appropriate HGV's and public service vehicle.  Generally bus services run along these distributor roads and the placing of traffic calming measures, such as ramps, will not only detrimentally effect buses and bus users but will also encourage motorists to divert from these routes to residential routes where they exist.  Best practice recommends that traffic calming is installed on a cell by cell basis on local roads bounded by distributor roads, in order to indicate to drivers the hierarchy of the road network and the most suitable route to use. 

Distributor roads also facilitate the distribution of traffic to the adjoining estates. Such routes are also used by the emergency vehicles (Ambulance, Fire Brigade, Gardai etc). It is not the Council's policy, since 2003, to provide traffic calming measures such as ramps on these routes. 

When the traffic calming programme commenced in 2003 a meeting was arranged with representatives from the emergency services.  It was their strong recommendation that traffic calming measures should not be installed on distributor roads as these routes are deemed crucial in facilitating the early arrival of these services at their destination.  This recommendation was adopted by the Transportation SPC at its meeting held on 30th January, 2003 and it is on this basis that the current traffic calming programme is progressing with the agreement of the three Area Committees and full Council.

One of the issues often highlighted in requests for traffic calming on distributor roads is that of speeding  and these are always  referred to the Gardai for their attention.