COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF TALLAGHT AREA COMMITTEE

Monday, February 24, 2025

QUESTION NO.

QUESTION: Councillor D. Donnelly

"To the chief executive to consider opening up the bus lane at Cookstown Est road - Belgard/Kingswood junction onto the Belgard/Naas road, during school hours to take the congestion out of the traffic?"

REPLY:

SDCC does not support the removal of Bus Lanes to help congestion.  The traffic section is very familiar with this junction and has observed this junction is working at acceptable limits.  There are a lot of movements to be facilitated at this junction. The Luas, the buses, cycle, pedestrian and car movements. 

The junction in question has been carefully designed and the carriageway layout reflects the hierarchy of roads policy of promotion of sustainable movement first.

The green phase times for for each travel mode has been calibrated and the current settings have been agreed by Transdev(Luas) and Dublin Bus as the best working arrangement.

We constantly monitor the operation of this junction on our live camera feeds.  Should any particular issues arise, we immediately can call on our maintenance contractor to fix any problems within very short service times.

Elsewhere, there is a focus on creating bus lanes at the huge expense of planning, consultation, land purchase and construction costs in order to improve journey time reliability of the bus services, and aid the conversion to bus travel.  This approach has been proven to be much more efficient at moving people.  We cannot take an opposite approach by temporarily removing bus lanes where we already have them in place.