Frustrated by longer wait for green man at Blackhorse junction, people dash across in front of moving cars

The junction near the Luas’s Blackhorse stop looks a bit like a lopsided asterisk from above. 

Feeding into it from different directions are Davitt Road, Naas Road, Tyrconnell Road, the Luas’s Red Line, the Grand Canal, and the cycle paths alongside the canal.

On Tuesday morning about 8:10am, cyclists following the canal towards town arrived one by one on the west side of the junction and stopped to wait for the green man. 

Pedestrians arrived too and stood listening to things via earbuds, or clicking on things on their phones, or just staring across at the red man, willing him to turn green so they could cross in time to catch the Luas.

Lights for the snakes of drivers in cars waiting in queues in the various arms of the junction changed: green, orange, red, green, orange red. 

The small crowd of people on bikes and feet grew and grew, as the drivers’ lights cycled through their colours and the red man stayed red. 

Eventually, people gave up hope and started to dart across between moving cars and trucks. It was about 150 seconds before the man turned green. 

In the evening, at 5:40pm, the scene was about the same, but with more bike and foot traffic headed west than east now. 

Niamh Stephens, on her bike, stopped on the east side of the junction and waited for the light to change so she could head west along the cycle path. 

Something changed about six weeks ago, and now this junction’s “a disaster”, she said. 

“I think it’s broken,” Stephens said. “I’ve actually started breaking the light, which I hate to do – but I know the cycle of the lights and I’m like, ‘I should have gone already.’”

The maximum cycle length at junctions is usually 100–120 seconds, which allows all phases to run, said a Dublin City Council spokesperson on Tuesday. 

But in some cases, including at Blackhorse bridge, “where the Luas has its own priority phase, the total cycle length can be higher”. 

The council recently “made adjustments to this junction involving the operation of the Luas, which at certain times of the day has inadvertently resulted in longer wait times for pedestrians across Blackhorse Bridge”, the council spokesperson said.

But once council staff realised this, “we implemented changes at this crossing to shorten the wait time for pedestrians, in the interim before we can implement a longer-term solution. We will continue to monitor the junction closely over the coming weeks.”

On Tuesday, the time between when the light for the east-west pedestrian/cycle crossing man turned red, and when it turned back green again varied widely over eight cycles, from under 30 seconds to nearly 180 seconds. 

The junction’s future

There may be more changes coming to the junction as well, in the longer-term. 

The council’s Portobello to Blackhorse Active Travel Scheme “is currently at the Concept Development and Option Selection stage”, the spokesperson said. 

“It is anticipated that bike signals for this crossing will be included in the design for this junction,” the spokesperson said.

That scheme would run 4.4km alongside the Grand Canal, between Richmond Street South in Portobello, and the Blackhorse junction, according to the council. 

“It will provide a continuous and segregated cycle route with connectivity to local roads, schools and sports clubs,” according to a March report from the council’s Active Travel Programme Office.  

“The Emerging Preferred Option was submitted to the NTA in March for approval,” the report says.

The National Transport Authority (NTA) allocated €1 million for the scheme for 2026.

Between this year and 2028, there’s €4.3 million in the council’s capital programme – its budget for big once-off construction projects – for the Portobello to Blackhorse Active Travel Scheme.