Someday, BusConnects is supposed to bring safer cycle paths to Malahide Road – but what happens until then?

Around 10am on Tuesday 15 July, Kay Sarica and Claudio Dalla Vecchia were leaning against a wall in front of Artane Cycles, waiting for it to open. 

Dalla Vecchia’s bike was inside, and he was hoping to pick it up. Sarica’s was parked next to her, she’d brought it for a fix. 

She says she cycles from Clare Hall to Bayside for work. It’s a long, slow trip on two buses, or a quick 15 minutes or so by ebike – so not much of a choice, she says. 

But cycling around this part of the city can be risky, Sarica says. The stretch of Malahide Road between the Artane roundabout and Coolock village, for example. 

The cycle lane is just paint on tarmac, with cars and vans flying by at 60kph or more. “I do find it dangerous,” says Sarica. 

The safety of cycling along the Malahide Road is something that Social Democrats Councillor Paddy Monahan raised recently in a written question put to the council executive.

“The Malahide Road is a lethal road,” he said by phone later. “All sections of the Malahide Road are hostile to cyclists, without exception.” 

In his answer from the executive, he was told: that a BusConnects corridor would run down the Malahide Road, “and will provide segregated cycling facilities along the route”.  

The Clongriffin to City Centre Core Bus Corridor, part of the BusConnects redesign of the city’s bus network, has planning permission. It’s unclear when it might be built – but it’s a matter of years, not weeks or months.

But, Monahan said, “We want people cycling today. We want people to feel safe today.” 

It’s an issue across the city: many BusConnects corridors, and council active-travel schemes always seem to be years away, just out of reach. Meanwhile, people are trying to go to work, school, or the shops on bikes every day, all mixed in with fast moving cars. 

Malahide Road

“It’s for brave cyclists,” said Fine Gael Councillor Clodagh Ní Mhuirí. She lives not too far from Malahide Road, and uses it in all modes: bike, car, walking, bus, to the train.

From Clontarf up through Donnycarney and the Artane roundabout to Coolock village, the cycle lanes are narrow stripes marked off from the car and van traffic on the side of the road with a white paint.

Or there are no dedicated cycle lanes of any sort, just an indication that cyclists should ride in the bus lanes, along with the buses and taxis and occasional private vehicles, zipping along with speed limits of 60kph. 

The Artane roundabout has off-road cycling routes, and cycle lights. But that’s pretty much the extent of the segregated cycling infrastructure along the route. 

“If you were designing a road, particularly a main road like that, from scratch, there's no way that you'd have cyclists and buses sharing space,” said Ní Mhuirí, the Fine Gael councillor. 

"More women are more likely to start cycling when there are safe cycling routes and segregated routes,” Ní Mhuirí said. “Like, there's research that backs that up as well.”

Kevin Byrne, a father of three, said he lives 200 meters or so from the Artane roundabout. 

He bikes often, but also doesn’t feel so safe taking his kids to St Brigid's girls school. He does it still though – and he says they’re one of the few families that do.  

They mostly stick to the pavement, but it still isn’t comfortable, Byrne said. “Cars are fast.” 

He said he looks forward to the new cycling infrastructure promised for the area as part of the BusConnects corridor, and various council active-travel plans.

What about temporary measures?

In the meantime, could the council “implement safe, segregated cycle lanes the length of the Malahide Road”, Monahan asked the council executive in his written question.

“It is not sufficient to point at future plans when people on bicycles are risking their lives every day and countless others are being put off cycling for life,” he said.

In response, the executive pointed to plans for the BusConnects corridor, and various active travel schemes – in future years. 

What about doing something now? “They’re good schemes,” Monahan said by phone later. “But we really seem to drop the ball in the interim.”

But Green Party Councillor Feljin Jose said it doesn't make sense to try to put in other cycle routes before BusConnects and Active Travel roll out on the same roads. 

The hoops have been jumped through for those big projects already: assessments, public consultation, the works.

Construction of the first BusConnects corridors is due to start this year, a National Transport Authority (NTA) spokesperson said. Though not along Malahide Road.

“All twelve corridors will be completed in 2030,” says the BusConnects website. So, if all goes to plan, the route on the Malahide Road should be done by then. 

But already it’s not going to plan. In June 2024, a High Court judge granted a local woman leave to challenge An Bord Pleanála’s decision to permit the Clongriffin to City Centre Core Bus Corridor. 

Still, starting a separate, new process now to put in safer cycle paths along that route, wouldn’t get it done faster, says Jose, the Green Party councillor. 

“If you were to do the same thing independently, you would have a longer timeline,” he said. “They’d have to go through the same environmental assessments and public consultations,” 

He said it wouldn’t be faster, and trying to go around the big BusConnects plan might even cause complications.

“There’s a huge shortage of engineers, planners, landscape architects — the people you need to deliver this,” he said. “We need to be laser-focused and work together to build a joined-up network.”

However, Jose said, “there is definitely scope to put in short term, interim interventions at kind of very unsafe black spots”. 

Meanwhile

Local dad and Dublin Cycling Campaign member Aidan Jones said the wait for safer cycling infrastructure has already affected his family.

“I thought I’d be able to cycle safely with my kids to crèche,” Jones said. For now, they cycle on the footpath, or ride in his and his wife’s cargo bikes. But it’s different.

“Now the kids will have left crèche, and then, you know, all the kids will be cycling to school on this new cycle track. But they could be near 10 or 11 before [that’s possible], you know,” he said.

He’s concerned about what it means when children don’t start cycling young. 

“Once they don't have the opportunity to cycle, and they go in the car everywhere ... that kind of locks in this cycle, this habit that you get driven everywhere,” he said. “And then the kids lose that autonomy.”

–With additional reporting by Sam Tranum

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.