Long-awaited plans for a walking and cycling bridge alongside the Tom Clarke Bridge (East Link) are progressing, with an anticipated opening date of around 2029. However, the project has also expanded to include road widening on the existing bridge which will also require a new bridge control building.
The walking and cycling bridge will be a separate bridge, called the Point Bridge, and located just west of the existing bridge. But, as with many active travel projects undertaken by Dublin City Council, the project has morphed into a wider project which is now called the “Point Bridge and Tom Clarke Bridge Widening Project”.
The new Point Bridge will also be a lifting bridge and include future-proofing with a 5.3m wide cycle path and 4.6m wide footpath.
The bridge has been long planned with this website reported in 2017 that options for the walking and cycle route were under review.
It’s understood that part of the reason for a separate walking and cycling bridge was originally to simplify the project’s delivery compared to adding structures to the existing Tom Clarke Bridge.
The widening of the project’s scope follows the examples of other city council projects, including the Clontarf cycle route project, which expanded into a massive wall-to-wall street renewal project. The same thing happened with the Liffey Cycle Route project, which was expanded into the “Liffey Corridor project,” where costs ballooned to “above €100m” before the project was cancelled in favour of a more cost-effective approach.
A Dublin City Council Active Travel office update on the East Link bridge project said: “It is also proposed to upgrade the existing Tom Clarke Bridge by widening the northern and southern bridge decks. The works will include replacing elements of the bridge deck furniture such as barriers, lighting columns and traffic lights.”
This widening of the bridge decks will mean the removal of the existing control building, which is located on the bridge and the building of a planned replacement control tower between the two bridges.
Dublin City Council said: “It is anticipated that construction works will commence in 2027 and last approximately 24 months. During construction, traffic on East Wall Road, the R131 and North Wall Quay will be maintained at all times, except for limited short periods.”
Early-stage public consultation is planned for the project is planned next week from 4-7pm on Tuesday, June 18th at the Ringsend & Irishtown Community Centre, 22 Thorncastle St, Dublin 4, D04 Y6V3, and from 4-7pm on Wednesday, June 19th, at the Seán O’Casey Community Centre, 18-26 St Mary’s Rd, Dublin, D03 AY74.
More drawings and details can be found at consultation.dublincity.ie.
The plan is in the context of two other bridges planned beside the East Link. The first is a public transport and active travel bridge over the mouth of the River Dodder, which the National Transport Authority is developing as part of BusConnects (the access to which is shown in the bottom right of the drawing below).
The second planned bridge is Dublin Port’s Southern Port Access Route bridge parallel to and east of the East Link route. This bridge will separate port traffic from the public road network as part of the 3FM Project, which is looking to expand the south port. Dublin Port is planning a cycle path and footpath on the east side of its bridge.
Just picking up on a minor detail, the off-road “cycle track cross-roads” is confused design and over-engineered. Off-road cyclists do not need to be told to stop, yield, go this way, go that way, etc. when they interact with other cyclists, to the same extent as drivers do on roads and cycle track infrastructure should not be designed as min-roads. Cyclists can happily co-exist with each based on eye-contact and courtesy. Please look at Dutch design to see how light-touch engineering suffices in most typical applications. Sometimes placing some order on proceding via markings is justfied, but only on very heavily trafficked cycle infrastructure.
@Go Dutch—If those crossings are signed, as I have a sneaky feeling that they are, then I think it is over-engineered in that way.
However, yield markings between cycle paths are standard in the Netherlands, especially in built-up locations and on priority cycle routes. The “shark teeth” are just less apparent and act as both yield signs and yield lines all at once.
At first glance I thought the four-way yield on the north bank of the bridge was a but overkill and in reality it should be rare enought that people are comming from all directions at one, but of the directions they are comming from at once at this location, I cannot think of which you’d give priorty as the main route… maybe from the bridge string on towards the Point?
This article outlines how much the Dutch think about these things: https://bikecity.amsterdam.nl/en/succesful-test-with-turned-around-priority.
To the Cyclist using the East Link , you are supposed to Dismount and walk across the bridge.
Hi John, no, cyclists can use the carriageway on the bridge. You’re only supposed to dismount if using the footpath.
The silly dismount signs were removed many years ago now. They were replaced with no overtaking signs — motorists are expected to wait behind cyclists for the short distance of the bridge.