— Longer-term plan to be in City Centre Transport Study, with public consultation later this year.
Dublin City Council has moved to clarify its plans for Parliament Street after a business on the street complained that their application for a licence for outdoor dining was rejected.
Also, as IrishCycle.com reported this week, a senior Dublin City Council official told a local council meeting that outdoor dining areas are for eating, “certainly not for smoking” and not for just drinking.
Street 66, an LGBTQ bar on the street, said that a bicycle rack installed in a loading bay, which doubled as their outdoor dining area “seems a little vindictive or calculated”.
The bar had hoped the issue could be resolved before Dublin Pride events next week, but even the announcement of Summer weekend closures will only kick in on July 1.
Dublin City Council has not yet explained why their application was rejected — the owner of the bar said that they found out over the phone and were told they would get a letter about it. Street 66 said that the bicycle rack was installed just after the bar found out that their application for an outdoor dining area was rejected.
This afternoon, the council said that “traffic-free weekends” “with a particular focus on encouraging families onto the street” are to begin on Parliament Street this summer. It said that the family focus is due to feedback on its previous traffic-free weekend.
The council said: “Every Saturday and Sunday from July 1st to late August, pedestrians and cyclists will be free to enjoy the street from 11am to 11pm without the presence of vehicles.”
“Traffic-free trials on Parliament St took place last summer on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 6.30pm to 11pm. Feedback from those trials and others conducted in 2021 requested more family-friendly times, so a decision was made a number of months ago to start this year’s measures from 11am and run them over the weekend,” the council said in a statement,
The council said that deliveries will be able to be made on the street up to 11am and that Essex Quay and Essex St will remain open and that emergency vehicular access will be maintained at all times.
The statement from the council added: “Permanent changes to Parliament St are currently being finalised as part of the City Centre Transport Study, a draft of which will be published for public consultation in August or September.”
Odd the way DCC has no real loading bay policy throughout the city anymore it seems- to alleviate delivery vans blocking cycle lanes and pulling up on footpaths (and damaging them). The loading bay in front of the Swan Center in Rathmines still remains a coffee shop seating area which seems a bit odd- If it isn’t a loading bay anymore why not pave it. Meanwhile many Lidl’s, SuperValu’s etc., have no loading bays at all and block cycle lanes regularly all day.
From a pedestrian point of view I would have thought the vast amount of footpath space taken by the likes of Trinity Inn on Dame Street was more urgent to address.
These piecemeal ‘family event’ efforts seem like more delay tactics by DCC to string out decisions on college green, South William St etc., – even Capel St still has no real pedestrian priority sense to it.
Agree with you on all that you write here, Mark. Businesses desperately need loading-bays so as to avoid blocking cycle tracks, bus lanes and pavements (destroying the latter too).
On another note, while it is nice to have traffic-free streets for some times during the day just how are families going to access them by bike when we don’t have a safe segregated cycle track network to bring children in from the suburbs to enjoy our city?
I agree with every word you say Mark.