How’s the Clontarf to City Centre route progressing?

Comment & Analysis: The Clontarf to City Centre bus and cycle route is finally showing firm signs of completion. If you’re running a business or living along some sections where heavy work is on-going, it might not feel that way, but the progress in the last few months is clear when looking at the full route.

Here’s a quick look at some of the progress…. These images were taken last week, so some might be out of date!

The two bus stops that were promised to be reinstated are now largely finished. This is the inbound one at Strandville Ave. It was originally a bus stop, but retaining parking space was seen as more important than providing one.

Planning good spacing between bus stops is key to providing a reliable, attractive, and accessible bus service. Close spacing impacts the quality of the bus service. However, as the website pointed out, the spacing gap in this case was too wide.

This is the outbound bus stop now nearly restored as a bus stop in the second image — note: In both design and service terms, these reinstated stops will be more minor than the other stop, which will be larger and have space for two buses to stop at once:

This is the outbound stop under the railway bridge at Nottingham St — given the space constraints which means shorter stops, both reinstated stops will not have shelters:

No project is perfect, and while the project adds pedestrian space and improves the public realm. That’s not always the case. The footpath at Connolly Station is maybe the worst example.

First, the footpath at the south side of the main station entrance, at one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the area, has been narrowed — pedestrian priority must be improved here by switching the traffic lights to green man quicker, or this footpath will be overcrowded often:

On the other side of the main station entrance, the footpath was narrowed to insert a taxi rank inside the cycle track — the way that taxi drivers park at many taxi ranks, this design also has a high probability of issues. This design change happened very late in the project’s detailed design stage:

One of the heaviest bits of work on the inbound section of the route was actively being worked on last week — there was a relatively short section to be finished, so, it shouldn’t take too long to finish:

Under the railway bridge, a significant amount of engineering work has taken place to move the railings back which is now not obvious from street level:

It has allowed for a decent width of both footpath and cycle track:

On the outbound section of the route, there were also sections still closed — many cyclists were exiting the cycle track in advance of the closed section ahead:

While others were entering the bus lanes at different points closer to the closed section:

Greenary has been added to the streets along the route, including sections which never had any before such as at Amiens St:

The largest work site is at Fairview / Marino Mart:

On other sections, the cycle tracks looked to be very close to being opened — something like minor works, line painting or just need to be signed off on:

Other sections required surfacing:

The council has mentioned snag works. One issue this website has noticed is that there are many locations where the levels of footpaths and cycle paths don’t seem right.

Levels are hard to photograph clearly, but here you can see the final road surface is higher than the footpath and cycle path: