A plan to ballot residents on proposed traffic calming between Upper and Lower Kilmacud Road was deferred until after the election by Dundrum Area Committee councillors.
The councillors decided to defer the issue at their October meeting and it was not included in their November local area meeting.
The proposed traffic calming between Upper and Lower Kilmacud Road will take the form of modal filters that block rat running while allowing motoring access to all houses in the area. The area in question is closely bounded by regional roads.
The new modal filters are proposed after people reported that previous modal filters meant increased traffic and speeding on streets such as Sweet Briar Lane, Rathmore Avenue, Dale Road, Redesdale Road and Slieve Rua Drive. The council said that the shift caused safety issues with many calls for action to address the situation.
The new approach is at the wider neighbourhood level, which aims to solve the overspill of issues.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council officials are suggesting a ballot to seek residents’ support with two to three weeks to respond via Free Post.
Sweet Briar Lane is the most affected street from previous measures with traffic volumes up by 80% northbound northbound and 100% southbound southbound and speeding up between 16.5% and 9%, although the baseline traffic counts were taken in 2021, which was below typical levels because of Covid-19 restrictions.
Depending on the ballot results, it is planned that the measures be implemented using powers under Section 38 of the Road Traffic Act.
At the October meeting, Cllr Maeve O’Connell (Fine Gael) complained that there had been no consultation about the modal filter locations. She said that there needs to be more clarity and consultation on the exact location before it goes to a vote.
She said that a solution was being presented without engaging more closely with people.
Cllr O’Connell claimed that councillors noting the official report would be giving it approval, but a point of information was made that the noting of reports does not mean acceptance as there is no rejection mechanism for reports to be noted.
Cllr John Kennedy (Fine Gael) said that action on Sweet Briar Lane was needed even if the proposed solution was not adopted. He suggested another option, including a one-way option, and said that the council must come up with a real solution for Sweet Briar Lane.
He said that the way the roads are set up, it may not lead to an increase of traffic on the main roads and that there may be lower traffic on some main roads.
Cllr Kennedy was interrupted by the committee chair, Cllr Pierce Dargan (Fine Gael), after Cllr Kennedy exceeded his speaking time. Cllr Kennedy reacted by trying to start making another point and raising his voice repeatedly.
Cllr Dargan said: “Don’t scream at me. I’ve been trying to give people time… I did the exact same thing with Cllr O’Connell, I said thank you, and she got to the end of her point rather than screaming at me. I’m trying to be fair across the board regardless of party, so, I don’t appreciate that.”
Cllr John Hurley (Social Democrat) said his “mailbox has been lit up” with emails from residents about the proposals with some of them “very confused” about what is being proposed and “some very against what they are hearing. There’s a lot of confusion.”
He asked why horizontal traffic calming was not looked at and claimed that filtering the road was “a traffic blocking rather than traffic calming measure.”
Filtered permeability is widely recognised in traffic planning as one of the most effective traffic-calming measures.
Cllr Michael Fleming (independent) also said that he “fully supports” traffic calming but not “traffic blocking” and claimed that it would be “splitting the community in half”.
The councillor, who owns a business locally, also said that businesses have not been consulted and that more traffic would be pushed onto already busy main roads.
Cllr Barry Saul (Fine Gael) said that modal filters are “very controversial” and that Mount Merrion area “still has not recovered from issues related to displacing traffic.
He said he was surprised by the nature of the report and said it was “completely and utterly disrespectful to councillors” to suggest a ballot without first consulting more with them.
Cllr Saul said that local residents had raised valid issues but that the wider traffic picture had to be looked at.
Cllr Jim O’Leary (Fine Gael) echoed that it would have been useful for councillors to be briefed before the proposals were put forward.
He said that he agrees with Cllr O’Connell that some roads not affected by the rat running issues will have a vote on the solution. He said that Marsham Court and Kilmacud Park are not through roads and shouldn’t have a vote on it.
He said: “What I do want to make sure is an assurance that whatever vote is taken, it has no impact on the modal filter already in place at Drummartin Park. There’s a community there, a proposal was put forward, and they accepted it. Every other part of this traffic cell is going to have the opportunity to decide how they are going to deal with the traffic which has been pushed into their areas.”
Cllr O’Leary added: “They’d all be quite happy if the modal filter in Drummartin Park was taken away, and that solves their problem that the rat running goes through Drummartin Park. But that would be completely unacceptable and I want an assurance that whatever vote is taken, it’s taken on where new modal filters may or may not go and that the modal filter in Drummartin Park is not touched.”
Cllr Liam Dockery (Fianna Fáil) said that he agreed that there is confusion and echoed that councillors should have been consulted with more.
Cllr Oisín O’Connor (Green Party) said that even if he would generally agree on a project like this, he said that it seems disappointing that councillors were not consulted further. He said that the council seem to have two speeds in relation to traffic calming rollout — going too slow or too fast.
He said that there will be confusion because usually it’s the traffic section of the council which deals with traffic calming, but, in this case, it’s an active travel project.
He added: “Education is needed around any proposals like this. In my own estate, there has been exhaustive education by the residents association and everybody so people understand the actions. When things happen fast like this, it can confuse people and lead to misinformation — I think the council needs to get ahead of that if [the planned measures are] going to be proposed.”
On the question of traffic calming vs filtering, he said: “Traffic calming won’t do anything to solve high volumes of traffic if that’s what the problem is.”
He said if the project goes ahead, measures to protect pedestrians and people cycling from potential safety issues on the main road may be needed if there are extra traffic volumes.
Cllr Peter O’Brien (Labour) said that some confusion might be around, including unaffected streets. He said that the residents were very united with the current modal filters and these would not be removed and said: “Even the thought of removal [of existing filters] would cause a big row.”
But he complained that the council was using a video it produced to show residents’ reactions to modal filters and said: “We’re running the risk of saying it worked in this area and it is guaranteed to work in another area.”
However, modal filters — unlike some other traffic calming measures — modal filters using bollards and planters have a very high success rate at solving rat running and the associated speeding from non-local drivers.
Cllr O’Brien questioned what exact question would be asked in the ballot.
Giulia Grigoli, a senior executive engineer at the council’s Active Travel section, said that looking at the whole area at once avoids traffic displacement onto other minor roads.
She said that further consultation with residents or residents’ groups would follow on the details. Grigoli said if the preferred option is not accepted by residents, other traffic calming measures could be considered.
Grigoli said that they had planned to ballot the area within the red boundary on the map but could look at that again and reduce the area to follow suggestions from councillors. There are around 560 households.
She also confirmed that there is no plan to remove the existing modal filters and that “people really like them”.
Conor Geraghty, a senior engineer in the Active Travel section, said that when previous modal filters were installed as part of the active travel route that they made a commitment to return and address any spillover issues, and that’s why the Active Travel section is taking the lead on the issue.
He said what the officials had in mind was to run the ballot and see how much support there was for the proposed option. This would give a clearer picture, and they would then report back to councillors before taking any action.
After some debate on technicalities, the issue was deferred.
WATCH: At Dlrcoco.public-i.tv (from 33 mins )
I hope they don’t repeat what they did in Dunlaoghaire
29 ramps between Avondale Road and Seafield Road and 10 ramps on the small lower glenageary road..whiplash and car damage…no one is calm about this Engineers idea of road CALMING
You get whiplash and car damage from speeding, so it seems that speed ramps do work.
I’ve driven on Avondale Rd for over 20 years and never experienced and jolt or scrape – never mind whiplash. That having been in several different vehicle types. That I was doing ca. 45kmh in a 50 zone may have been something to do with that, and you know what? I didn’t even need to slow or brake going over the ramps because they are designed to specifically allow emergency vehicles such as ambulances to roll over them without impediment.
I can imagine that people who get most upset by ramps are those whose driving style is at pace (e.g. 55kmh) and then braking late approaching ramps – maybe that causes whiplash and scraping of their vehicles?