Finglas Luas not only fails on cycling but, regardless of intent, it includes a scorched-earth approach that will make a cycle network harder to build

— Luas will not have enough stops to serve many local trips; cycling can help.
— Route passes a large number of schools, but provision for walking and cycling is disjointed.
— Large focus on the public realm and trees without getting active travel basics right.
— Design choices at larger junctions which avoid best practices is highly questionable

Comment & Analysis / Very long read: Last month, this website reported that plans for the Luas Finglas extension includes sub-standard, disjointed cycle paths years after the project’s lead said it would “jeopardise and undermine” the planning process. But just how bad is it?

The project drawings and previous information reported on this website suggest that some members of the project team have really tried hard to get things right. However, because of conflicting priorities, things are far from right- crystal clear elements of the Design Manual for Urban Roads and Streets and of the Cycle Design Manual are repeatedly ignored.

There is disjointedness, there’s downright unsafe junctions, basic rules on cycle path widths are not followed, and there’s repeated cases where pedestrian priority could be given, but it’s not. Planning for Luas extensions has been painfully slow, yet the result on show is a worrying loss of potential.

Often, with issues like these, readers jump to the idea that car priority is being put above active travel as being the main reason. While there are elements of car dominance remaining apparent, just as apparent is a preference for fitting in as many trees as possible over providing safe and attractive cycle routes, including to schools.

It’s hard to express how pointlessly disconnected the sections of cycle routes are on this project. Of the cycle paths along the route, four unconnected sections have three significant gaps. No quiet streets are provided in the gaps, and no alternatives exist or are currently likely to be put in place soon.

The disjointed mess of the cycling infrastructure is clear from the drawings on the Railway Order website at luasfinglasro.ie. It is also shown in this fly-through video showing what the planned route should look like:

This is the new southern start of the extension, where there is a new bridge planned to cross the Royal Canal:

The planned cycle path ends before the canal (ending point circled in blue) — the existing bridge has a permanent traffic light stop-go system for traffic with a lengthy distance between both traffic lights and the humped bridge with poor visibility.

It’s also a bus route, so if you’re too slow cycling up the bridge on one side you could be facing a bus in the opposite direction on the other side:

When you get to the end of the cycle path heading towards the canal, it’s unclear how people cycling over the canal are supposed to join the carriageway. If they do so when the shared crossing is already green, will they have enough time to get over the bridge?

The cycle path here is just around 3 metres wide, which is narrow for a two-way cycle path:

This is the drawing legend for the drawings:

But when you add trees into the mix right beside the cycle track, the usable width is reduced even further. The footpath on one side is also substandard.

While it is a noble aim to add so many street trees on both sides of the road, the motorists on the carriageway are the only ones left with decent width.

The location of the trees right between the cycle path and footpath is a very strange decision which goes against design guidance.

There is no justifiable reason to try to add so many trees into this kind of environment which does not support them, especially not without affecting active travel modes:

The side roads have really great stop markings and good raised crossings, but the cycle paths should follow the Cycle Design Manual and have a red surface across the junction with elephant markings and zebras crossings beside the cycle crossing:

This image is from the Cycle Design Manual. The design is unidirectional here but can be used for two-way paths:

The junction with the Ballyboggan Road and the route are the tram and cycle route go across the Tolka Valley Park:

While the Ballyboggan Road is not part of the GDA Cycle Network, designers of projects are responsible for how people cycling get through junctions in all directions.

Narrow, dashed-lined cycle lanes have no place on main roads like the Ballyboggan Road and nor does a traffic island without providing a cycle path which will endanger people cycling along here:

This arrangement for the two-way cycle path means that the cycle path crossing cannot be run at the same time as the pedestrian crossings which crosses over it, which makes the junction less efficient and less safe

As we go inside the park, between the two Xs there is no footpath, and the detour is well off the desire line, so, the cycle path will likely become a defacto shared path.

Dublin City Council parks also need to be questioned on whether they will try to apply kissing gates to the cycling and pedestrian entrances to the park.

Even at the bridge, the width of 3 metres is not sufficient for a two-way cycle path towards the bottom of a hill, especially not when people walking use the cycle path rather than the existing bridge:

The cycle path narrowing to 2.5 metres on a hill is simply not a serious proposition:

The 2.5 metre width is not at any kind of pinch point; it is the general width of the two-way cycle path in the park:

The cycle path within the park is marked in drawings as a dark hardtop surface and shown in a video run-through as a yellow path beside a beige footpath — both black and yellow colouring are against the Cycle Design Manual.

It’s also against all best practices to clearly define cycle paths for all others around. No cycle logos are shown on the path in the park, and few on other cycle tracks.

The rule might seem overly perceptive, but it allows for a national colour which people can associate with cycle paths. And it avoids loads of different people, be it the heads of different sections of a council when a path goes through their area or different project managers or others etc, to pick what they prefer on different whims.

Note here also how the cycle path narrows from the bridge towards the inside of the park:

Two cycle routes meet within the Tolka Valley Park — the new one along the tram route and the Tolka Greenway:

The space is insufficient for somebody to turn from the cycle path (north-south) to cross the tram tracks to the shared path (east-west), which is part of a primary utility greenway route.

There is a major risk that the angle will mean when a person is turning:

• Their bicycle wheel gets caught in the tracks, and they are injured or worse if a tram is nearby and the driver does not or cannot act in time.
• That the person cycling is not turned enough to see an incoming tram.
• Or that there is a collision or near collision between two people on bicycles or between two people, one on foot and another on a bicycle and that one ends up in the path of a tram.

There should be at least the length of a long cargo bicycle between the tram tracks and any crossing. It is very strange that this was not done in this location where there are no significant space constraints.

The presence of wide poles for overhead lines can also cause further obstructions. The placement of signage at a walking/cycling crossing previously blocked the view of a cyclist crossing tram tracks in south Dublin, where there was a collision. The signs were removed after the collision after the intervention from railway safety authorities, but it will be a lot harder to remove a pole holding overhead wires or relocate the crossing.

At the north end of the park, the designers didn’t even slowly change the width of the path.

As previously reported, the Luas Finglas project also plans to include short sections of cycle tracks on the Tolka Valley Road when the tram route intersects. The road is currently very wide:

On Tolka Valley Road, Cycle Design Manual guidance is again ignored, and new green buffer areas are added between the cycle track and the footpath rather than the cycle track and the road as advised.

Because of the planned layout, the project team has included advanced stop boxes to turn into the cycle route along the tram route. Advance stop boxes are widely seen as undesirable and not comparable with providing for cycling for all ages and abilities.

There are also kerbs, which make it harder to get into position when traffic is moving or if a motorist is blocking the advanced stop box:

At the end of the short sections of the cycle tracks, the cycling environment not just narrow into weirdly long sections before ending, but these narrow first. But, not only that, the locations of the trees at the ends blocks the building of longer cycle tracks in the future:

In the next section, the cycle track is also substandardly narrow through basic grass for no apparent reason, and the cycle path does not have any dedicated cycling links to the estates or roads, and the footpaths are too narrow for shared use:

2.5 to 2.7 metres is just not wide enough for this kind of path on the flat, never mind about downhill:

Between the proposed St Helena’s tram stop and the GAA pitch, the cycle track just ends:

There’s not even access to the road and without using the footpath and no route onwards:

Regardless of the intent, this is a toxic scorched-earth approach to providing a tram route and not having any care for cycling provision — not even between the end of the project team’s cycle path and a number of schools.

These roads operate as main roads within the area, and that is unlikely to change soon.

One of the excuses for not providing continuous cycle routes is that the Luas group is not part of the GDA Cycle Network, but Farnham Drive is part of the network, and the project is concreting in the car-centric design and space allocation of the road while also not providing a route via the parkland:

This is how the road is:

And the project team are proposing adding more trees outside of the park while retaining car parking, which is also unlikely to be removed as part of any future cycle route project. So, again, the project team are not providing a cycle track on this section in the green area along the tram tracks and also blocking any possible safe route on the road beside it.

And, why are these raised crossings not zebra crossings?

And the same question can be asked around the corner: Why are these crossings on St Helena’s Road not zebra crossings?

Around 450 metres north of where the cycle track stopped beside the GAA pitch and planned St Helena’s tram stop, there are unidirectional cycle tracks placed on Patrickswell Place, but this is only for under 200 metres.

Despite the junction being part of the GDA Cycle Network, cycling is not integrated at the junction of Patrickswell Place and Wellmount Road.

And poor unmarked crossing points for pedestrians are all that is provided:

The crossing of Wellmount Road is across the GDA Cycle Network:

But no space for future provision is apparent at the junction:

The cycle track on one side goes up and down at minor junctions, which is — yet again — against the Cycle Design Manual guidance:

The junction at the northern end of the road is part of the GDA Cycle Network

But here again, the Luas and NTA teams are collectively refusing to provide for continuous routes and are planning to cement in a design which would make it hard to provide cycling connections at the junction in the future:

This type of junction with segregation up to the junction but ending at the junction is just asking for trouble by making turning left very likely to result in a left hook, while there’s no provision for turning right from the cycle track and no way to exit the cycle track before the junction:

Following the short section, there is another gap where no cycle route is provided:

A cycle path, for example, could have fit through here without unduly affecting the Garda station, but other choices were made:

On Mellowes Road, the cycle track has the look of a quick-built temporary cycle track:

It’s unclear why the design choices are being made here… maybe the cycle tracks are afterthoughts?

It’s understandable why the mature trees are being left alone on the right-hand side of the road.

The majority of hard surface space is still being given to motorists. The cycle path on the right-hand side could be put inside the existing tree line on that side, freeing up more space for a new matching green space and tree line on the Garda station side. However, it would also affect the car park and/or the planned second line of trees around the car park.

If there isn’t a willingness to shift things around more, the green buffer space and some of the extra footpath space on the left side here should be used to provide proper, more permanent-looking cycle path widths with forgiving kerbs on both sides of the road:

After the Finglas Village tram stop, there’s yet another gap in the cycle route despite mostly ample space running along the tracks:

As with other locations, there are trees placed beside the path, which will make it harder to provide a cycle path or make the path a wider shared path in the future:

This is the junction of St Margaret’s Road and the R135 (formerly the N2). There’s a lot going on here, so, we’ll take a closer look…

The following is another extract from the GDA Cycle Network Plan. The orientation differs here (note the north symbol in the last image).

The junction is highlighted with a red X added on top of the map, and the very rough green highlighter shows the route of the Luas Finglas tram tracks.

The R135 includes North Road and the greyed section of the duel carriageway below it.

On the approach to the junction, one of the reasons that the project team could say they didn’t provide a cycle path along the tracks at the bottom left of this image is that such a cycle route is not in the GDA Cycle Network Plan.

But the project team has ignored the GDA Cycle Network Plan towards its own park-and-ride (see next image), and, as shown in this image, the project team makes no allowance that the proposed cycle route on Casement Road is only to/from the side circled below.

Note how no crossings are provided in the red circle for people walking to access the main junction and cross to the tram tracks — again, the area looks great with greenery, but the basics of active travel (including for accessing public transport) are an afterthought or not included at all:

As part of Luas Finglas, one of the planned park-and-ride units with bicycle parking (shown in the grey box below to the right of the image) is on the section of the R135 marked as North Road on the last map.

But — yet again — the Luas Finglas project is adding trees to where cycle paths are planned to be and to a location where bicycle parking is planned.

Park and ride, especially for cycling, should be viewed as opening up connecting in two directions — not just people cycling from their homes to the tram station but also from a tram stop to their work location, with the user regularly leaving the bicycle at the secure bicycle parking overnight.

The pedestrian bridge is being removed. While at-grade crossings are generally seen as more accessible, crossing three lanes of dual carriageway, waiting in the middle and then crossing two more may be less safe than the footbridge.

For cycling, the design clearly looks better than what has gone before, but that’s a low bar and, as mentioned earlier in this article, when segregation is provided up to a junction, that can prove more dangerous if the design isn’t right.

This is the Protected Junction (TL501) design in the NTA’s Cycle Design Manual — there is no reason why this type of design isn’t being used at this junction:

It is based on the Dutch protected junction design, which is suitable for very large roads, including dual carriageways:

All along St Margaret’s Road, the cycle route and tram track both run along the road. The design of the cycle tracks is good and far better than the other sections of cycle tracks along roads planned as part of the project:

But it also feels like the designers were constrained.

This junction will replace the roundabout at McKee Ave (bottom of image), and Lidl (the entrance to which is at the top of the image below) is a different type of protected junction — in the Cycle Design Manual, it is listed as TL503 Protected Junction – Full Signal Control (known more generally as the Dublin-style protected junction).

The Dublin-style design was apparently designed for (1) retrofitting routes into more confined spaces and (2) keeping people cycling and walking apart by the use of traffic lights (but this has proven not to be the case with both types of users not using the design as implemented).

The downsides of the design are listed in the Cycle Design Manual as follows (with comments as part of this article in brackets):

• Longer pedestrian crossing distances (the equivalent of around 6 lanes at once, which is three more than when crossing the nearby dual carriageway);
• Longer pedestrian signal phase which may increase delays and reduce junction capacity (this is important especially for a junction which will be constructed by the Luas);
• Full set back cycle crossings may be more difficult to achieve;
• Sharper turns potentially less comfortable for cyclists;
• Smaller protected corner islands may feel less safe for some cyclists (with high number turning into the sides, ie into Lidl, this will increase conflict);
• Less stacking space for cyclists due to smaller corner islands (this is important as in one direction, a primary cycle route goes through the junction, from McKee Ave); and
• At busy junctions, pedestrians waiting to cross may block the footpath for other users.

It feels like the Dutch-style junction (Protected Junction, TL501) could have fit here with just a slightly more land take without reducing lanes — the kind of extra space highlighted in yellow highlighter below, which would have very little impact compared to some of the CPOs along this road as part of the project.

Or a redesign with a Dutch-style junction might be possible by carefully looking at the current space and where turning lanes start etc.

Even if I’m left winding if a two-way cycle path below the tram tracks in the image below (to the east of the road) could have worked better given the space provided, the rest of this section is generally good:

Two of the cross-sections for this section show much the same thing — one cycle path with well-designed forgiving kerbs on one side and, on the other side, beside greenery (this should be kerb-less):

In the last image, the 2 metres is measured between kerbs. However, on another cross-section, the 2 metres includes the kerb — not even a cycle path with a forgiving kerb should be measured like this; it would never happen with a general traffic lane.

One smaller issue is that the housing estate entrance at the top of this image into McKelvey Ave could easily have a dedicated cycling crossing — the project team avoid mixing people walking and cycling in shared spaces too much and there’s no reason for a shared crossing here:

Finally, the end of the line for now is outside Charlestown Shopping Centre and one of the most mind-boggling choices along the route. Unlike at McKee Ave/Lidl, there are no space constraints here:

There is no reason why the TL501 Protected Junction (Dutch-style) design was not chosen here. Using the Dublin-style design here will increase risk and capacity issues for no logical reason.

The duelling of cycle lanes at two corners could easily be replaced by a Dutch-style junction, which is a safer and more attractive design for cycling and shorter pedestrian crossings than this: