Comment & Analysis: While covering a mix of active travel, public transport and other transport projects, I often look around and wonder: Have I gone mad, or is our system so dysfunctional that it keeps pretending that substantial climate action is just something that cannot be achieved? To keep my sanity, I move onto other work or other things in life. I cannot help but think that too many of us are doing this.
In the news week, there were headlines such as “Ireland faces bill of up to €26bn if EU climate targets missed, report warns“.
In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the transport sector in Ireland is the second largest polluter (only surpassed by an agriculture sector geared for export). So, transport needs to play a huge part in reducing emissions if we have any chance of reaching our 2030 and future targets.
Also in the news this week was a story of how a homeowner in Dublin is being threatened by planners in South Dublin County Council with a large fine and/or jail because external insulation is covering up bricks on a relatively modern house. This story is a bit more complicated than it might have been reported (the application for retention was deemed invalid and can still be applied for again), but how is this even an issue?
The person did the right thing and obtained a Government grant which lowered his family’s heating bills and reduced emissions. The planning system is hardly the only part of our system which needs to adapt to climate action, but the planning system is actively working against climate action in more than a few ways.
To keep myself sane, I keep telling myself that, at some point, our collective pretence of sanity will run out. We’ll snap out of it and realise that solid and swift action is needed. A glimpse of reality came from an unexpected High Court case recently.
Justice Richard Humphreys issued a landmark High Court judgement at the start of this year, where he berated An Bord Pleanála for agreeing with a County Development Plan’s stance on blocking a wind farm in a certain area rather that following what are supposed to be overriding commitments made in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act (otherwise known as the Climate Act).
Justice Humphreys wrote:
“What the inspector is saying ultimately is that it is “overwhelming” that visual impacts (as enshrined in a [development] plan) take priority over compliance with national and EU legally binding targets to address the climate emergency (which itself threatens landscapes here and globally with vastly more severe disturbance, desertification, sea level rise and so on). Only a lawyer would attempt to call that rational. Someone else might say that it represents a deeply skewed set of values and an unwillingness to face new realities so starkly highlighted by the board elsewhere, something to which we will now turn.”
An Bord Pleanála, with egg on its face, has since protested, but it is clear that the planning authority is not facing reality. Its board and sometimes its inspectors are not facing their legal or moral obligations to act on reducing emissions.
An Bord Pleanála’s dysfunctional attitude towards climate action can be found in more than a few areas relating to transport.
It also approved the Galway City second ring road in 2021 despite the project baking in an increase in emissions directly from the road and having broader impacts on turbocharging Galway’s sprawl problems, which will in turn increase emissions further.
On that, the High Court in 2023 overruled the board and said that the councils involved failed to comply with the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act.
It’s not just about roads; plans are being held up on much-needed projects. This is not solely An Bord Pleanála’s fault, and there are Government-level issues with resourcing the planning body and other issues, but questions need to be asked about how the planning authority is conducting itself on far more than just wind turbines.
As this website reported last year, An Bord Pleanála’s board received its inspector’s report for the Dart+ West project over 180 days before it acted on it.
Another large-scale transport project, MetroLink, planned between Swords and the city centre, submitted its railway order application in September 2022, but 29 months later, things are still rumbling on with no end in sight.
After the oral hearing — held at the discretion of An Bord Pleanála — it was decided that further information provided as part of the oral hearing process would be opened up to further public consultation.
On transport, often, when this kind of thing is talked about, it’s framed in terms of roads vs public transport spending, but it’s often far more subtle than that. Sometimes, it’s about bus or active travel plans that are not in line with climate commitments because of such projects’ slow progress or weak approaches, which won’t deliver enough modal change.
The way the board gave approval to the National Transport Authority’s BusConnects projects included dismissing suggested conditions from the board’s planning inspectors that were made in light of the Government’s Climate Action Plan.
For example, on the Tallaght / Clondalkin to City Centre Core Bus Corridors, the An Bord Pleanála planning inspector said:
“Notwithstanding the significant improvements that will be brought about by the proposed scheme, I reiterate that there are some shortcomings in conditions along Belgard Square West, Blessington Road, Main Road, Old Greenhills Road, Walkinstown Road and Crumlin Road, where cyclists are expected to share road space with buses and general traffic. There may have been opportunities for increased road space reallocation in parts of the proposed scheme though one-way systems for general traffic and carriageway narrowing that would have resulted in additional space for segregated cycle infrastructure and further public realm improvements. Road space reallocation now seems to be a more prominent measure within CAP23/ CAP24 [CAP = Climate Action Plan] for tackling transport sector emissions ceilings compared to when the proposed scheme was designed before the adoption of CAP23.
Having regard to these factors, the Board may wish to consider seeking further information from the applicant to increase road space reallocation and to limit general traffic further. The fact that two-way general traffic has been retained throughout most of this core bus corridor, indicates to me that the proposed scheme may have gone further to accentuate modal shift from the private car to bus transport/ active travel. Had the proposed scheme been designed at the present time, when climate change is becoming increasingly apparent, rather than a number of years ago, it may have been more radical in tackling car dominance.”
The planning inspector included suggested conditions to try to address some of the shortcomings in terms of both policy and pedestrian and cyclist safety within the project without having to rework the whole thing.
This included a Street Design Audit of pedestrian and cycling to align the project with the Design Manual For Urban Roads and Streets (DMURS), and having junctions follow DMURS and the Cycle Design Manual.
But maybe the key part of the condition was that at “Pinch points [the design] shall be in line with the road user hierarchy as designated within DMURS, i.e., the width of the general traffic lanes should reduce first, then the width of the cycle track should be reduced before the width of the pedestrian footpath is reduced. Footpaths and cycle lanes shall not be reduced below 2m where there is scope to reduce the adjoining general traffic lane to 2.75m.”
One of the problems of BusConnects is that most people looking at the drawings will see cycle tracks along a lot of roads where there are none now, but what’s harder to see is that the width of such cycle tracks are so substandard and the junctions are often too poor that the ability of the infrastructure to delivery modal change will be limited.
The latest hope is that the detailed design stage may fix a lot of the issues. But, at the planning stage, the board again was having none of it:
As planned, the BusConnects infrastructure projects are not compatible with our legally binding climate action commitments, but the board could not even agree to modest changes.
It used the excuse of an “iterative process” but what was presented to planners was out of line with the road user hierarchy in both DMURS and the National Transport Authority’s own transport plan for the Greater Dublin Area, and it is out of sink with the NTA’s own design guidance.
The Design Manual for Urban Roads and Streets has been national design guidance and policy for streets and roads in urban areas since 2013, but the board seems to dismiss it on an on-going basis.
The above is not isolated. For example, when a planning inspector tried to put a basic provision for pedestrians in a high-density area, the board said that it was “unwarranted” and basically said that black was white.
As the website reported, the design means that, in practical terms, if you’re walking along the south side of the North Circular Road or the north side of Gardiner Street, you’ll have to cross three sets of pedestrian crossings to continue on the same side of the same street.
A child should be able to see that the pedestrian crossings are missing, and unlike the board’s assertions, this is clearly not “sufficient pedestrian connectivity”.
The earlier part of this article mentioned the case of external insulation being subject to a planning enforcement order with a threat of fines or even jail. That was not An Bord Pleanála (not yet, anyway), but we already have similar cases in which it was involved.
Those are the cases of bike sheds… at the front of people’s houses. In these cases, there is a crossover with the core issues Justice Humphreys talked about in his judgement — perceived visual impacts going against legal commitments in the Climate Act.
Again we have members of the public trying to do the right thing. In this case by cycling instead of using cars. But we also have the system not taking into account of how it’s not practical to be dragging bicycles through houses or leaving bicycles without covers exposed to the weather and possible theft in a front garden.
In one case, An Bord Pleanála’s board went against its inspector and rejected a modest bicycle bunker in a front garden in Clontarf, and, in another case, a planning inspector wrote a 16-page report justifying his rejection of a bicycle shed in Cork.
One might conclude that at least some of An Bord Pleanála’s resource problems are of its own makings. But it is clear that the planning body is not taking climate change or climate action seriously.
A bit like RSA An Bord Pleanala needs to be seriously overhauled.