Dublin City Council recently invited responses to its public consultation on proposals for pedestrianising College Green and part of Dame Street. The following is Dublin Cycling Campaign’s official submission to the public consultation.

1. Which option, Option 3 or Option 4, would work best for you and for this area of the city?

Dublin Cycling Campaign favours Option 4. It will make Dublin a more liveable city by providing one of the largest car-free public spaces in the city.

2. Do you see any positives or negatives in Option 3?

Dublin Cycling Campaign welcomes the segregated cycle route outlined in Option 3 (and Option 4) and could see this becoming a very popular route for people cycling through Dublin City Centre. We ask that any such cycle route be built to the highest design standards, including a width of at least 4 metres.

We have serious reservations about the 24-hour vehicular access that is proposed under Option 3. This would completely undermine the pedestrian plaza, and undo all of the potential safety, aesthetic, and environmental benefits of a pedestrianised public plaza.

We believe that vehicular access should be restricted to the hours of 6am-11am, as proposed in Option 4, and which is similar to current arrangements in other pedestrianised areas such as Grafton Street and Henry Street. This arrangement works well in those aforementioned streets and there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work for Dame Street and College Green too.

3. Do you see any positives or negatives in Option 4?

Dublin Cycling Campaign welcomes the segregated cycle route outlined in Option 4 (and Option 3) and could see this becoming a very popular route for people cycling through Dublin City Centre. We ask that any such cycle route be built to the highest design standards, including a width of at least 4 metres.

We welcome the proposal that vehicular access should be restricted to the hours of 6am-11am, which is similar to current arrangements in other pedestrianised areas such as Grafton Street and Henry Street. This arrangement works well in those aforementioned streets and there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work for Dame Street and College Green too.

4. If you are a business-owner, which option would better support you and the area?

Dublin Cycling Campaign is not a business owner but we are familiar with a vast array of studies in cities across the world where pedestrianising streets has proved massively beneficial to local businesses.

In fact, you don’t have to look very far to see examples of this: Around the corner from College Green, Grafton Street has gone from strength to strength since it was pedestrianised in 1983. More recently, the pedestrian trials on South William Street, Anne Street and Drury Street have shown how successful pedestrianisation can be, and how much public appetite and support there is for it.

5. Do you have any suggestions for how these options could be enhanced?

Dublin Cycling Campaign urges Dublin City Council to bear in mind the lessons that have been learned during the Covid pandemic and the pedestrian street trials of Summer 2020.

There is a clear need for greater public provision of basic amenities such as drinking water, toilets, seating and shelter. Any new public plaza, especially one at the scale proposed here, should make the provision of these basic amenities a priority.

We also encourage the council to take an holistic design approach which provides equitable access to this public plaza, and which enables people of all ages and abilities to fully participate in the space and, by extension, our society.