The Social Democrats are calling on Dublin City Council and An Garda Síochána to immediately revise their traffic plan for this Friday’s Spice Girls Concert at Croke Park to prevent the closure of the dedicated cycle lane on Alfie Byrne Road at the height of the weekend rush hour.
This is yet another example of Dublin’s growing and vibrant cyclist population being given the short end of the stick. The Alfie Byrne cycle lane is a major route for cyclist and pedestrians and an example of a well-designed segregated cycle lane
The Social Democrats are calling on Dublin City Council and An Garda Síochána to immediately revise their traffic plan for this Friday’s Spice Girls Concert at Croke Park to prevent the closure of the dedicated cycle lane on Alfie Byrne Road at the height of the weekend rush hour.
The party, which recently launched its 12-point cycling policy, is deeply concerned that a major cycle route would be closed to facilitate coach parking for the gig, when the National Transport Authority has a dedicate coach parking space on nearby Sheriff Street.
Catherine Stocker, the party’s local election candidate for Clontarf said:
“The fact that the Dublin City Council and An Garda Siochana have reverted to using Alfie Byrne Rd after previously committing not to anymore is disgraceful. This road is a major cyclist and pedestrian throughway and is not sustainable to park 14 tonne coaches at 5p.m. in the middle of Friday rush hour. This will endanger both cyclists and pedestrians who use the route.”
Carol Deans from the North Inner City ward said:
“It’s frankly unacceptable that the NTA has constructed a dedicated coach parking facility on Sheriff Street and yet declined to make it available for a major Croke Park event. Why build facilities if you are not going to use them when they would be most effective. That they have instead decided to displace cyclists and pedestrians is simply ridiculous.”
“The NTA has chosen to close this parking space at 7pm despite having permission to keep it open until 12 midnight on event nights. We are calling on the NTA to make this coach park available and for An Garda Siochana to direct coaches to this locations instead of Alfie Byrne Road.”
Paddy Monahan, candidate for Donaghmede said:
“This represents yet another example of Dublin’s growing and vibrant cyclist population being given the short end of the stick. The Alfie Byrne cycle lane is a major route for cyclist and pedestrians and an example of a well-designed segregated cycle lane.
“That Dublin City Council and An Garda Siochana have decided to cannibalise some of the limited cycling infrastructure in this city for coaches in the middle of rush hour shows clearly their anti-cyclist bias.”