The BusConnects corridor from Ringsend to Dublin city centre, which includes the long-anticipated construction of a bridge linking the Poolbeg peninsula to the city, has been approved by An Bord Pleanála.
The National Transport Authority (NTA) has sought permission for 12 dedicated bus lanes as part of its programme to overhaul the capital’s bus system. The Ringsend core bus corridor (CBC) is the seventh approved to date, with five more still awaiting decision by the board.
At just over 4km long, the Ringsend scheme is one of the shortest of the 12 segregated corridors, but involves some of the most significant interventions in the city, with construction of a new bridge where the river Liffey meets the river Dodder, and the removal of a pair of historic bridges on North Wall Quay.
The 1912 Scherzer rolling lift bridges are on Dublin City Council’s record of protected structures and were built to allow boats and barges move from the Liffey through to Spencer Dock and on to the Royal Canal.
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The huge metal and steel structures remain in place, but their diesel engines which allowed them to roll back and lift the road surface have long since been decommissioned.
The NTA said they already represented a significant “pinch point” for buses on the north quays with traffic reduced to just one lane in each direction at the bridges. It told the board their retention would represent an “untenable constraint” on the delivery of the BusConnects route, which was designed to achieve “improved public transport journey time and reliability through continuous bus lane priority”.
The NTA plans to dismantle the bridges and reconstruct them nearby, turning them by 180 degrees so they run parallel to, instead of across the road. They could then be used by cyclists and pedestrians, leaving the width of the newly constructed roadway for buses and other traffic.
While Dublin City Council supports the scheme, its conservation section was “highly concerned” about the negative impact moving the historic bridges would have “on the heart of Dublin’s docklands”.
Moving an industrial heritage structure from its original context “obliterates the legibility of its intended function and reduces it in significance to no more than visually pleasing furniture”, it said.
However, the board supported the NTA’s position. The council was, however, unequivocally supportive of the construction of the new bridge at the end of the south quays over the mouth of the Dodder.
The 200m-long public transport and cycling bridge will run perpendicular to the Liffey’s Tom Clarke (East Link) Bridge and is “crucial infrastructure” to connect the Poolbeg peninsula to the city centre, the council said. Some 3,000 apartments are under construction on the former Glass Bottle factory site on the peninsula. The council had eight years ago intended to build the bridge itself, but set aside its plans when the bridge was incorporated into the BusConnects scheme.
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The Ringsend CBC will extend from Sean Moore Road, beside the Glass Bottle site, to Talbot Memorial Bridge beside the Custom House, running on both sides of the Liffey.
The six other schemes approved by the board run to the city centre from Liffey Valley, Clongriffin, Belfield/Blackrock, Ballymun/Finglas, Swords and Blanchardstown.
Routes from Lucan, Templeogue/Rathfarnham, Tallaght/Clondalkin, Kimmage and Bray await the decision of the board.
Two of the approved schemes, Clongriffin and Belfield/Blackrock, are the subject of ongoing judicial review proceedings.
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