PLANS FOR a permanent ban on cars crossing Dublin city centre will be put out to public consultation by Dublin City Council early next year.
Senior engineer in the council's traffic department Eoghan Madden yesterday told councillors that the city's roads were at capacity and the centre could no longer be used as a cross-town route.
"What we do need to take out is through traffic. People using the city centre to get from A to B will have to be taken out of the volume of traffic in the city centre," he told the council's traffic committee.
It was necessary to retain car access to the city for residents, and retail and other businesses, he said, but routes crossing the city from north to south would have to be maintained for other modes of transport such as buses and Luas.
Population growth and increases in car ownership meant the situation would have to be dealt with sooner rather than later, he said.
The numbers commuting into the city centre each day are expected to rise from the current 200,000 to 375,000 by 2020, the council said.
"Any increases in people coming into the city every day can't be by car. If we are to cater for future growth, we have to look at something other than the private car," said Mr Madden.
The council was in talks with Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus about giving buses priority at junctions, and was also working to improve cycling facilities to encourage people to leave their cars at home, Mr Madden said.
A greater number of areas with pedestrian priority were also essential, but, Mr Madden said that the council was moving away from a policy of fully pedestrianised streets for safety reasons.
"We are slow now to fully pedestrianise streets because anti-social behaviour can occur. If people know that a car could come around the next corner that behaviour is less likely to occur, so we don't see letting cars through streets as completely detrimental."
Labour councillor Andrew Montague said other areas such as Wexford Street were "bottlenecks" and should also be considered for public transport use only. Capel Street should also be considered for pedestrianisation, Mr Montague said.
The proposals for a cross-town car ban are under consideration as part of the formulation of the next city development plan which comes into force in 2012.
Restrictions on cars in the area between St Stephen's Green and O'Connell Street will be in place within the next two years, to allow the construction of the Transport 21 projects Metro North and the Luas interconnector line.
It is likely that these restrictions would be partly incorporated into the next development plan.
A report compiled by the council's planning department, which was presented to the traffic committee yesterday, also found that co-ordination between the various transport agencies was sometimes disjointed. Several areas needed to be addressed to ensure the car ban would be effective, the report said, including the poor-quality passenger interchange facilities, difficulties in accessing public transport by foot or bicycle, congestion and restricted capacity at peak times and poor information systems.
