Clontarf to City Centre Cycle & Bus Priority Project discussion (renamed)

I travel this route twice a week on the bus and as we move towards the end of August there is an increase in traffic through Fairview and queues at the junctions and back into Fairview. I'm tending to be through there between 08:00-08:10 so I can only assume it gets worse until around 09:00. I don't know what it's like from the Richmond Road side trying to get on to Ballybough Road but I would have thought it was busy there too.

Futher down the line as I walk up Portland Row there is a significant increase in traffic here coming back down to turn on to Amiens Street. One of the days last week it was full with delays back on to the NCR.

Once schools go back there is going to be a significant increase in delays for cars through Fairview in the morning. Whether you care about that or not is a different discussion but it is the reality.

I live in North Strand and work in D4 (although I've just left my job so haven't been traveling to work this summer.).

In general though, every year without doubt the traffic drops during summer and I start DRIVING to work (yes shoot me). I get in in 20-25minutes. PT takes 30-45 minutes depending on connection times.

I get a shock every year when schools return and I quickly switch back to PT and ditch the car. Hopefully this year, if there is enough chaos, people like me who needlessly use their car will simply ditch it and use PT

Well:

a. that's going to be approx 10:30pm, hardly peak times.

b. you'd be stone mad to try and drive near Croke park with 80k+ people spilling out around it. even if the roads were open you'd be sitting there for the hour in your car.

Well there's nobody to blame for that except Garth Brooks really.

Traffic inevitably increases between 8 and 10 when the schools go back for a number of reasons. Aside from people just doing a school run, there are going to be teachers driving to and from work (people seem to forget about them!).

At the same time people who currently leave home earlier or later, may now drop their children off at school en route to work and that means far more people travelling at or around the same time.

Now as to how many of these groups could use the bus or train, or indeed walk or cycle, that’s another thing.

Traffic is so light at the moment it’s difficult to gauge what it’s going to be like when schools reopen.

The single outbound lane through Fairview seems to mean traffic moves faster than two lanes having to merge.

I think they should make all Dublin Buses that pass through Fairview free for the duration of the roadworks. Out of the €63m budget, it would be a pittance.

You must be great craic at parties.

Absolutely and I do get that, but I wasn’t really referring to the sudden increase but rather to why there are the numbers there are. Some people do seem to forget that a lot of teachers drive as well. It’s not just parents dropping kids to school as you point out.

Then in a few weeks the colleges go back, and Dublin Bus will get the annual barrage of tweets from people saying that they can’t get on the bus anymore before said people realise that they need to leave earlier. Every year it’s the same!

This happens after every concert in Croke Park. I used to live near there. It's just to filter people out as efficiently as possible.

Nothing new there.

Clontarf road at Alfie Byrne section being reduced to a single lane in both directions this weekend. Best avoided!