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

Very simple, put barriers on the car park (at least car park 1) and charge €20 per hour for parking.

I would point out that many people who use Westwood, do so by walking/cycling/public transport. It is in the middle of a dense residential area, where lots of people can walk to it from. It is a 10 minutes walk from a major growing business park that is also served by a free mini bus. DART station right next to it, multiple bus lanes and now one of the cities busiest bike lanes. You really can't get a much better connected gym for walking/cycling/PT.

Of course they could always look into build a multi storey car park at either car park 1 or 2. Maybe do a three way deal with DCC, Irish Rail and Westwood to develop the two car parks next to the DART station into a shared multi storey car park and close the one in front of the Gym.

If you put paid parking in, they will have to pay or leave their car home, simple as that.

Tough if they aren't happy with it and tough on Westwood if they aren't, neither have a god given right to block bus lanes and cycle lanes.

BTW I'd disagree that high earners don't use public transport, lots of folks with high paying jobs using the DART on the way too and from work, etc.

You do that via barriers and paid parking. Basically the issue is too many people trying to park in car park 1, thus leading to queues.

By making it €20 [1] per hour for car park 1 (while free for car park 2) you encourage less people to use car park 1 (the price sensitive ones) and thus eliminate the queues.

[1] doesn't need to be €20, could be €5 or €50, whatever the price needs to be so that car park 1 is never full and thus no queues.

It is the same concept how congestion charging works or the tolls on the port tunnel. The aim isn't to stop everyone from using them, but to reduce usage to a sustainable level.

The point would be to set the parking charge high enough so that the car park is never full, so there would be no waiting at the barrier, there would always be space available in the car park.

No, the problem is blocking the bus / cycle lanes for long periods of time. Doesn't matter how expensive or not the car is!

I disagree it would be just moving the problem 10meters down. There is enough space in car park 2, it is just many people are too lazy to walk from it. I'd often see people queuing for a full car park 1, while there are plenty of free spaces in car park 2.

If you put paid parking on car park 1, then you better balance the utility between the two car parks. Price sensitive members would be more likely to use he free parking at car park 2, while the lazy ones can pay €20 or whatever to park next to the door.

This really isn't rocket science.

If you aren't happy with charging for parking, then another solution.

Barriers on car park 1, that only close when the car park is full. But here is the important bit, when this happens, car park 1 remains closed for the next hour or 2, even if some cars leave. Signs clearly showing that car park 1 is closed for the next hour or two.

Would stop people from queueing and would push people to use car park 2 instead at busy times.

Except car park 2 is actually owned by DCC and thus public property, so you'd have to ask why the public taxpayer is allowing an expensive private gym to use this car park?

While strictly speaking you can't force a private company to do anything, the authorities can certainly take various actions that would hurt said private company if they didn't play ball.

For instance DCC could easily pull the use of car park 2 and the NTA install automated bus lane fine cameras outside and leave them deal with the fallout of greatly reduced car park capacity.

So really it is very much in their interest to work with DCC, NTA and the Gardai on coming up with a solution.

Probably the best solution would be for them to build a multi-storey car park. Ironically if DCC weren't leaving them use car park 2 for a song, they would likely have already been forced to do that by now.

BTW, the cycle lane in Fairview Park alongside the Tolka river between Alfie Byrne Road and Fairview is open. Looks like some signage etc. to do yet, but you can cycle it now. A nice addition.

The cycle lane along Alfie Byrne Road from East Point Business Park and down through East Wall is progressing too.