Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 17 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

National Development Plan 2021-2030: Discussion

Photo of Gerry HorkanGerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

For the benefit of the Chair, the working population of Sandyford pre-pandemic was about 35,000 a day going in and out of it, and we were told that Limerick was 25,000 a day. An enormous number of people rely on the Luas line, which we talked about earlier.

In terms of the eastern bypass that has been removed from the draft strategy, the Minister and I know the area very well. While I never asked for the eastern bypass to be built I wanted to make sure that the reservation that is there is not immediately removed and promptly built on because that is a corridor that could be used for projects. One could use it for the UCD to Sandyford DART line up through that reservation. These are virgin fields and the project would not involve the relocation of a lot of services. It would also be far easier to build on it than in other places.

In the mid-2000s, there was a proposal to create a blue line in the form of a bus rapid transit corridor.

That proposal would have linked the Sandyford Luas and business district through the eastern bypass reservation via University College Dublin, UCD, to RTÉ and St. Vincent's Hospital and connecting to the DART. There is an enormous number of trip generators along that route and I would ask the Minister, who is familiar with that area, to look at that proposal again and see if something could be done on that corridor, even if it was a cycleway initially. Some of it is private ownership as the Minister knows and some of it is in local authority ownership but that could be used.

On BusConnects, I am hopeful that it will do what it is supposed to do. The Stillorgan quiet bus corridor is more than 20 years old. It is brilliant and it does a good job at a fraction of the cost of the Luas but the Luas is a magnet, as we said, and the more lines we have the better. We need to incentivise people into cycling more and let them learn that it is a brilliant way of getting around. On roads, page 64 of the NDP lists 31 projects that were in a previous NDP subject to further approvals. How many of those may ever be built? Depending on how much time he has I ask the Minister to deal with the eastern bypass first.

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