Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Under the National Development Plan 2021-2030, BusConnects programmes will be substantially delivered in all of Ireland’s five cities by the end of the decade. These programmes will significantly enhance the quality of public transport in our cities and also include the parallel development of high-quality cycle lanes.

BusConnects will be hugely transformative for all five of our cities, including Cork. Like all transformations, it will require change. I agree that it is important that this type of change is communicated in a way that allows people give their feedback to assist with that change.

In June 2022, the NTA published proposals for a network of sustainable transport corridors, setting out the type of bus and cycle infrastructure along those key corridors. Public consultation regarding these proposals ran until early in October 2022, with close to 3,000 submissions received.

These submissions were all carefully considered by the authority and have informed the most recent round of public consultations on what are now the preferred route options for the 11 corridors. The consultation launched on 30 March and will run for eight weeks until 25 May. The most recent round of consultation is being supported through various different means of engagement with the public including specific public information events and community forum meetings along the corridors, as well as the usual advertising and leafletting one would expect.

The Deputy will acknowledge that transport modelling is a highly complex and technical area and I have been advised that it is most useful to undertake it when the details of schemes are broadly finalised, which is not the case yet. Undertaking and publishing detailed traffic assessments at a stage designs are evolving and changing means that the published analysis quickly becomes invalid as even small items, such as the introduction of turn restrictions at a junction, can alter and invalidate the analysis work undertaken.

I encourage everyone to put their views forward regarding the published material and at the various events and meetings being organised so that the proposal for the corridors can be developed further to the stage for which the Deputy calls. That would allow for the type of detailed transport modelling referred to then be done.

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