Dublin Port Company has plans to put in place the major missing link in the delivery of cycling infrastructure throughout Dublin bay within two years.
Cyclists will take the off-road route from Tolk river estuary, which is opposite Clontarf, to Liffey quayside. The route will enable Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council and Dublin City Council to finally finish the Sutton to Sandycove cycleway.
Dublin Port plans to send an application to the city council for approval for the cycle route next April. The cycle route will run inside the port lands opposite East Wall Road.
Eamonn O’Reilly, the port company chief executive, said, “This one of the most hostile stretches of urban roadway in the city. You may not want to walk or cycle on it because it is noisy and dusty. With the Liffey-Tolka Project, we are going to create a brand new area of the public realm. It is going to be a great place for moving through.”
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The Minister says, “It is now safer to cycle than most people believe it to be.”
Starting at Tolka estuary at Bond Road, the 1.4km route will move south in the direction of Promenade Road. The route will cross a pedestrian bridge and a new cycle. Then, the route continues across the lands of the port parallel to EastWall Road, meeting the Liffey side cycle path at the roundabout before the East Link bridge.
The current width of the footpath is 2m wide. The plan is to extend it to create a 12m pedestrian and cycling space. 140 trees, which will line the path, will mitigate air pollution and noise. Grafton Architects will design the cycle route. The work on the cycle is to start next September and it is expected to be finished by the end of 2022.
The cycle path will link up the cycle paths of the council. Mr. O’Reilly said, “The obvious next step is to extend the cycling infrastructure to the Alfie Byrne Road.”
The S2S project was proposed in 2002. This continuous Dublin Bay cycle running along the Clontarf coast in the south of Sutton Cross ends on Alfie Byrne Road. Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council recently installed segregated cycle paths along the coast between Sandycove and Blackrock as part of Covid-19 mobility measures. In January, the city council plans to open a cycleway in Sandymount, along Strand Road. The city council is expected to begin to plan for a route linking the Merion Gates at the Strand Road’s southern end and Blackrock.
The construction of the Tolka Estuary Greenway is expected to begin next month. It is a 3.2km route along the Dublin Port’s northern perimeter. It starts at Bond Road and ends at the east end of the docks. The port company expects to complete it in early 2022.
Mr. O’Reilly said, “The Liffey-Tolka project is the most significant port-city integration project. It will allow access to various port tourism projects. To open up Dublin Port to Dubliners, we had to cut the Gordian knot of the complicated challenge.”
