Objection to Amendments 3 and 9
Dear Sir/Madam,
I write as Secretary of the Lockhouse Way Residents’ Association (SDCPPN-1433), on behalf of households at Lockhouse Way, Seven Mills, Clonburris.
Walking, cycling and compact growth are welcome aims for Clonburris, and this wea are not opposing every change now on display. Our objection is confined to two items. Amendment No. 3, as drafted, would remove a planned vehicular crossing of the railway. Amendment No. 9 would tighten parking management on the false premise that Seven Mills already enjoys high-quality public transport.
Amendment No. 3 — do not drop the vehicular railway crossing
What is proposed is straightforward: the railway overbridge planned for vehicles becomes a pedestrian and cycle bridge only; the connecting Link Street is recast as a Local Street and a Strategic Pedestrian and Cycle Route; and the vehicular overbridge is struck from the infrastructure phasing list in Table 4.2.
A dedicated walking and cycling crossing is something we want. It cannot, on its own, do the job the 2019 Planning Scheme assigned to a vehicular bridge. If that crossing is lost:
everyday car trips that would have used the bridge are pushed onto Fonthill Road North and Lynch’s Lane, including the junction that is the way in and out of Seven Mills;
people living on one side of the tracks must leave the SDZ and loop around on Fonthill Road North to reach homes, shops or community uses on the other side;
Seven Mills becomes still more reliant on a single busy access, which matters if Fonthill Road North is blocked or heavily queued — including for emergency vehicles; and
residents who cannot reasonably walk or cycle the crossing — people with limited mobility, older neighbours, families with small children, anyone who needs a car for a given trip — are left with a much longer detour. A foot and cycle bridge is not the same facility for those households.
The Systra Bridge Removal Assessment Modelling Report is cited as comfort that the road network can absorb the change. The numbers in that report do not read as comfort. Displaced traffic is assigned to Fonthill Road North and Lynch’s Lane. At Junction 8 on Fonthill Road North, Degree of Saturation on the northbound right turn rises by 90% in the morning peak and 60.4% in the evening peak; traffic on the western approach rises by 42.4%. Systra flags possible widening and extra turning lanes. Junction 7 also worsens in the morning peak.
That extra load sits on the same junction Seven Mills already uses. Residents already sit through more than one full signal cycle trying to leave the estate in the morning. The estate is not finished. Later phases will add more cars to the same pinch point. Taking away the planned second route, while pouring other SDZ traffic onto Fonthill Road North, would make a bad access worse.
The model also leans on a transport future that is not here. There is still no bus through Seven Mills. DART+ South West — the rail upgrade the low-car strategy needs — is put back to after 2035 in the National Development Plan Review 2025 Sectoral Investment Plan for Transport (December 2025). Kishoge is not operating as the local station the Planning Scheme counted on. Cutting a planned road link now, and hoping “future transport policy interventions” will tidy up what is left, is not a sound basis for a material amendment.
Traffic does not disappear because the bridge is no longer for cars. It is moved to other streets and other front doors. Concerns of households next to the bridge have to be weighed against the cost of that displacement for Seven Mills and the rest of the built community.
We asks that Amendment No. 3 be rejected, or rewritten, so that:
a vehicular north–south crossing of the railway is kept, with proper walking and cycling provision on or beside it;
if any downgrade still proceeds, capacity and residential amenity at the Fonthill Road North / Seven Mills junction are assessed in full and any works needed are committed before the change takes effect;
the case for dropping the vehicular link is tested against public transport that is actually running, not against a timetable; and
a phasing trigger is written in, so the vehicular link cannot be removed until a real road or public-transport alternative is in use for people already living here.
Amendment No. 9 — parking rules cannot rest on transport we do not have
Amendment No. 9 is framed as a tidy-up of Section 2.2.6. The commentary around it treats Clonburris as already “served by high-quality public transport” and pushes more flexible, more tightly managed parking, including a rule that on-street spaces are not given to individual households.
That is not how Seven Mills works:
no scheduled bus serves the neighbourhood;
DART+ South West is, on the Government’s present programme, more than a decade away; and
households still need a car for a large share of ordinary trips — work, school runs, shopping, GP and hospital visits, looking after family.
A low-parking scheme only holds if people can get about without a car. They cannot, and they will not be able to for a long time. Using Amendment No. 9 to squeeze residential parking, to stop households having a usable on-street space, or to “future-proof” by taking spaces away now, would leave people with neither enough parking nor a bus or train they can actually board.
Marking EV bays and accessible bays clearly, and stopping cars being left where they block others, is fine. Using this amendment to cut, shuffle or further ration residential parking — or to pass parking and EV costs onto residents or the owners’ management company — before public transport is running, is not.
We asks that Amendment No. 9 be rewritten so that:
parking is only reduced, reassigned or further restricted once public transport serving that part of the SDZ is in operation, not before;
accessible bays stay required, close to front doors, and cannot be lost to EV or “future-proofing” spaces;
parking strategies and Mobility Management Plans are judged against services that exist, not services that are hoped for; and
residents and owners’ management companies are not billed for parking or EV measures that flow from this amendment.
Why these two amendments should be read together
Dropping the vehicular bridge and tightening parking at the same time would lock in a transport-led scheme before the transport arrives. That order is the problem. Restrict first and wait for buses and DART later would hit an established neighbourhood that already has no scheduled public transport.
The amended Planning Scheme should say plainly that walking, cycling and — above all — public transport have to be in place with, or ahead of, the restrictions those modes are meant to justify.
Please record this submission in the Chief Executive’s Report to An Coimisiún Pleanála. We are willing to discuss any of the points above with the Planning Authority.
Yours faithfully,
Vignesh Sekar
Secretary, Lockhouse Way Residents’ Association