‘If you park here again, I’m going to slash your tyres’

Congestion and parking issues in Citywest led to a discussion on transportation and car ownership between councillors.

Calls have been made to put Citywest forward to become a new transport hub in South Dublin, upgrading the public transport in the area to allow it to become more interconnected and work to deter the existing traffic issues.

Councillor Kay Keane stated that the creation of a transport hub in the area could encourage people to leave the cars at home and lower the usage of personal motors on the roads.

Cllr Keane also referred to instances of threats to slash tyres due to disagreements over parking spaces.

The Tallaght South councillor said: “People are basically sticking notes on people’s cars – ‘if you park here again, I’m going to slash your tyres’ kind of thing, but it’s actually real . . .

“. . . [A transport hub] would, I think, enable Citywest to become a centre to show, if public transport is managed correctly and it’s frequent and it’s not always packed, that this could point to people being able to leave their cars at home and rely on public transport to get them from A to B.”

Citywest is currently connected to the city centre by the Red Line Luas, as well as the 65B and 77A buses – other buses like the S8 and W6 also operate in Citywest.

The council has recognised the creation of sustainable transport or mobility hubs as something deserving of further focus from their Planning and Transport Department.

An allocation was made in the recent Three-Year Capital Programme to look at the provision of transport hubs in the county via a study and work to “promote behavioural change” to more sustainable modes of movement.

Citywest is expected to be an area included in this study when it commences, which will look at the feasibility of sustainable transport works to the area, identify needs and outline the benefits for all localities examined in the research.

The local authority also noted their goal to provide compact residential developments with neighbourhood parking facilities that put shared and sustainable modes of transport first, as well as space for other vehicles.

Councillor Paddy Holohan noted that his kids love to take public transport but criticised decisions from the council that he felt caused the transport problems in the area.

Cllr Holohan stated that there was “no democratic input” mentioned as an aspect of the plans to create new hubs in the county.

He said: “We live in a free society. If you want to own a car, you own a car . . . we’ve got a few little months, a tiny little sliver in this country where it’s beautiful to be to go and stand at a bus stop and stuff like that.

“If you are privileged enough to be able to work hard and own a car and pay for that car, you should have a right to own that.

“No one should be coming along without a democratic input.”

Cllr Louise Dunne noted that overdevelopment and bad planning will lead to issues like traffic problems in Citywest, reports of tyre slashing and more across South Dublin being raised by future elected members in the same chambers.

Cllr Dunne summarised: “This is down to bad planning.”

She added that she needs to travel by car to get her children to college and a crèche before she goes to work herself.

The Tallaght South councillor called for a car-park hub to be installed in Citywest but noted that a compulsory purchase order would likely be necessary.

Cllr Jess Spear welcomed the possibility of a transport hub being established in Citywest and acknowledged that many of the next steps stated by the council are more about assessment of needs and feasibility.

Cllr Spear called for a timeline to be provided soon on the transport hub studies so that residents can know that “there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

She stated: “I don’t want to set the wrong expectation that ‘oh, it’s coming in a year, or it’s coming in two years’, if it’s not coming until five.”