Cycling Certainty on the Seafront

There have been challenging conditions for cyclists along the Clontarf seafront over the last year - both natural and artificial. This article is about how we fixed one of these challenges relating to access to the coastal mobility route.

Closures and uncertainty

For most of the summer of 2025, the coastal active travel route in Clontarf was closed so that Dublin City Council could complete flood relief works for the river Wad. No warning was given that the cycle lane was going to close and no alternative route was provided (other than "go on the road, it'll be grand, good luck with the traffic"). So for about 4 months last year, Ireland's flagship active mobility route was out of action without no warning or alternative route provided.

In January 2026, storms and flood warnings caused Dublin City Council to set up temporary flood defences along the seafront in Clontarf. The bike lane goes right along the sea wall in places and when the temporary concrete flood barriers were moved into position they cut right across the bike path - check out the video below to see my fellow councillor Paddy Monahan getting an unpleasant surprise early one morning!

Anyone who has ever driven a car in Dublin knows that this would never happen on a road: road closures are clearly signposted and alternative routes are provided. Local and national government are serious about decarbonising Dublin's transport system (just look at the list of projects under way: new light rail, DART+, MetroLink and the Greater Dublin Active Travel Network) and that seriousness needs to be reflected in how we keep this infrastructure available to use in all conditions.

In a city-wide transport network, each mode of transport (walking, cycling, buses, rail, trams, cars etc) has an important part to play and the council needs to pay attention to ALL of them. It's not good enough for Dubliners to find they can't use the safe cycling infrastructure their taxes paid for because the weather is bad or there's some building going on. Safe, segregated infrastructure is incredibly important in encouraging less confident cyclists (and particularly children) to get out on their bikes - a major reason that people don't cycle is that they are (rightly) concerned about safety. We want more people to cycle, so we need to make it easier for them to do so - hence the need to keep the lanes open.

Keeping the lanes open

Paddy and I brought a motion to the North Central Area Committee last week, proposing that in the event of this bike lane being closed for any reason, an alternative segregated route will be provided. In practise this means some cones or barriers will be placed on the road so that cyclists are separated from motor traffic per the "hierarchy of controls" safety framework. The point of this is to make sure that people who have planned their journey don't meet any nasty surprises that might put them in danger now or put them off cycling in future.

I'm delighted to say the motion passed, so from now on we should all be able to cycle along the seafront, safe in the knowledge that we won't get bumped onto a dangerous road full of traffic. Happy cycling!

Paddy and I made a little video welcoming this development below: