Here are some updates on the Stepaside Village Improvement project. Overall, the plans are to improve walking and cycling access to Stepaside village, improve road safety on the approach and within the village and make Stepaside village a more attractive destination for people to live nearby, shop in, work in and visit.
Last April, we announced a public consultation for Phase 1 of the Stepaside village Improvement project. Phase 1 includes proposed improvements to walking and cycling access to Stepaside village (I wrote a full post about this last year). Phase 2 designs for improving the layout of Stepaside village itself will be publicised and consulted on over the coming months in summer 2024.
The council are now continuing to detailed design for Phase 1, and engineers are hoping to start construction by the end of the year. Council officials have also engaged with McGarrell Reilly Homes on the greenway link within Stepaside Park that will join Phase 1 with the Cruagh Greenway (planning permission granted by An Bord Pleanála in September 2023). Here’s a rough drawing I’ve done on what’s planned:
Public consultation on Phase 1
The public consultation ran from April to May 2023 and was advertised on the DLR website and social media channels. I delivered letters about the public consultation to every home in St Patrick’s Park and Stepaside Park to ensure that local people in the immediate vicinity were kept informed.
75 valid submissions were made to the public consultation, with 64% being supportive of the proposal and 32% against it. You can read the full report here.
One of the issues raised during the public consultation was the changing of the Stepaside Park junction to have traffic lights. The response of the engineers to this is that the 2014 planning permission for the most recent phase of Stepaside Park (D13A/0190 and ABP PL06D.242585 (Condition 9)) requires the junction to be signalised with traffic lights.
I raised a number of issues with the engineers too which will be taken into account in the final designs:
- Spaces for pedestrians and cyclists to be kept separate, including at junctions.
- Retain as much of the existing greenery and trees as possible.
- Try to do something to address the parking issues around the entrance to St. Patrick’s Park
- Protect the planting done by the St. Patrick’s Park residents association. And if that’s not possible, replant them elsewhere on the green with the agreement of the community members who maintain the planting.
Speed limit changes to Stepaside Village
In terms of road safety, Stepaside village itself is being proposed to have a lower speed limit, as part of the countywide Speed Limit Review (more details here). This is due to be decided and voted on by councillors in April 2024.
You can see below the white lines showing the extent of the proposed 30kph zone and the orange roads are remaining as 50kph:
Phase 2 of Stepaside Village Improvement project
While Phase 1 stops at the pedestrian crossing next to St Patrick’s Park, Phase 2 will involve improvements to Stepaside Village itself. There are still some elements of the plan to iron out and there are a number of different things to balance as part of this phase of the project.
Phase 1 involves slightly narrowing the road on approach to Stepaside village from the south, but doesn’t affect the number of traffic lanes or location of parking/loading bays. But Phase 2 is going to mean some more change than that and some difficult choices to make.
Another thing that’s being looked at for Phase 1 is addressing issues around the large amount of illegal and disruptive parking that happens at the entrances to St Patrick’s Park. I’m fully supportive of the St Patrick’s Park residents’ requests to put a stop to this and improve safety in their estate.
Further updates
I’ll share another update once there are some firmer dates for construction of Phase 1 and some preliminary designs to share of Phase 2. In the meantime, feel free to contact me about any element of the project.
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