Despite parents’ pleas, council has no plans to make walking and cycling across the Chapelizod Bypass to get to school safer

On Monday morning about 8.35am, a steady stream of parents and children walked, scooted and cycled north from Kilmainham across the Chapelizod Bypass to get to Gaelscoil Inse Chór.

They crossed two westbound lanes to a big island, then three eastbound lanes to another island, then a slip road coming off the bypass toward the school in Islandbridge.

The children in their glitter backpacks and rainbow bike helmets look tiny and out of place and vulnerable in this wide open sweep of asphalt and fast-moving cars, SUVs, vans and HGVs.

One morning on the way to school, a driver stopped their car at a red light far ahead of the white line, blocking the cycle lane, and when people started to complain, it backed up, Melinda Rangel reported on the Active Travel Collision Tracker.

She and her son were crossing at the pedestrian crossing, with the permission of the little green man. When the driver started to reverse, he “wasn’t looking and almost hit my son”, Rangel said in her report of the 25 September 2023 incident.

More recently, about three months ago, Adrienne Lee was on the way home from school about 2pm, on a bike, with her six-year-old and four-year-old on a bike and scooter, she said Saturday by phone.

“We were slow to set off across the road, and a car going about 80 flew through a red light,” Lee said. “If we’d crossed when the green man changed we would have been dead.”

Parents have been campaigning for years to get the council to make the intersection safer for them and their children going to and from primary school. Community activist Zoe Obeimhen has been pushing the issue too, including with a recent petition.

But when Labour Councillor Darragh Moriarty asked council managers whether a school traffic warden could be stationed at the junction, and whether the junction could be made safer, the written replies from different council departments weren’t encouraging.

The request for a school traffic warden “will be assessed”. The junction’s design is “to standard”. There aren’t resources available to put in “school zone” safety measures around the school.

Hazardous routes

The safety of kids coming across the Chapelizod Bypass from Kilmainham, Inchicore, and other points south is “a big concern for us here at the school, a lot of the parents walk down or they cycle”, said school secretary Erin de Brig, by phone on Monday.

The intersection is especially dangerous on wet days, de Brig said. “There’s been a few parents that have come to us really kind of shook, where a car has skidded and almost hit their kids,” she said.

School parent Síne Kelly says “that junction is so huge”, and the light sequence leaves parents waiting on a traffic island with cars and HGVs rushing by on both sides. “You just feel very vulnerable, like you shouldn’t be there,” she says.

Then, since drivers break red lights so often, when it’s time to cross the next section, “Even though you have the green light to cross, you are literally looking all around you to see if someone’s going to break a light,” she says.

There’s another crossing 600m west, which is a bit less complex: cross two lanes, a traffic island, and then two more lanes, then go through War Memorial Gardens to the school. “But for a lot of students, that’s a huge detour,” Kelly says.

For others, it’s the most direct way – like Jane Toolan and her kids. But this crossing from Memorial Road into the park still has its problems, she says.

“It’s a horrible road, you’ve small kids on a bicycle in front of you and you don’t know how they’re going to behave, they can be erratic,” she says. “So your heart is in your mouth every time you’re going across.”

Before Covid-19 hit, the pedestrian-crossing lights left enough time for parents and kids to get across all four lanes to the safety of the park in one go, she says.

During the lockdowns, though, the council shortened the timing and they’d get stuck on the island – “parents, kids, dogs, bikes, scooters” – with drivers flying by on both sides, Toolan said.

“One day my four-year-old misread the light and went out in the road and nearly got killed,” she said. After that, she kept after the council until they changed the timing so they could cross in one go, she says.

“I feel like I went on a rampage, I just wouldn’t take no for an answer,” she says. It’s been back to that timing for about two years now, she says.

Still though, the entrance to the War Memorial Gardens is restricted, so if a big group crosses all at once, the last to make it can end up waiting in the road for their turn to get into the park, Toolan says.

“Once you get across and into the park there’s a collective sigh of relief,” she says. “You feel everyone’s blood pressure drop.”

Ideas for improvements

The petition started by Obeimhen, the local community activist, calls on the council to make the intersection safer.

Toolan, Kelly, Lee and Rangel – parents of kids at the school – as well as de Brig, secretary at the school, all said they’d like the council to get traffic wardens to help with the crossings to and from school.

When Moriarty asked the council about this, the response he got was that the request would “be assessed and referred to the Traffic Advisory Group for examination. The Councillor will be informed of the recommendation in due course.”

Moriarty, the Labour councillor, also asked “Can DCC Traffic investigate a permanent way to make this junction safer”? The response: “This junction has been provided with pedestrian crossing facilities and these facilities are to standard.”

In terms of putting in markings to make it clear where the school is, to alert drivers to be careful, like big colourful spots on the street, or giant-pencil-like bollards along the kerb, the council said it wasn’t in a position to do that just now.

“The School Zone team is currently resourced to deliver School Zones to Round 2 schools on the Safe Routes to School programme, which is funded by the National Transport Authority,” the response said.

“Once this Safe Routes to School list is completed, the team will have capacity to engage with other schools, including Gaelscoil Inse Chór, about safety measures at their school, subject to the availability of resources,” it said.

And all the red-light breaking at the intersection is an issue for the Gardaí, the council’s response to Moriarty says. “The Transport Advisory Group will raise the matter of breaking traffic signals with An Garda Síochána to ensure that enforcement occurs at this location,” it says.

A spokesperson for An Garda Síochána has not replied to a query sent Friday as to whether the council has yet been in touch with the force about this issue at this intersection.

Dreaming (much) bigger, the parents say they’d love to see a pedestrian bridge across the Chaeplizod Bypass. There’s one about 1.2km west across the same big road, after all.

“But I just don’t imagine that happening, and anyway those things don’t happen overnight, and we cross every day so we need something done in the meantime,” says Rangel, the parent whose son a driver almost backed into in the intersection.

Says Lee, another of the parents: “Someone’s going to be seriously hurt on that road. What are they waiting for?”

Knock-on effects

Even if no one gets hurt or killed, the fear of it has impacts, the parents of kids who go to Gaelscoil Inse Chór say.

It might make some parents consider sending their kids to one of the other schools in the area, instead of the gaelscoil, they say.

Does the crossing put people off the school? “Potentially,” says Toolan.

Says Lee: “Any other school it might. I’ve had chats with parents – you might leave it if it was any other place.” But this school is “such a treasure”, she says.

De Brig, the school secretary, who also has kids at the school, said similar.

“I’d say it could do,” she says, “but when you get down to our school, it’s in a beautiful, safe spot, almost like a country school, with all the trees.”

For parents who do send their kids to the school, the hazards of the crossing limit their independence, they say.

“I can never see myself letting my kids walk to school on their own,” says Lee. “Ever. Even in sixth class.”

And some parents who could walk with their kids to the school choose to drive, to avoid the crossing, Toolan says. “Which is a shame because it’s adding to traffic.”

Many of those who do still walk or cycle or scoot it find it very stressful. “It takes the joy out of having an active commute to a school in a lovely location,” Toolan says.