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Cork City Council has passed an "anti-car policy run by apparatchiks in Dublin"

The strategy will see the city’s main thoroughfare closed to traffic for three and a half hours a day.

St. Patrick's Street, Cork IrishJaunt IrishJaunt

CORK CITY COUNCIL has voted to approve a new traffic plan that will see the city’s main thoroughfare closed to traffic for three and a half hours a day.

The City Centre Movement Strategy was voted through at a meeting of the council last night and will change much of how the city moves.

It will include works which will:

  • Close St Patrick’s Street to private car traffic between 3pm and 6.30pm
  • Reduce the time a motorist can park to an hour in many areas
  • Install CCTV at many junctions around Patrick’s Street
  • Add a pedestrian crossing between Cook Street and Opera Lane
  • Make pay parking up until 8.30pm instead of 6.30pm.

The plan also contains major plans for the Bachelor’s Quay and Grattan Street areas.

However, it has been harshly criticised by some on the council, most notably Fianna Fáil’s Tim Brosnan.

Brosnan this morning told TheJournal.ie that the plan would “increase the north-south divide” in the city.

It’s an anti-car policy run by apparatchiks in Dublin. The council staff here are being told that they’re only getting the money if they do the work and they’re taking the money because they have nothing else to do.

“People feel like they can’t go against the plan.”

Brosnan criticised the council’s use of the Part 8 planning mechanism for the scheme, saying it had been used to push through a plan that would impact negatively on residents of Cork’s Middle Parish.

I would be very cynical about the plan. The cycle lanes that have been added haven’t increased the experience of cyclists and parking bays planned for Alfred Street aren’t wide enough to hold a car.

“There is no consciousness about what is being done there.”

Brosnan said the plan will mean traffic will be forced to go east-west around the city, rather than through it.

“North-south traffic will be chaos. They can’t handle a wet Friday as it is. No brain power is being used here by reputedly smart people.”

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