The longest-running High Court case against the National Transport Authority’s (NTA) BusConnects programme is expected to be resolved by the removal of a planned bus stop.
An Artane resident in March of last year initiated judicial review proceedings against An Bord Pleanála’s decision to grant permission for the Clongriffin to city centre corridor due to concerns over the location of a bus stop.
The corridor, granted permission by the board in January last year, is one of 12 segregated bus routes planned as part of the €4 billion scheme to transform the capital’s bus services.
Áine Kelly challenged the board’s decision to permit the removal of two existing sheltered bus stops on Malahide Road and to replace them with one unprotected stop outside her home, which is part of a terrace of single-storey cottages with no front gardens.
RM Block
Ms Justice Emily Farrell said the planning board had “significantly mischaracterised the serious concerns of the resident” about privacy and security at her home and dismissed them as “matters of annoyance or inconvenience”.
Ms Kelly and her neighbours had made several submissions to the NTA during its pre-application consultation process, and to the board during the planning process.
She said she and her neighbours are in favour of the BusConnects project, and the Clongriffin corridor, but opposed to the removal of the two existing stops with shelters and their replacement with an uncovered stop.
The submissions centred on the likelihood that, given there was no space on the footpath for a bus shelter, passengers waiting for the bus would congregate directly outside their homes, blocking windows and doors and compromising privacy and safety.
Buses would run on a 24-hour schedule with up to 30 buses per hour at peak times, the court heard.
In her written judgment this week, Ms Justice Farrell said it required “little imagination” to understand the resident’s submission “as a concern that the adverse impact on their privacy, and their property, including the ability to open windows in their homes, would be worsened by the placing of a bus stop immediately outside” the cottage. This “would necessarily involve the congregating of passengers outside her home”, the judge said.
However, she said neither the board nor the NTA “considered whether an alternative position should or could be found to avoid the consequences” outlined by the resident.
The benefit of addressing the complaints “was not weighed or considered in rejecting the alternatives and preferring the location which had been chosen”.
In dismissing the concerns in relation to the bus stop, the reasons given by the board “were inadequate”, Ms Justice Farrell said. The board’s “mischaracterisation” of the concerns as a matter of “annoyance” was a “failure to understand and correctly characterise the submission of a breach of rights, privacy and security at the dwelling”, which meant “the reason for rejecting the applicant’s submission was legally defective”.
Ms Justice Farrell said she broadly accepted it would be “disproportionate to quash the entire scheme” and has given the parties an opportunity to make further submissions before October 13th.
However, she said the court may decide to amend the board’s decision “for example by maintaining the status quo in relation to one or more adjacent bus stops”.
She made a provisional order quashing the board’s approval of the Artane Cottages stop, pending any submissions.
A spokeswoman for the NTA said “the judgment is still being reviewed and considered”.
Ms Kelly said she did not wish to comment at this time.
