Trinity professor fears bus stop will have strangers at her front door day and night

A Trinity College lecturer has challenged a part of the BusConnects programme, saying a proposed new bus stop outside her front door will place her at risk from unknown strangers.

The High Court has allowed Áine Kelly, from the Malahide Road area of Artane in north Dublin, to proceed with her case, saying she had ‘demonstrated substantial grounds for alleged disproportionate impacts on her property and other rights’.

The National Transport Authority (NTA) had tried to stop the legal action, saying the case concerned an ‘important infrastructure development’ for Dublin.

Ms Kelly, a professor of physiology at the Trinity Institute of Neuroscience, represented herself in the case.

In his judgement on Wednesday, Judge Richard Humphreys said she had challenged a decision of the board authorising the erection of a bus stop directly outside her front door at Artane Cottages Lower, which opens directly onto the footpath with no garden, path or other buffer zone.

He recounted Ms Kelly’s prediction to the court of what she would find outside her front door, if the bus stop for the Clongriffin to central Dublin bus corridor went ahead.

She had said: ‘Never again being able to challenge anyone who is standing directly outside my front door, no matter what hour of the day or night it is; coming home from work in the dark, which in winter is the early evening, having unknown strangers standing outside my front door, without any means for me to challenge their presence; putting my key into my front door and opening the door with strangers standing beside me.

‘If anyone wishes ill intent on me or my property, they won’t have to break in; I will be opening the door for them.’

She added: ‘It is simply unacceptable for the NTA and An Bord Pleanála to be placing me and my neighbours in this situation, a situation, I hazard to guess, that they would not accept for a second if it affected their own homes and families, when all they need to do to prevent this is to make a minor adjustment to the plans to move the bus stop a short distance from its proposed location.’

Judge Humphreys said her concerns had been ‘arguably swept aside in minimising language by the board and held to be outweighed by the importance of the scheme’. Among Ms Kelly’s allegations was that the NTA did not follow proper procedures and failed to notify her and other affected residents of the proposed new bus stop arrangement.

She claimed detailed observations from residents were not properly considered by the NTA or An Bord Pleanála.

She alleged the proposed bus stop was a late-stage design change and was the only stop in the BusConnects scheme that would be in front of houses without front gardens.

There was insufficient footway to accommodate the stop and residents would experience reduced enjoyment of their properties, she claimed.

Judge Humphreys allowed Ms Kelly’s judicial review to proceed, on clearly defined terms concerning the impact on her property and other rights, and the lack of reasons given. However, he also said he believed that the dispute was not ‘utterly beyond the realm of settlement’, and that the court would help if that became a possible outcome.

Judge Humphreys said that changes to bus arrangements on the Malahide Road have been in train for some time. He said Ms Kelly wrote to the Quality Bus Network design team as far back as June 2006, expressing some concerns. Twelve years later, following the announcement of the BusConnects strategy, she wrote to public representatives outlining her views in June 2018.

In November of that year, the NTA launched a first round of public consultation on the preferred route for the Clongriffin to city centre bus corridor, the City Centre Core Bus Corridor Scheme. Ms Kelly expressed her concern about the narrowing of the footpath outside the houses of herself and her neighbours, to allow for the bus lanes.

‘Narrowing the footpath means that traffic on one of the busiest roads in the city will pass even closer to the front of our properties,’ she said. The new bus stop outside her house was not proposed until April 2022, at which point it was strongly objected to by the local residents’ group, including Ms Kelly.

The judge noted that they said: ‘The bus stop increases pressures on those properties further and undermines efforts by the undersigned residents to maintain the houses occupied and in their original character.’

The full hearing of the matter will be held at a later date.