Dublin City Council has been allocated €35.95 million towards Active Travel - a decrease of nearly €10m from last year.
Green Party Councillor Feljin Jose has criticised the dwindling funds the Council has received, as its down from €45m last year - and €54.1m in 2024. With Active Travel schemes being a core tenet of the Dublin City Development Plan, he fears many important works could be in danger as they won’t be enough funds for all planned projects.
With Active Travel funding being capped by the government at €360 million per year nationwide, Cllr Jose said this doesn’t take into account inflation or rapidly rising construction costs. He stressed that Dublin is already “getting less out of the same money” and arbitrarily capping the funds until 2030 goes against common sense.
“The overall funding amount has to go up with inflation. What we're building in 2020 is not the same as what we should be building in 2030. We should be scaling up, not fixing our ambitions at the same level as five years ago,” he said
A core issue is that the entire country is competing over limited funds that are being stretched further each year. Cllr Jose pointed out Bus Connects being granted €23m of the total funds in 2026. With The Core Bus Corridors’ (CBC) Project not yet under construction, he worried that unless the government rethinks its funding allocation process, they are going to find themselves increasingly wanting.
“It leaves behind the entire Active Travel programme of Dublin City Council, all the kind of non-radial, orbital cycling routes, orbital walking routes, pedestrian crossings, zebra crossings and the smaller local transport schemes, all of that, could get left behind,” he said.
In his own area, Cllr Jose is particularly fearful for the future of two projects effecting Cabra-Glasnevin. The first is the Ratoath Road Active Travel Scheme. As a project that’s supposed to improve walking and cycling facilities along Ratoath Road and Cappagh Road later this year, Cllr Jose worries there now won’t be enough funding available by that time.
The second project is the fourth phase of the Royal Canal Greenway, which aims to provide segregated walking and cycling facilities along a 4.2km route between Phibsborough and Ashtown. Cllr Jose stressed there are health and safety concerns on this route, with instances of delivery drivers being assaulted, and said it’s important that proper infrastructure and lighting is priotised.
With Dublin City Council “entirely relying on central government to actually fund us,” Cllr Jose said they are put in a difficult position when planning Active Travel projects only to later discover funding has been reduced.
“There's absolutely no need to do that. They can increase it in any budget. They could increase it next year and say it's actually 400 million to account for all the inflation and that would give a lot of room for a lot of local authorities to work with,” he said.
“You don’t fix the road budget to a certain number and just forget about inflation. The road maintenance fund has been coming up because the cost of doing all of these things has gone up. But the Active Travel fund, like pedestrian crossings, cycling lanes, better footpaths, lights, all these kind of things have remained completely fixed.”
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