The €40 million redevelopment of O'Connell Street in Dublin has failed to protect the safety of cyclists and pedestrians in the absence of continuous cycle tracks and effective pedestrian crossing points, according to the Green Party.
The party's transport spokesman, Eamon Ryan, accused Dublin City Council yesterday of failing to prioritise the safety of "vulnerable road users". He described conditions on O'Connell Street as "positively dangerous".
In response to Mr Ryan's comments, a spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said the council was conducting a safety audit through its traffic department. The results will be available over the next few weeks.
Original plans to incorporate cycle paths and a 30kph (19mph) speed limit were previously abandoned as this would have necessitated redesignating O'Connell Street as a non-national road and making substantial changes to the road's €10 million new signage by the National Roads Authority (NRA), according to Mr Ryan.
"The new design of O'Connell Street may be attractive to the eye but in road safety terms it is a disaster," he said.
"In creating a new civic space, the safety of vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians should have been the top priority."
Mr Ryan noted that in the past three years six cyclists had been killed and hundreds injured on city centre streets.
The difficulties faced by cyclists in the city was exemplified by Mr Ryan in the cycle route from Parnell Street to O'Connell Bridge, where cyclists start off in a shared bus corridor before having to weave out to a central median cycle lane used by every other form of traffic.
He described the pedestrian crossing points at O'Connell Bridge as a "disgrace", as hundreds of pedestrians are forced to crowd on to a narrow pavement within inches of heavy goods vehicles.
Mr Ryan concluded: "If we cannot make our prime national street safe for vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists having spent €40 million upgrading it, is there any wonder why we have such carnage on our roads?"