The Dublin Circular City Committee flourishes as the GAA’s ACCESS Action Plan sees its implementation
The latest meeting of the Dublin Circular City Committee (CCC), which oversees the implementation of the GAA’s ACCESS Action Plan, served as a great occasion to review and catch up on the ongoing activities and their implementation, as well as share outlooks for the future.
As a reminder, the GAA’s Action Plan, announced last spring, revolved very much around mobility but not only for what concerns the Croke Park, where major GAA matches are played, but also the wider north Dublin urban area, thus contributing for a greater cause aligned with the Dublin City Council’s priorities and objectives. The commitments included a high density parking for north Dublin City sports events, activating clubs for matchday sustainable travel and sustainable mobility in stadium management.
As an input to the meeting and overview of the current trends and tendencies, the results of 2023 Croke Park Travel Survey were shared. The results included over 5000 respondents across 22 match days and suggested similar results to the one of a smaller 2024 survey. The study showed that 51% of respondents travel primarily by car, 14% by train, 14% by public bus, 5% by coach, 5% by foot and <1% by bike, with 5% travelling by multiple modes. 83% of respondents travelled with family or friend, 12% as individuals and 5% with clubs. The survey also wanted to focus on car travels and showed that 71% of them were parked on public roads in the city.
When it comes to individual Pilot Actions, a potential site for the high density bike-parking for north Dublin City sport events was identified on Irish Rail land by canal, which is in the imminent proximity to both Croke Park and Dalymount Park – another sport venue attracting local supporters as the home of Bohemian FC. A pilot could be run in May 2025, during the Bike Week, from 10 to 18 May. The Dublin City Council will look into planning for and potential of using this site, while Dublin City Sport & Wellbeing Partnership would share further details of the Bike Week itself and how to combine the two initiatives.
As Croke Park isn’t any club’s home ground per se, it often hosts large audiences from different part of the island. As early as 25 January, a sustainable travel activation day would be run by the GAA and Croke Park for Mayo vs Dublin Men’s national League match. It would imply a potential of partnering Dublin and mayo clubs for coach parking and/or park and ride options.
Internally, for what concerns Croke Park staff and contractors and conference centre clients and visitors, the sustainable mobility in stadium management processes was also addressed, as the objective is to increase non-match day sustainable and active travel to the stadium. Progress was made on this action with achievement of Bronze Smarter Travel mark for the stadium, which includes recommendations for improvement. Nevertheless, availability of car parking was identified as a barrier to positive behavioural change for stadium users – a potential focus for GAA and Croke Park in stadium sustainability planning?
Finally, the CCC also assessed and discussed its future, especially beyond the ACCESS project’s lifetime and for what concerns ongoing sport and city sustainable mobility partnerships. Apart from the focus on the ongoing initiatives and activities and their successful implementation, several other options for the future were considered as well, all significantly contributing to active and sustainable mobility, elimination of private vehicles from urban areas on match days through increasing the offer for such new mobility patterns and behavioural change.
Image credits: Flickr