Dublin City Council met today, Wednesday, April 27, to approve plans to pedestrianise Capel Street.

The traffic-banning measures are expected to be put in place within the next four weeks and will extend the length of the 400m from Parnell Street to Strand Street. This puts Capel Street, home of our beloved Pantibar,  ahead of both Grafton and Henry Street for the longest traffic-free street in the city although, unlike Grafton and Henry Street, Capel Street will remain open to cyclists.

The Queen of Ireland, Panti herself welcomed the news: “I’m delighted for Capel St and for the city. I hope it’s the start of a revolution in how the city thinks about how it uses its public space. I wish I’d done it years ago ?”

DCC would like to announce that it intends to proceed with plans to make Capel St Traffic Free.

91% of the 1,766 submissions received during the public consultation were in favour of the proposal.

Details of access routes and implementation date will follow shortly.#CapelStr pic.twitter.com/GnpQR6dKNJ

— Dublin City Council (@DubCityCouncil) April 27, 2022

Car parking spaces will be removed from the newly pedestrianised zone and bollards will prevent vehicles from entering outside the hours of 6 AM-11 AM daily when deliveries will be permitted.

This development follows the huge success of a six-week trial pedestrianisation which took place last summer. Measures were put in place banning traffic from 6.30 PM to 11.30 PM at weekends, and the response was so positive that this trial got extended to eleven weeks.

The council received over 7,000 submissions during the consultation process, the most submissions ever received by the Dublin City Council during a public consultation, with the submissions overwhelmingly in favour of the new measures. In fact, a short consultation was held last month to finalise the plans for Capel Street, and a massive 91% of 1,776 submissions were in favour of the proposal.

Pantibar is gonna hit different this year during Pride thanks to all the space to be gay on Capel Street @PantiBliss

— Iarnród Éireann BROCKOVICH 💜 (@yascaoimhin) April 27, 2022

Although the public is largely in favour of the car ban on Capel Street, some local businesses are not so content with the decision. 53 identical submissions objected to the initiative, coming mostly from businesses within the Jervis centre.

“We object to the 24/7 pedestrianisation proposal for Capel street as it will have a detrimental effect on our business,” the submissions read. “We seek a compromised solution that doesn’t threaten our future employment.”

However, Dublin City Council has said that the proposal is not for “24/7 pedestrianisation”, as time has been allocated for deliveries. The proposed measures would seek to “improved pedestrian space and cycling permeability”, Lovin Dublin reports.