Sustainable Swords

DBFL led on the transport planning, active travel and placemaking elements of Fingal County Council’s ambitious Sustainable Swords project. The project will underpin the compact growth of Swords as an Emerging City of scale of approximately 100,000 people by capitalising on the transformational opportunities offered by Metrolink, BusConnects, greenway development and the reallocation of road space on R132 for public transport, walking and cycling. DBFL’s work will help provide a platform for the reimagining of the historic town centre as an accessible, healthy, vibrant, and people-oriented beating heart of Swords.

DBFL’s work will help provide a platform for the reimagining of the historic town centre as an accessible, healthy, vibrant, and people-oriented beating heart of Swords. 

The key outputs of the Sustainable Swords project include the following: 

Baseline Conditions and Policy Context Report including an assessment of the relevant national, regional and local policy context applicable to Swords existing walking and cycling conditions around the Study Area.  

Context Report highlighting areas of international and national best practice and their applicability to Swords. These included techniques such as School Streets, dedicated walking and cycle provision, mobility hubs, shared space and filtered permeability, Park and Stride, and the reclamation of public space from the private car. The Report provides a high-level indicative movement and placemaking strategy of the Study Area identifying key areas for improvement. 

Option Development and Assessment; Development and sifting of options against agreed active travel and placemaking objectives; identification of Preferred Options to inform the final plan. 

Option Refinement, Transport Modelling and ‘Check the proposals’ – A four level modelling framework was employed to assessment and validate the proposals under the strategy. This involved the use of the NTA’s Regional Model System, the Development of a Local Area Model (LAM) and a mircosimulation model and multiple junction models to sense-check the proposals.  

Finalisation of Plan – incorporating feedback from the Steering Group and public consultation process. 

The Strategy was published in 2023 as part of a Wider Sustainable Swords Placemaking Strategy.   

A key element of the Sustainable Swords project entailed a close working partnership with the An Taisce Green-Schools team who undertook several quantitative surveys and audits in partnership with local schools in and around the Study Area to identify key barriers to walking and cycling to school.  

This information was supplemented by a simplified Healthy Streets ™ DBFL-led audit of some of the key streets within the Study Area. The audit focussed on the perceived walkability and cyclability of the surveyed streets using the ten Healthy Street indicators and was undertaken both by people familiar with the Study Area and remotely by newcomers bringing a fresh eye perspective. The information gathered by this process informed the setting of transport objectives and the development of transport options to address shortfalls in walking, cycling and placemaking.