How Long is An Bord Pleanála Taking to Decide Public Transport Planning Applications?

Over the coming years An Bord Pleanála (ABP) will have to process a large volume of planning applications for housing as well as the energy, transport and heating infrastructure necessary to facilitate Ireland reaching its climate targets. Unfortunately, in recent years ABP has been beset by scandals and delays raising questions about whether it is able to deal with the required throughput of applications.

Here I want to examine how long it is taking to decide on public transport infrastructure applications. To do this I looked up the application codes for all of the major public transport projects which have reached the ABP planning application stage. I then wrote some code to retrieve the information for each of the planning application pages from ABPs website for each relevant public transport project. The time taken for planning application consideration to date is shown in the plot below. A vertical gridline is added every 18 weeks representing the amount of time within which a decision is meant to be made.

Time taken by ABP per project

I've written a script that should update this image daily so check back to see how long these planning applications take. I will endeavour to add new projects as they get submitted.

So far 12 of the public transport projects have had their applications decided on. The projects that have had their application decided are Cork Line Level Crossing Closures, Galway Cross-City Link, Dublin CBC 5: Blanchardstown To City Centre, Dart+ West, Dublin CBC 14/15: Belfield/Blackrock To City Centre, Dublin CBC 6: Lucan To City Centre, Dublin CBC 1: Clongriffin To City Centre, Dublin CBC 3/4: Ballymun/Finglas To City Centre, Dublin CBC 7: Liffey Valley To City Centre, Dublin CBC 2: Swords To City Centre, Dublin CBC 16: Ringsend To City Centre, Glounthaune to Midleton Twin Tracking. The decided applications have taken an average of 630 days. The planning application that has been in the system the longest without having a decision reached is the Metrolink which has taken 742 days so far.

Below is a table of the applications:

ID Project Decision Time Taken
310286 Cork Line Level Crossing Closures Make Railway Order w cons 1139
314597 Galway Cross-City Link Approve with Conditions 749
314724 Metrolink Requires Further Consideration 742
313892 Dublin CBC 5: Blanchardstown To City Centre Approve with Conditions 728
314232 Dart+ West Make Railway Order w cons 720
313509 Dublin CBC 14/15: Belfield/Blackrock To City Centre Approve with Conditions 691
314942 Dublin CBC 6: Lucan To City Centre Approve with Conditions 678
313182 Dublin CBC 1: Clongriffin To City Centre Approve with Conditions 647
316119 Dart+ South West Further consideration needed for this case. 569
314610 Dublin CBC 3/4: Ballymun/Finglas To City Centre Approve with Conditions 550
316272 Dublin CBC 10/12: Templeogue/Rathfarnham To City Centre Further consideration required 546
316828 Dublin CBC 8/9: Tallaght/Clondalkin To City Centre Decision - Further consideration required 532
314056 Dublin CBC 7: Liffey Valley To City Centre Approve with Conditions 529
317660 Dublin CBC 11: Kimmage To City Centre Case is due to be decided by 31/01/2025 444
317742 Dublin CBC 13: Bray To City Centre Further consideration required 434
317121 Dublin CBC 2: Swords To City Centre Approve with Conditions 404
317679 Dublin CBC 16: Ringsend To City Centre Approve with Conditions 370
315087 Glounthaune to Midleton Twin Tracking Make Railway Order w cons 350
320164 Dart+ Coastal North Case is due to be decided by 03/02/2025 91

If you are interested in seeing how this was done the code for this project is available on my GitHub here