A city council official said the process of trialling traffic measures will be difficult because the new guidelines do not provide for pre-trial public consultation.The guidelines state that consultation is part of the trial process and should occur after people can see the trial operating on the ground, the citys Mobility committee was told last week.The lack of guidelines was previously criticised by residents who took a legal case against the Strand Road cycle path trial (an artists impression pictured above), and judgments in that case also criticised the national Government for not having put in place guidelines. The guidelines were introduced in 2023, years after the trial was to go ahead, but ahead of the council receiving the legal green light for the trial last year. A briefing on the guidelines provided by senior officials at the councils Mobility committee was a reminder, as a similar briefing was given to the committee when it was named the trainport committee in 2023. Back then, three councillors gave the guidelines a frosty response, but the committee members who spoke last week only welcomed them.The idea of trialling the Strand Road cycle route was raised by Cllr MichaelPidgeon(Green Party), Cllr Paddy Monahan (Social Democrats), and sectoral members Jason Cullen, chairperson of Dublin Commuters, a sustainable transport advocacy group, and Siobhn McNamara, a rep for the Dublin Cycling Campaign. Cllr Pidgeonasked if the guidelines for trial asked if there was going to be any sort of consultation before trial, or whether trials were to be sprung as a complete thing with no input in the two-week notice period. Cllr Monahan said that the guidelines were a four-page document that seems so dull but is so inspiring.Brendan OBrien, head of the traffic and transport section of Dublin City Council, repeatedly said that the guidelines are from the Department of Transport and that the council would have to follow them. Theyre not our guidelines. Theyre set out by the Department of Transport. And it is something were probably going to struggle with a bit because if you follow the guidelines, which are based on the experimental traffic orders in the UK, because the idea is that you dont do the long consultation, you dont do all that.What you do is you say heres the idea, heres where were putting in, we put it in on a temporary basis, and we collect the responses during that trial period with the intention that at the end of the trial, the trial can either be removed, amended, or it can be made permanent, he said.He said that not every scheme is suitable for a trial. He said that normally the council would only be trialling something if theres a high degree of uncertainty about it. He said that the briefing was to flag those items and he added: But its were not the ones that are not doing the consultation [ahead of trials].Claire French, senior executive engineer with Dublin City Council, said: The trial allows for collecting responses in different ways. So there are traditional ways, you know, online, postal and stuff like that, but it does allow for setting up forums with residents and businesses. So, there is an opportunity for feedback at that stage on a more local level.And when will we see it? Whenever I suppose a suitable project comes along, she said.Responding to a question on changes being made during a trial, French added: Our understanding is that we can make kind of minor changes during the trial, and if somethings not working, we can go in and adjust it.OBrien said that the active travel funding for Strand Road is an allocation which has been in place for the last four years not all allocations are spent in the year when they are first listed.I suppose this year, you know, with the judgment having been delivered [last year], part of what were doing is to both have a look at what were doing with our floor defence people and also to look and see whether there is the justification to move to a trial. Whatever there is, the rationale and if it would meet the requirements that we have, he said.He continued: And so, thats part of what the funding is for there. So, theres no decision to make, whether to do a trial or not to do a trial at the moment. But I suppose, what were pointing out is if there is a trial to be done, its the procedure that weve outlined the guidelines from the Ministry that will be used for that trial.