Comment & Analysis: When they come up against opposition, Dublin City Councils active travel office has made a habit of deferring action with projects often going into prolonged review stages. This costs more and prolongs the delivery of road safety and climate action measures it serves nobody well. Before answering the question in the headline, its worth looking at whats currently proposed.A two-way cycle path is proposed along Chapelizod Road from the junction with the Parkgate Street entrance to the Phoenix Park to the entrance to the grandly named Kings Hall housing development (think 1990s, not 1890s) the two-way cycle path is outlined as a green line below.As covered in another article, the design of the cycle path is poor, and it needs to be fixed. The good news is that it can be fixed without major changes or impacts.For context: Also shown is the existing shared greenway path beside the south side of Chapelizod and the Irish National War Memorial Gardens (light blue line), and the under-construction Commemorative Bridge (darker blue), which will span the Liffey between the gardens and the Chapelizod Road beside the Phoenix Park. It does not bridge the road, as some more visionary but never-built concepts did, but the active travel project will help link the two parks.Its worth saying that, despite some people commenting online claiming otherwise, the project does not change the two general traffic lanes on the approach to St Patricks National School at the junction between Chapelizod Road and Main Street (Martins Row) in Chapelizod, and theres no plans to put cycle lanes on the narrow seections of the two-way roads around the village.With bus lanes, Chapelizod Road has two sections of single-directional bus lanes one in the inbound direction towards the city centre and one in the outbound direction to Chapelizod village. The city centre lane is to be retained, but the plan is to remove the Chapelizod bus lane to provide for the two-way cycle path.The reason why the bus lanes are only closer to the two ends is because, on this road, thats mainly where they are needed.And a local Facebook page, Chapelizod Chap Lips, has highlighted the issue with removing the bus lane at the village end. In a post with a video clip, the page said: Filmed this evening as an example of why that bus lane is in place and replacing it with a cycle lane will force the bus to sit in general traffic.The video shows the bus using the bus lane to speed past cars and vans, until it seems to stop in a place where it might not be usual to stopEverything might not be as simple as it seems. A comment under the video clip posts a photo of cars in the bus lane and said: 5.20 Wednesday evening both lanes full and bus stuck, imagine if there was only one lane!To be clear, the photo of the motorists illegally using the bus lane was taken around the same point where the video clip ends. It could well be a coincidence, but this is a bus lane known to be often blocked by motorists, and the obstruction by motorists usually does not start until closer to the junction. The clip starts as the bus driver pulls away from the bus stop (shown with the blue marker to the right of the image below) and ends before the end of the proposed cycle path (shown in green with black arrow pointing to the end). The bus lane currently ends at the pink arrow. Basically, of the 800 metres of bus lane, the last 200-300 metres is doing the hard work that is, when its not full of cars.So, if theres a collective honest concern about bus priority, something needs to be done about the cars in the bus lane. Segregating the bus lane with plastic bollards has worked to some level or another in other parts of the city. A compromise here is to cut the cycle lane short say, to somewhere like the church (shown with the blue arrow above) and then protect the last 200 metres or so of the bus lane with bollards. This would offer a balance by providing cycling segregation as far as the more built-up area near the village (where a 30km/h speed limit could be applied). It would be a bit of a downgrade, but would still allow for cycling segregation where speeds are likely to be higher between this end of Chapelizod and Islandbridge/the city centre. If people really wanted to give buses priority, a protected bus lane could even be extended closer to the junction. Extending it the whole way to the junction is possible by reducing general traffic to one lane, but because of traffic light sequencing, that may affect the operation of the junction and slow buses going towards the city centre.Thats why balance often needs to be looked at. The compromise of shortening the cycle path to somewhere around the church and then protecting the rest of the bus lane seems like a good balance of all the competing demands on space.