Comment & Analysis:Recently, IrishCycle.com reported that the National Transport Authority confirmed its support for the approved Tallaght Village project and that councillors highlighted the spread of misinformation. In the same article, IrishCycle.com then detailed examples of that misinformation.And to be clear, it was not just this website claiming there was misinformation; councillors were pointing to it as well.One of the groups involved, Save Tallaght Village, claims there was no misinformation. So, lets have a look at those claims and look at what was actually said and reported: Main Street access vs roads will be restricted solely to buses and bicyclesMaybe the key issue is the misinformation included in the petition, which was set up against the project. On the claims in the petition, I reported:But it is untrue to claim that roads will be restricted solely to buses and bicycles. Through traffic will not be able to rat run via Main Street, but access for private motorists and deliveries will be maintained. And while detailed design and planning are ongoing, objectors may be on safer ground claiming parking bays on the public street are to be removed, no private or business-owned parking bays are to be removed, so it is misleading to claim all all business and resident parking bays will be removed.Ill take Save Tallaght Villages response on this in two parts. This is the first part of what they said:Firstly Main Street is not a rat run, there are two additional set of traffic lights coming to and from the village. With the Part 8, the only vehicles to be able to move from top of the village to the bottom are buses and bicycles. The council have determined that there is rat running, saying its 70% of traffic. In fairness, this website or Save Tallaght Village has not see this data, but theres more than that data to suggest rat running, including a councullor saying they do it to aboid the traffic on the bypass while the name has a edge to it, its something people do without thinking a lot of the time, and theres a natural rat run route via and even from some of the car parks to the west and south of the village to locations east and north east of the village.Now, you could say, whats the harm in driving thought just a short bit? But the main idea here is to give buses priority and reduce through traffic to make the village centre a more pleasant place.And part two of Save Tallaght Villages response:Access to where? The parking spaces are going. There will be a loading bay shared with residents and business. This is for residents to off load their shopping and then move their cars to another road. Have you visit Tallaght Village? There are no private or business owned parking bays.Yes, I have been to Tallaght Village more than a few times. For starters, a loading bay alone would count as access traffic. But theres more than that.In the above text, I was mainly referring to the off-street parking, which can only be accessed via Main Street, but I find it amazing that a group thats asking me if I have even been to the village is claiming theres no private parking there and implying no need for access besides the use of a loading bay.Theres clearly more than a few premises on Main Street which have access from Main Street on both sides of the planned bus gate location (roughly marked with a red X in the image below just to be clear: not all of them are for public use, but that private access is still access.I also did not mention on-street only parking. On Main Street, Macaris etc (and yes, they list themself as Main Street) clearly have their own parking spaces on what are often referred to as private landings this is privately owned spaces along a street usually behind footpaths and with little or no fencing or walls, etc.There is very clearly also The Priory. Access will also be maintained to it. Why would that not count as access? And access traffic includes not just loading bays, but a motorist dropping off a passenger.Plus, the council is apparently going to work to maintain some public on-street parking, but even if we run with the idea that the council cannot be trusted to do that, there are more than a few examples of access traffic being needed. So why are Save Tallaght Village pretending otherwise? Are they sure they have been to the village?NTA support for the projectThe group references what I reported as follows (Ive now bolded the word reposted):But despite officials reassuring councillors at the council meeting that the NTA now supports the village project, a Facebook group against the project reposted an advertisement they ran in the local Echo newspaper, which included the claim that the NTA objects to bus throttles and the gate on Main St in this Part 8.Save Tallaght Village responded:The NTA put in a submission into the Part 8 that they objected to the bus throttles and gate and at the council meeting on the 8th of June we heard the council had met the NTA and they were happy. When we ran the advert on the 28th May and 4th of June this still was the caseAs highlighted in bold text above, in what I reported, the issue was not with the advert but with reposting that fact sheet on Facebook after the Part 8 planning was past. In other words, after it was made clear that the NTA supported the project, changes were made.Traffic data availabilityI reported:Despite claims from objectors that there are no traffic counts, Walsh said that the council has traffic count data and that a conservative estimate is that 70% of the traffic on Main Street does not stop in the village. In other words, it is rat-running traffic.Save Tallaght Village responded as follows: We requested traffic counts from the council on 5 occasions before the vote for the part 8. There was no response from the council leaving us to believe there was no traffic data.But the problem here is that posting something as fact when its not is still misinformation.Reposting it after the Part 8 approval meeting, as part of the same fact sheet above, really counts as disinformation.Another bit on the NTA and the projectI reported:A post last week implied that the NTA did not support the scheme after it was made clear that they do. When contacted by this website, a spokesperson for the NTA said: Following discussions with the Council Executive, the NTA is satisfied that the Council will develop the Tallaght Village Enhancement Scheme through the remaining design stages in conformity with the Tallaght/Clondalkin to City Centre Core Bus Corridor (CBC) Scheme, which forms part of the overall Bus Connects Dublin programme. Just to be clear: The article was not just about debunking what objectors to the project said, and the references to the NTA changing their minds were to cover how they did so, as a previous article on this website includes a substantial bit about how the NTA was against the project. Anyway.Save Tallaght Village responded:Again, I addressed this at point number 1. We were informed of this at the meeting on the 8th June. More backroom shenanigans.Again, the problem is that the group was reposting a fact sheet after that meeting, which claimed the NTA disapproved. But thats one thing.Posting that misinformation and then claiming there were More backroom shenanigans is just ridiculous. A council meeting, any group in private, does not make what they are doing backroom shenanigans. And its clearly not so to meet another State body which has a project in the area, which is going to be implemented alongside the councils project.Play areasI reported:As another example, when Cllr Jess Spear appeared on RTE News speaking about the project, she mentioned: places for children to play. The Save Tallaght Village page posted a clip of the councillor speaking and said: More fake news There is nothing in the Part 8 about a childrens play area. There is a proposed teen space that is completely different. But the council officials have outlined how the plan includes incidental play areas for children, and, in any case, teenagers under 18 are also children. Incidental play areas are not playgroups but rather informal spaces designed where children can play in public spaces.Save Tallaght Village responded:Where ? Please point these out on the mapI feel this is going into nitpicking detail when the detailed design is still to be done, and it really misses the point that teenagers are actually children, too. I know teenagers have a bad reputation in some peoples eyes, but they are also residents, and until they are 18, they are children.The creation of incidental playable spaces is dependent on the creative use of the public realm to provide enjoyment and discovery for children and young people for example through the creation of landscaping and high-quality public art. These spaces can, with good design, be multifunctional offering a range of leisure and recreation opportunities for users of all ages as well as being playable. The playable space typology in Table 4.6 builds on the multifunctional concept of playable play and defines a hierarchy of play provision.It is not always something that will be shown on a higher-level design. Incidental play areas are like the walkway through the planting area, as explained in the Part 8 presentation: With out consultation with all the stakeholdersI reported:Back in April, when the decision on the Part 8 plan was postponed, the group also said: They are expecting a new design then in June which they can push through with out consultation with all the stakeholders. However, this is a misrepresentation of the Part 8 process the new design is part of the Part 8 process and was developed based on feedback from the public and groupsSave Tallaght Village responded:There was no decision in April to postpone Part 8. The part 8 new design was due to be spoken about at the Tallaght Area Committee meeting in April, but the Cllrs decided not to speak about it and pushed the conversation out to the full meeting on the 8th JuneIn the article, the line Back in April, when the decision on the Part 8 plan was postponed, the group also said: has been shortened to Back in April, when the decision on the Part 8 plan was postponed, the group also said:. A clarification note has also been added to the article. IrishCycle.com is happy to amend the article and add clarity. But while I am happy to amend the other article, as with a lot of the points of reply, the group has willfully or not missed the central point. In this case, the fact that they were misrepresenting the nature of the Part 8 process. Councils are run by humans so, like most of the rest of us, they dont always get things right. But attacking councils for a normal part of the process a part that included fixing issues the objectors had too has a toxic effect on the trust in our public bodies.And its worth highlighting when I say the above, this is only some of the misinformation covered in the article the group was, for example, also all too willing to repost claims from conspiracy theory spreader Cllr Linda de Courcy (Independent Ireland) who claimed that the proposal to remove vehicular traffic AND parking spaces from Tallaghts Main Street and replace this with a bus lane. The Save Tallaght Village group knew there was no bus lane replacing all the parking or traffic lanes, but they were happy to repost the claim. This is sadly becoming more and more of a common issue where groups against projects are all too willing to give an unclear or outright distorted view of a project, often claimed as fact.This may seem more important when key issues like access are being discussed. But consistently flinging baseless muck at projects and public processes is not healthy for our community or even our democracy.