Road Safety

Fingal County Council's Road Safety Officer sits within the Department of Environment, Climate Action and Active Travel.

Schools Road Safety

Fingal County Council works with primary and post-primary schools to provide infrastructure, support, training and outreach programmes that make walking and cycling to school safer.

Our role is to reduce current road safety risks for children such as;

• School gate congestion
• Illegal parking blocking footpaths
• Parking on DYL’s
• Rat Running Traffic
• Overcrowding of footpaths
• Poor visibility for parents and children
• U-Turning traffic
• Road safety risks
• Cars idling outside school gate harming young lungs

School Streets

A School Street is a designated Car Free Zone outside a school. It offers a temporary pedestrian and cycling zone which operates only during drop off and collection times. School Streets provide a safe environment for children when they need it most and make the experience of arriving at and leaving school more enjoyable, less stressful and above all much safer.

Cycling & Walking Buses

Cycling buses and Walking buses promote Active Travel on a child's journey to school, by bike or on foot.

Volunteers, parents and teachers, escort groups of children along a set route, on a set timetable, every day during school term. Just like a school bus these alternative Active Travel 'buses' stop to pick up children at points along the route to school.

Safer Routes to School

All children deserve the freedom to walk or cycle to school safely. Fingal County Council’s Active Travel team are working to deliver Safe Routes to School through projects funded by the Programme for Government which has set aside €1.8 billion to support walking/scooting and cycling to primary and post-primary schools.

The Safe Routes to School programme aims to create safer walking and cycling routes within communities, alleviate congestion at the school gates and increase the number of students who walk or cycle to school by providing walking and cycling facilities. The improvements to a school’s commute may range from an upgraded footpath or addition of a protected cycle lane to a complete reworking of a school’s entrance to better accommodate walking and cycling.

In June 2021, 11 Fingal schools were selected for round 1 of the programme and will work with a designated infrastructure officer from Green-Schools who will liaise with the school and local authority as works are planned and carried out.

Schools were selected for participation in the programme for 2021 based on a mix of criteria including school type, location and school’s commitment to sustainable travel. The programme is funded by the Department of Transport through the National Transport Authority (NTA) and is supported by the Department of Education. An Taisce’s Green-Schools is co-ordinating the programme and Fingal County Council will play a key part in delivering the infrastructure to support this programme.