Dublin is not just counting bicycles

On a typical day in Dublin, Ireland, residents take 530,000 walking and cycling trips that could have been taken by car. The impact of these choices is immense: Ireland’s National Transport Authority estimates that they save the country’s health service €64.5 million—or over 1.17 million doctor appointments annually.

The local government in Dublin, home to more than 1.5 million people, has set an ambitious target to increase this trend: Reduce traffic by 40 percent by 2028 and support a significant increase in walking, cycling and the use of public transportation. Achieving this requires a reimagining of the ways that people can move around the city, with plans to roll out a city-wide network of 314 kilometers of cycle paths by 2031.

This will take more than just upgrading physical infrastructure like roads and paths. It's also crucial to invest in data-gathering tools that can precisely measure the benefits these changes have for communities over time—everything from health, wellbeing and economic impacts to shifts in air quality and noise pollution. That’s the focus of the city’s Partnership for Healthy Cities-supported “Data Insights for Active Travel Project.”

To learn more, we spoke to two members of the Dublin City Council project team at the sidelines of a recent workshop convened by the Partnership. Jack Kavanagh is Smart Dublin Open Data Lead and Jack Lehane is Smart D8 Ecosystem Manager and an ADAPT Research Fellow.

Why is capturing data about Dublin’s pedestrians and cyclists so important?

Jack Kavanagh: There's a huge investment in active travel in Ireland at the moment. Since 2020, there's been over US$1 billion invested in active travel projects, a lot of which has gone into Dublin. So it’s going to be really important to back up this investment with data that can provide pre- and post-intervention comparisons to justify it going forward.

Jack Lehane: Adding to that, in a wider national context, there are still a lot of data sets that don’t currently exist. The ones that do exist may not be shared, centralized or even interoperable, so it’s hard for them to work together.

How  will the project  address this?

Lehane: What we’re doing is capturing data to measure and validate the impact of these active travel investments, while also filling data gaps at the same time. We're using different sensors and data sources to show not just how many people are walking, wheeling and cycling versus not, but the changes over time.

A key area we want to measure is illness and harm prevention, so we’re capturing insights on near-collisions, as well as extending data sources to include air quality and noise pollution sensors. From that, you can actually show what health impact it has in the city—at scale.

What kinds of technology are you using?

Kavanagh: We’re trying a number of new technologies. On one route, for instance, we’re going to use AI camera sensors to see how pedestrians are interacting with new infrastructure like continuous footpaths and bus islands. This data, together with other information collected, will provide a detailed picture of Active Travel in Dublin, which was not available before.

You’ve just created a digital dashboard that pulls together census data, Google Maps information and the city’s own pedestrian and cyclist counters. What has it shown so far?

Kavanagh: We can already see a promising example in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, a county in Dublin where there has been substantial investment in safe cycling infrastructure. By using our dashboard to overlay this area’s expanded cycle network and census commuting data, we can see an increase in the number of people using bicycles in this region year on year.

How will this information help inform public policy?

Lehane: The interesting thing about active travel is that it cuts across different bureaucratic jurisdictions, so it's not just sustainable and active mobility, it's also health, climate and environment, tourism. We want this dashboard to be a one-stop shop that captures and centralizes this information, making it more easily accessible.

What would you tell other cities working on improving safe and active mobility?

Lehane: The little things matter. So as people learn to participate in or change habits on a daily level, it can lead to a big change over time and we hope to find in a few years that the city is actually healthier and happier, and people live longer as a result.

Learn more about Dublin's work on Vital Strategies VitalTalks podcast, which explores how cities are using technology and data to improve active travel. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.