Since 1980, Dublin City Council (DCC) has been conducting traffic counts at 33 locations around the cordon formed by the Royal and Grand Canals. The counts are conducted during the month of November each year. Since 1997, the counts have been conducted over the AM peak period between 07:00 and 10:00.
Between 1997 and 2009, the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO) collected data from a number of sources on people crossing the Canal Cordon into Dublin’s City Centre in the AM peak period between 07:00 and 10:00. The National Transport Authority (NTA) subsumed the DTO in 2009, and has continued to collate this data on an annual basis including in 2025. Combining the sets of data enables the tracking of trends in the modes of travel that people are using to travel into the City Centre for the period 2006-2025.
The total number of people crossing the canal cordon in the AM peak period (07:00-10:00) decreased by 8.5% between 2019 and 2025. This is a decrease of 18,391 person trips, bringing the total number of people crossing the canal (inbound) in the AM peak period to 198,832. There had been a continual annual increase in the number of people crossing the canal in the AM peak from 2010 – 2019, this figure lowered during 2020-2021 due to COVID 19 restrictions. In 2025 there was an increase of 53.1% in overall numbers between 2021 and 2025 which equates to an additional 68,987 trips.
