EV owners seek solution to expensive and inadequate public chargers

• Published date: 15 April 2024
• Author: OLIVIA KELLY
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Residents without driveways have resorted to trailing cables across footpaths to charge cars, with the risk of trips to passing pedestrians, or driving to public charging points where electricity costs can be five times higher than domestic rates

However, a device designed to overcome this problem, in use in several European cities with similar parking issues, has recently appeared on Dublin streets. The Dutch-designed charging arm projects over the footpath from a post installed on the homeowner’s property at a height of approximately 2.3m, allowing pedestrians to pass underneath. When not in use, the cable folds back into the post.

However, while the device appears to resolve the trip hazard, Dublin City Council said it is not authorised for use.

“It needs permission as it is a permanent structure to the front of a house,” said the council. Consent from the council’s environment and transportation department is also required “for extending on to the public footpath” but due to the “high risk to public liability” the council “will not give consent for structures like these to reach across the public footpath”, it said.

Homeowners using the devices said they cannot understand the council’s reasoning.

“I’ve had this about six months and before that I was using a cable across the footpath with a rubber strip, but I always felt uneasy about it. But I can’t see why the council would object to this,” said one charging-arm user in Clontarf. “It’s on private property, it’s very discrete and in the summer months it’s almost entirely covered by foliage,” he said. “It’s not an eyesore, it’s not a public hazard and it’s far safer than what I had been doing. So I wouldn’t really see the rationale for a request to remove it. And it hadn’t crossed my mind to ask them.”

There are no public charging points near his house, he said. “When I was buying the car most garages said to...