The Dublin City Council met this past Tuesday and voted unanimously to decrease the fees that developers pay to acquire land, construct roads, and make other improvements to minimize traffic impacts in east Dublin. The previous impact fee schedule was established in 2004 and needed to be updated to reflect the drastically lower cost of land, changes in land use (i.e., higher density than expected), and higher construction costs. With this approval, the traffic impact fees for residential projects will decrease by a combined 11% and non-residential fees will decrease by 3% effective June 7th. This should help to encourage development in Dublin.

The calculation of impact fees is based on the estimated number of “trips” generated by building new projects (e.g., trips to the grocery store, trips to/from home). The most significant reason for the decrease in fees is that Dublin has built at a higher density than what was initially forecast. Higher density means more people will be generating more car trips. With fixed traffic costs and more people than expected, the cost per “trip” has been less than expected.

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