There is likely to be only one park and ride site operating in Dublin to help cope with traffic this Christmas. The Dublin Transportation Office says that it has two possible sites in mind and, according to DTO director John Henry, one of these will probably be put to use, writes Patrick Logue
Last year there were no park-and-ride sites servicing Dublin over the Christmas period.
While Henry claims it remains the DTO's policy to introduce permanent park-and-ride facilities for the capital, he says that Dublin may be unsuitable for such a system to work successfully because of its physical size.
"You have to go to where the congestion starts," he says adding that at these points it would take a bus at least 40 minutes to reach the city centre.
Henry says that it's also difficult to attract interested parties to operate the facilities as they can be "high loss-making operations." The benefits of park-and-ride can be minimal, he adds. Ten facilities would cut the 350,000 daily trips to the city centre only by 10,000.
Conor Faughnan of AA Ireland dismissed the DTO's reasoning saying it was an "ongoing indictment of the Dublin Transportation Office" that the city does not have any permanent park-and-ride facilities. "Their excuses are utterly unconvincing. We never get any evidence of a determination to apply creative thinking.
"We were initially promised it in 1991, the policy was introduced in 1993 and still there is no sign of park-and-ride in a city of over one million people.
"It's a ludicrous deficiency considering it's a relatively low-tech solution which could help an awful lot of people."
Faughnan says Dublin's quality bus corridors are let down by the fact that many people are unable to use them. Only those who live near them can benefit, he says.
"It's ironic that at the same time as the DTO says park-and-ride won't work, informal park-and-ride is taking place in areas around DART stations. People are determined to try park-and-ride."
But Henry says it's not as simple as Faughnan claims: "Park-and-ride is easy to manage but difficult to fund."