REARVIEW:LET'S HOPE Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey's announcement of €14 million in funding for bus priority and park-and-ride in regional cities makes a difference to motorists and is a sign of things to come from Transport House.
It struck me, while sitting in traffic last week, that having spent about €750m on a light rail system, €800m on a port tunnel, €500m on the upgrade of the M50 and €600m on the buyout of the Westlink toll booth, a small fall of rain slows everything to a crawl in the capital.
It is not that motorists are willingly dragging themselves through traffic for the love of their cars, or because they have time to kill. They are in their cars, because there is no viable alternative in place and they pay dearly for it in motor tax, fuel costs and depreciation.
Regular serious traffic jams are a failure in the public transport infrastructure, not a sign of stubborn car drivers.
With all the billions we have spent on public transport in Dublin, I still can’t think of one park-and-ride facility near the capital (corrections on a postcard please). Park-and-ride is low-cost and can be extremely effective, because it removes unnecessary cars journeys from the roads and frees up space in the city for pedestrians and cyclists.
AA Ireland has been banging the drum for years, with the old mantra that all we need is a strip of flat ground and buses. It may not be quite that simple; issues around private and public bus operators are sticking points.
At the same time, we should not overthink public transport solutions. The concept of park-and-ride is now ripe for the picking. There must be many strips of flat ground and plenty of Tarmac knocking about these days, not to mention land owners who would gladly get involved.
