The pursuit of an integrated transport policy is too dependent on private finance, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
The new Government has committed itself to pursuing one of the great chimeras of all time, an integrated transport policy, "designed as far as possible to overcome existing delays, bottlenecks and congestion" while offering people the choice of travelling by public transport.
The key phrase here is "as far as possible", because no sensible politician could possibly promise to banish traffic congestion. "Freedom of the road" will only apply to massively overdesigned stretches of motorway in under-populated rural areas, never to the M50.
Surprisingly, in view of the staggering cost - €12 billion, by the latest estimate - and the loss of 5,000 acres of agricultural land, Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats have no intention of rowing back from the previous government's controversial motorway programme.
In doing so, they have brushed aside more realistic and cost-effective alternatives of widening sub-standard stretches of existing national primary routes and providing bypasses for traffic-choked towns along the way, as proposed by the Campaign for Sensible Transport.
And because the motorway programme envisaged by the current National Development Plan will gobble up so much money, with only a small fraction of the total spend likely to be levered from the private sector, there will not be much left for investment in public transport.
Take the €8 billion metro plan for Dublin, which was adopted by the previous government in July 2000, when there seemed to be unlimited funds for everything. Now, as FF and the PDs say, the only way even the first phase can go ahead is via a public-private partnership.
Whereas Exchequer funding will be poured into the motorway programme, "maximum use of private finance" will be required to build the first metro line from Shanganagh to Dublin Airport by 2007. If this private finance does not materialise, it's goodbye to the metro.
The Agreed Programme for Government does not even mention the Dublin Transportation Office's Platform for Change