Charges favoured for road use in Dublin

Transport: Charging for road use in Dublin but not tolling town by-passes, and a cautionary approach to public private partnerships, were among the recommendations of the ESRI report, announced yesterday.

According to Mr Colm McCarthy a co-editor of the report, the prospect of Ken Livingstone being re-elected Mayor of London had proved the "political difficulties" of charging for road space were not as serious as had once been thought.

He said however the system in place in London was old-fashioned, a preferable one being that in place in Singapore. The Singapore system involved a "gadget" about the size of a mobile phone which could be topped up with credit, in much the same way as some mobile phones. Roads were priced and this price could vary at different times of the day, the cost being deducted from the drivers dashboard-mounted piece of equipment.

Mr McCarthy said local radio stations broadcast information on congestion and at times roads were deemed to be free of charge, because they were free of traffic.

In relation to tolling however, the authors of the report found tolling by-passes or new motorways where there was excess capacity, made little sense. Mr McCarthy said tolls could deflect traffic into town centres, which was contrary to policy. It would be better, he commented, to put tolls in town centres.

The authors also warned of the dangers of opting for public private partnerships as a way of finding "cheap cash" for schemes such as road building.

PPPs were he said an expensive form of financing, requiring a 30-year pay-back and each scheme should be rigorously evaluated on its merits.

While it found the national roads programme was overspent 13 per cent at the end of 2002, at €2.61 billion or 27 per cent of the total budget, the report was supportive of road building, suggesting it should receive increased funding.

However, Mr McCarthy also warned the State might be "building rather flashier roads than we need" and suggested that savings in this area could be used to fund additional secondary and regional roads in gateway towns identified by the national spatial strategy.

In relation to public transport the review said "physical delivery of the Luas is well behind schedule" - directly contradicting the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, who recently told the Dáil that Luas was "on time and on budget".

The ESRI report concluded that the main "lesson" from its review of the NDP was that "before changing plans for any major project, a full evaluation should be done. The Luas project was a case where this did not happen."

Mainline rail should not get any more "large dollops" of funding, at least until the new rail cars are in place next January and their performance assessed.

Referring to the parallel delivery of the roads programme, Mr Fitzgerald commented: "how many ways do you want to get to Sligo?"

The review was also critical of Irish Rail, commenting that the twin tracking of the line from Clonsilla to Maynooth resulted in just 20 daily stopping services. "Infrastructure investment alone will not pay off unless adequate operational management and performance is delivered" the report claimed.