Sir, – Recent statistics from Census 2016 are again showing the sad state of rural towns and villages, which are now destined for continuing decline while at the same time Dublin in particular and similarly Galway and many larger towns are scenes of human frustration because of traffic congestion.
Simple question: when will our national planners realise that there is another way to plan for peripheral towns to become new job-centres?
It is frightening to read in the soon to be finalised National Planning Framework the same pattern of mistakes that will continue to see our large cities and towns as centres of traffic chaos with the consequent human stress factors arising from bumper-to-bumper commuting for the vast majority of workers. This is an example of fossilised thinking by national planners caught in an apparent freeze-frame.
So what is the answer? Yes, working from home is often mooted as a new option, but there is a much simpler solution which will bring two wins in one stroke, namely reduced commuting times and less traffic pollution. Statistics show that one quarter of our carbon footprint comes out of the tailpipes of motor cars and lorries.
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What is needed is a new positive policy to create quality job opportunities, starting with a drive to create attractive job-centres in the smaller peripheral towns. These towns would welcome such growth with open arms as has been witnessed by the ecstasy and agony of the recent Apple planning debacle in Athenry.
In simple terms reverse flow commuter corridors, initially on a pilot basis, would start a process of more efficient use of our motorways and road networks to ensure that commuting times no longer have all traffic flowing one-way bumper-to-bumper to the job-centres every morning and then the same volume of traffic flowing the opposite way as people make their way home bumper-to-bumper after each day’s work. Imagine the decrease in stress levels and traffic congestion by a new policy of two-directional traffic commutes.
What is required is a new approach and out-of-the box thinking to begin to develop the economies of the peripheral hinterlands and towns by developing these reverse flow commuter corridors driven by re-focused job creation incentives.
This would, for example, see the qualified science graduate commute out the road from Galway city each morning to a workplace that could be reached in far less time than it currently takes a science graduate from Athenry to commute into Parkmore Industrial Estate or one of the other such job centres in Galway City.
A win-win for the worker; a win-win for the environment; a win-win for Athenry and all the other Athenrys which lie within short commuting distances from our traffic-jammed cities.
What is needed is for government agencies to see the dire need to create jobs away from the ever bulging work centres of large towns and cities. In one straightforward policy change we could have two big wins that every right-thinking person agrees with, namely the need to reduce human stress levels among commuters added to the need for greater traffic efficiency with the consequent reduction in carbon footprint. – Yours, etc,
JOHN HIGGINS
Bettystown,
Co Meath.