How will we get around in 2030?

The way we get around Ireland won’t necessarily be dramatically different by 2030, but by then — hopefully — major changes will be under way that will upend the transport landscape.

Right now, we mostly use our privately-owned cars to travel — 65 per cent of all journeys are made by car — contributing hugely to climate changing emissions. Indeed, 40 per cent of all of Ireland’s CO² emissions come from the transport sector.

So we need to drive less, use public transport more, and walk and cycle more. Between now and 2030, according to one leading expert, what we need is the simplest, most cost-effective solution: a better bus set-up.

“Between now and 2030 what we really need, though, is the delivery of the Bus Connects system, where we redesign the bus lanes, the cycle lanes and the pedestrian routes across Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford, and Limerick. That’s the priority and to be honest that’s the only thing that can realistically be delivered between now and 2030. There should be some improvements to the Dart, and to light rail in Cork, but there will be no new services, no new light rail nor Metro before 2030. Bus Connects is it,” said Dr Brian Caulfield, associate professor and head of department in the Centre for Transport Research at Trinity College Dublin.

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“If you’re asking me what things should look like, from a public transport point of view, by 2030 then I hope that the whole place will look like a giant building site,” he said. “Because that means we’re building the Metro, because we’re building a light rail system to Lucan, because we’re building other light rail systems. So hopefully in 2030, there’s traffic chaos across Dublin in particular, because that means we’re actually building these things and they can start to open up in the next decade.”

As for the rest of the country? The public transport pickings will be smaller, but still significant. As much as 90 per cent of all public transport journeys in Ireland take place in the Dublin area, while the remaining 10 per cent is divided between the other major regional urban centres. If we’re going to make serious running with public transport initiatives, then Dublin is where they’re most needed for now (sorry, everyone else).

That said, there are systems that could work well for the likes of Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford that wouldn’t work in Dublin, and Dr Caulfield thinks we should look to Northern Ireland for inspiration. “In Belfast they now have the Glider system which looks like a tram and works like a tram but runs on tyres so it’s a fraction of the cost of a tram. That’s something we could put together pretty quickly. It wouldn’t work in Dublin, but you could easily find the routes, the roads where it wouldn’t get stuck in the same traffic as everyone else, in Cork or Galway for example,” he said. “We need to be careful that we don’t fall into an inferiority complex, where everyone else goes ‘well, Dublin has a tram so we want a tram too’ mindset. We need to find the solutions that work. We could put a Glider network into a city for less money than we spend on electric car grants.”

What of those electric cars? Clearly the shift to electric is already happening and it’s gathering pace. That is good, but it also requires that the electricity supply network is decarbonised so that those electric cars are truly clean-running. By 2030, it’s also likely that the shift to a more on-demand form of car usage will have begun. Irish consumers tend to be traditional in the sense that they prefer to own, rather than rent (something that extends beyond cars) but even so, it’s likely that ride-hailing and car-sharing will become a key mode of transport. IBM is predicting that by 2030, autonomous, robotic cars will become widespread and so car buyers may abandon ownership en masse and embrace usage rather than purchase. A 2013 study by Trinity found that Ireland could reduce its CO² emissions by 86-kilotonnes per year by promoting a shift to shared car ownership, with the potential for a massive 895kt saving using “through appropriate policy and financial support”.

What about flying? Surely that’s the hardest transport system of all to decarbonise? That’s certainly true, but while so-called “efuels” — petrol-like synthetic fuels that extract carbon from the atmosphere rendering them, in theory, carbon neutral — are being developed, there’s room for electrification in aviation too. Gavin Campbell is the director of special projects for Spirit Aerosystems in Belfast (formerly called Bombardier). He told The Irish Times: “I think it’s inevitable that the electrification of aviation will bring both problems and opportunities. The whole potential switch is driven by opportunity, but it’s the nature of the product and the nature of the world that, operating in the highly regulated environment in which we do, a number of problems are going to have to be solved in order to realise that opportunity. That effort then takes you down a number of other roads, for example storing electrical energy on board. Because if you’re going to do that, then you’re looking at the potential of hybrid aircraft. At a recent aviation conference, the conversation was switching, very noticeably, from renewable fuels and biofuels, to electric aircraft.”

There is also the tantalising possibility of so-called “flying cars” — which aren’t cars at all but really a cross between a helicopter and a multi-rotor drone — which in theory could offer rapid intra-city transport without any traffic congestion on the streets. Major car makers — including the likes of Hyundai and Toyota — are already investing heavily in this area as has a start-up called Kitty Hawk. The company is being run by a Google alumnus, Sebastian Thrun, who was previously head of development for Google’s autonomous car systems. The plan, presumably, is to beat the likes of Uber and Airbus into providing on-demand personal air transport.

Kitty Hawk said in a statement that its Cora aircraft has “the potential to take off from a rooftop and hop across a city. To transform a parking lot into an airpad in your neighbourhood. You wouldn’t have to know anything about flying a plane. Cora could fly for you. And it would be all-electric, helping to build a sustainable world”. It’s designed to be “an aircraft so personal it could weave the freedom of flight into our daily lives”.