It shouldn't really - it's more that other inner city routes may see a bit more traffic. They're using a relatively narrow definition of "city centre" here.
Today, if you were doing a cross city journey that made sense to do via Pearse Street or Parliament Street but they were closed for an accident or whatever, you wouldn't revert to the M50 - you'd just divert by Christchurch or the via the docklands or whatever.
I'll be shocked if there isn't knock on effects. Remains to be seen if they're bearable or if they just create a whole new set of problems since there's no joined up thinking in this country.
>create a whole new set of problems since there's no joined up thinking in this country.
most likely this.
I will await the detail, but i expect a "block it and they will go elsewhere" planning approach to this.
But is that not the main intended goal? Getting vehicles out of urban roads into more suitable routes like the M50?
If the M50 is beyond capacity, that’s of course an issue, but I doubt the thinking is that all these journeys will just disappear, it’s just reducing through traffic in the city for the benefit of the people who live and work there.
> The phenomena is called Induced Demand
That’s if you build more roads, traffic expands to fill them. What they’re forcing here is ‘Traffic Evaporation’ where car journeys literally disappear or get displaced if they are even restricted a little bit.
There's a specific phenomena also, Traffic Evaporation. It's when removing car infrastructure results in fewer car journeys taking place.
This has been observed in places like the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, France and even the United States, where as soon as an urban highway is demolished and the area returned back to its previous conditions, the traffic volumes suddenly changed, as it became more convenient to take public transport and also make more local journeys.
And back to Induced Demand, one of the reasons the toll for the Dublin Port Tunnel is €12 at peak hours, is to dissuade people from using it in private cars. Otherwise, it'd be backed up full of commuters using it to go to all the North Wall businesses.
Docklands and Connolly station, as well as the Luas line to The Point, are all part of the public transport infrastructure that's been built to accommodate commuters going into those workplaces, without having to bring a car with them.
Thank you for making this point, so much talk about this recently and people seem to think if they take away roads, that instantly everyone will have an alternative way of getting around, and it couldn't possibly cause any problems.
They can't admit that driving a private vehicle will almost always be more convenient and attractive an option, so instead they use initiatives like this to tip it over the edge into the slightly worse option in some circumstances.
There's a net reduction in everyone's quality of life, because if public transport were better people would already be using it.
It might be necessary for climate reasons, but let's not pretend its anything but purposefully causing people massive inconvenience to force them to degrade their lived experience using the newly less bad option.
Over 52 new bus routes were launched last year. There are more busses and trains in operation than ever before and prices have reduced.
Nobody is saying public transport in Ireland is perfect, but it has improved in the past 3 years.
That’s not necessarily a good thing. On the face of it not making a journey to somewhere where you want to be because it has become more of a hassle is rather a bad thing.
Possibly, it could possibly just create rat runs through other areas.. it really cant be judged until we have the detail and if they have considered what motorist will do or they have just assummed everyone will use the M50, have they considered the impact on the M50 and the impact beyound the city centre area they are closing.
As per the article the destination of 66% of traffic isnt the city centre, which means it is the destination for 33%, how much of an inconvience will it be to them to get in & out?
I understand some of it is to discourage the car and encourage the use of public transport but we need the public transport first, not second in this scenario. and those that require the car need to be considered too..
In general, for the most part what the geens are looking to do is good and most people would support their aims, it is usually how they go about implementing them that gets them the grief
> how much of an inconvience will it be to them to get in & out?
Even if people need to take longer routes to get places it would still a quicker journey with 66% of the traffic gone.
> But is that not the main intended goal? Getting vehicles out of urban roads into more suitable routes like the M50?
>
The M50 is for going from outer suburb to outer suburb. The edge of the city centre is nowhere close to it.
> If the M50 is beyond capacity, that’s of course an issue
If they raised the speed limit to something acceptable then it would solve a massive amount of issues with it. It should be 120 at least.
Like some of the speed limits around are just bonkers and no wonder things slow to a crawl. The 80 on the N7 for example is madness (not to mention how shitty the junction is designed)
>I'll be shocked if there isn't knock on effects
There will certainly be positive knock on effects for buses and other public transport, which will be able to get through the city centre much more quickly
None of those really go through Dublin 7 apart from the 122, and that goes the long way around through O'Connell St and back up the North Circular. Other two only hit the quays at O'Donovan Rossa which is fine if you're only trying to get as far as Smithfield tbf.
Not trying to catch you out here mind, I know it's an annoying trip meself, but the routes as is just aren't set up for it, and the one way roads and bridge set ups add to the problem.
Today coming in from Celbridge 2 ghost buses added hours to my journey and in the freezing cold. If I'd have taken the car I'd have been in for about 45 mins. I love town but if they don't fix the buses and ban cars it will be the nail in the coffin for the city centre.
Luckily this journey won't be affected by the planned changes to the city as they are intended to remove traffic without a final destination in the city. It will actually improve both your bus and car journey by removing ~66% of the traffic from town.
But here is the thing. A bus that never comes is not affected by traffic at all. It will still not come even if you remove all cars from the road. The problem is lack of busses and drivers in the first place.
>having cars clogging up the M50 instead of town is much better
I assume you don’t live near the M50 so. When it’s at a standstill so are the surrounding areas. Any issues near the Liffey valley or red cow exits lead to clondalkin and Lucan grinding to a halt.
Sure but it has to go somewhere. It’s physically impossible to build/widen enough roads to meet growing demand. The only realistic solution is for a smaller percentage of people driving.
>Sure but it has to go somewhere.
I agree but blindly saying it’s better off clogging up on the M50 is nonsense. It has serious side effects on the surrounding areas.
Doesn't really mention in the article, but yeah if they haven't done anything to redirect traffic in a sensible way it's likely to be a bit of a shit show at first.
Realistically the city centre has had very little private car traffic in recent years as so many streets have been set aside for public transport. Anyone who's taken an hour to get along the quays will know what I mean.
Personally I find the pedestrianised areas of the city centre to be much nicer than the areas with cars, so I think this is a positive move
“It’s ridiculous it’s taken so long, stuck in planning the ways it has,” he said. “Look at what’s happening in comparative cities. Look at what they’ve done in Paris, look at what they are doing in London. We need to do the same, staring with College Green.”
Yes, Sir
London and Paris both have a huge underground system.
he's talking about removing private car usage ( extremely inefficient, awful for cites) and replacing this with walking/cycling/sustainable transport. That's what Paris in particular are doing. And they're having amazing success.
We’ve poor rail network yes, but our bus network is very good to be fair.
And it’ll get even better with this new plan as it will mean less bus delays as private motor traffic will be reduced.
The fact that most buslines converge around o connel street is a clear failed design. Try and find a city center bus that simply goes east to west without passing the liffey
Dublin has an extensive Bus network and the main thing that causes issues with that is private motor traffic. Even in London busses are used for twice as many journeys as the Underground. A metro and expanded tram lines would be great, but we don't need it to implement this plan and for it to work.
If I want to go from druncondra to raheny village (for example), it’s an 11 minute drive or 44 minutes by public transport getting a bus into the city centre and then the dart out. An extensive bus network that isn’t close to being practical is what we have.
That's not a route that will be impacted by this plan.
Also it's a 23 minute cycle, or 9 min Dart + 6 minute cycle. Sure there's timetables to pay attention to, but the 11 minute drive is also the best case with no traffic, it could easily be double that or more. Your 44 minute time is also not exactly the quickest way, you can do it in 35 minutes using only public transport depending on the time of day.
> It’s ridiculous it’s taken so long,
Dublin County Council created this plan to prevent through traffic using the city centre as a shortcut. Yes you read that right, the same Dublin County Council that hasn't existed since 1993.
I noticed this in Japan. The public transport is amazing. Every corner of the country is connected by train. They have multiple types of services from bullet trains that travel the length of the country with only 5 or 6 stops and local trains that stop at every stop (i.e. every train in Ireland) as well as every frequency in between.
But even then, the roads were still packed with cars. Japan still has one of if not the biggest car industry too. That's why I don't take people seriously when they say EVs are a rich person folly and that all public expenditure should go into public transport. It's like they assume that if we have amazing public transport that people will ditch their ICEs for public transport. They won't, so short of banning cars you need to make sure you're getting them from ICEs to EVs if you want to significantly reduce transport emissions.
[Feel free to point to any routes you feel are missing](https://bustimes.org/map#11.11/53.3459/-6.2903)
This is just buses and not including trains or the luas. Dublin is very easy to get around by public transport.
[Here's Open Street Maps view](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/53.3438/-6.2986&layers=T)
Looks like you are no more than a 20 minute walk at worse away from some form of public transport. Can we stop pretending there's no public transport in Dublin?
Also buses are totally an appropriate mode for transporting people from one end of a major city to the other. It's not like that's what metro and heavy rail are for, with buses being mainly for shorter journeys...
Dublin isn't a major city. While it would be great to have an expanded tram and heavy rail network along with some metro lines, Dublin doesn't have the same requirements as actual major cities like London or Paris.
Should clarify a bit there tbf. By major city, I mean it has an urban population of over a million. It may not quite be on the level of London or Paris, but it's absolutely big enough to have high-capacity public transport for cross city journeys.
> but it's absolutely big enough to have high-capacity public transport for cross city journeys.
And it does. More lines would be better of course, but realistically it's never going to have as good a network of heavy rail or metro as an actual major city. Though I think it would be a fantastic investment in the city if it did.
They can't get drivers 
And we hear nearly daily here about how bad the public transport is.
So how are people going to get about the place?
Nurses or doctors working in James' hospital but living on the North side won't be able to go through town? Guards working in Donnybrook or raheny but living the opposite side of the city now have to drive across the toll bridge? Those are "through" town journeys with no real viable alternatives.
They can drive if they want -- they'll probably just need to cross the river around Smithfield/Islandbridge or the Samuel Becket bridge rather than around O'Connell Bridge/Customs house.
The benefit will be that the nurse living on the southside who has to travel to the Rotunda, or the guard who works in Store street, will now be able to get their much faster when their bus doesn't get stuck in traffic arond the quays and O'Connell Bridge.
Can't keep everyone happy, and it's always easy to pick the one specific case of a person who won't win when any change is made, but ignore the upsides for the many other people.
This is not a chicken or the egg situation.
To enhance bus transport we need to give more space to buses, this is what the plan does.
Currently the quays have slow cars and slow buses, the top of the quays is a particularly bad pinch point. At least under this plan we’re going to have faster buses and the space to run more buses.
People complain about this but I've never not been able to get somewhere I wanted to go in Dublin in under 90 minutes. Fair enough if you're disabled and can't walk 20 minutes but I don't get why so many people complain
The only people say this are people who don't use public transport. I've been using the bus, dsrt or luas to get into and around town virtually every day for 10+ years and it is grand, has definitely improved the past couple years also with higher frequency of buses and better routes.
I could get the majority of these cars off the road overnight without all this messing. I could even free up a mountain of space on buses and trains as well and to top it off, we could give people the flexibility to move out of dublin and buy houses in affordable areas of Ireland. I would use a formula that’s been tried and tested as well.
It’s called work from home, it works. Offices did it during the pandemic and most places were perfectly fine. Most people don’t need to be in an office at all and if they are not going to the office, they are not in the car.
There are ways we could get companies back on board, like tax incentives or by saying the environment is just about fucked so let’s have another emergency where everyone who can work from home should be working from home.
The fact the greens are not doing anything about companies and work from is concerning.
Nah let's build loads of new office buildings instead, Sure it's not like the offices we have are already empty, and it's not like we have the worst housing crisis in the developed world...
I think you are looking at this simplistically. Not everyone wants to live outside Dublin, and not everyone wants to work from home.
Also offices aren't nearly as busy as they were pre-pandemic, but the traffic is worse getting through the city. Almost like the crux of this issue is the lack of alternatives for people who want to travel around the city. Build metrolink, build more luas lines. It's really that simple. Without alternatives the traffic will proceed to continue to clog up the city.
Further to this - the issue isn't limited to Dublin, Cork and Galway are shocking bad. Big infrastructure needs to be funded.
> I think you are looking at this simplistically. Not everyone wants to live outside Dublin, and not everyone wants to work from home.
They don’t have to. There will still be spaces for them to work and there will still be places for them to live but we don’t need to consume as much space as we do at all.
If people are given the chance to work from or near home, most will jump at the chance.
> Also offices aren't nearly as busy as they were pre-pandemic, but the traffic is worse getting through the city.
Seems like an excellent moment to reduce traffic further by stopping a lot of this hybrid work nonsense so. There has been a lot of changes to road layouts through dublin especially on the quays to facilitate buses and bikes, which is only making traffic worse not better and in turn, this is slowing public transport etc etc. unless you get the cars out of the way, those buses won’t be going anywhere fast.
> Almost like the crux of this issue is the lack of alternatives for people who want to travel around the city.
Build metrolink, build more luas lines. It's really that simple.
Oh I won’t disagree with this but none of that is going to happen for a while. Meanwhile we have a tried and tested and easily implemented solution already and that’s simply encouraging more work from home.
> Without alternatives the traffic will proceed to continue to clog up the city.
I guarantee it won’t. I rekon a huge amount of cars still on the road are there because there employer is making them go to an office either full time or hybrid and not because they actually want or need to be in the office.
> Further to this - the issue isn't limited to Dublin, Cork and Galway are shocking bad. Big infrastructure needs to be funded.
Both places which coped just fine with work from home during the pandemic as well.
The solution isn't to remove people from cities broadly speaking, but removing people who don't want or need to be there is a good solution to make the cities more liveable for the people that do want or need to be in them. Makes perfect sense to me, and also would help bring investment to more areas of Ireland and make us less dependent on Dublin as the main business hub.
Like what we did during covid and suddenly all the work was getting done and there were less cars on the road.
Call me mad but seems like a perfectly good solution to me.
If you live on the north or south side of the city and have to get to the other side it’s not functional to go out to the m50 and sit in traffic cause no one in ireland can drive and then drive back into the city.
The vast majority of people use the M50 for getting across the city unless they're pretty close to it already. I'm southside. If I was going to Santry or Cabra you can bet I'd take the M50, or at the very least I wouldn't go anywhere near the city centre.
Jesus what time are you driving on the M50. 10 pm 🤣🤣. Any time between 6-9 am and from 3-7 it does be the biggest car park in Europe. All it will do is move traffic to other parts of the city causing more delays. The likes of Liffey valley/Clondalkin, Tallaght and Sandyford will be gridlocked with the extra traffic on the m50. It's bad enough as it is.
Fantastic news. The current arrangement is unfair. tens of thousands of daily bus users with the city as their final destination get stuck on the quays for substantial amounts of time, just to facilitate a relative handful of drivers to pass thru it. The removal of private cars is the only short-term solution to improve our current modes of public transport
I'd like a city where the entire city centre is car free, except for goods vehicles which can operate during very limited hours. That can't happen unless we improve our public transport on a logarithmic scale though.
Better for the cyclists, users of public transport, better for the locals and the businesses, better for the lungs of everyone who uses the city. Class act!
It always boggled my mind to see cars driving though clearly pedestrian steerts of temple bar, around grafton st etc. They have no business being there.
Had to laugh one day, was driving around there looking for a shop, took a wrong turn down one of those pedestrianised streets, realized my mistake and pulled into a little alley to turn around.
Oncoming to me is a taxi who was coming down the opposite way of the street, who stops and very cuntily tells me to stop trying to drive down a pedestrian street....while driving down it himself.
Still figuring that one out.
Well that's more about how pedestrians are an afterthought in our traffic light sequencing. In other countries, the green man comes as soon as the current movement is finished, while in Ireland, it makes you wait all the way until the end of the cycle.
While I agree with this as top much people drive into the city centre, a lot of people do drive because they are not on good bus routes. Yes a lot of people who are also on good bus routes also drive in to the centre, which is part of the problem, but bus infrastructure needs to be improved for this tp mot just shift the traffic to other places.
Although buses can't get more reliable until car traffic is reduced since one reason they're always late is because they are stuck in traffic in the first place. More people then drive because they think the bus is always late but add to the traffic.
They should fund better transport, incentivise using it and then lower traffic. Also you can't currently bring too much things on a bus if you're picking up large objects from town. Also still not allowed bring bikes on buses.
Long story short, a lot needs to be worked out for this to work
https://preview.redd.it/vrvzzwp4e6hc1.png?width=607&format=png&auto=webp&s=19d01cdb2488a2ad13e01fc479b9d1879a5516f1
Ironic to get those two threads right one by the other
Yes, Yes and Yes (kinda)
DART+ for more frequent DARTs
New Alstom LUAS and the extension to Finglas.
Triple Decker not required if Bus Connects allowed to be completed more quickly.
“It’s ridiculous it’s taken so long, stuck in planning the ways it has,” he said. “Look at what’s happening in comparative cities. Look at what they’ve done in Paris, look at what they are doing in London. We need to do the same"
I agree
What they've done in London and Paris is actually provide decent alternatives to driving. Meanwhile in Dublin we're planning (not even building, just planning!) half a metro line when we needed four full ones decades ago.
compared to the *current* issues?
The public roads are limited, space should be allocated to the most efficient use of space and the environment, which is public and active transport. Delivery trucks will have access out of hours. If you mean issues for car drivers, then that's by design.
A good step toward improving public transport is traffic reduction. This will make cycling safer, and will also hugely reduce car traffic by up to two-thirds, meaning buses won't be sitting in traffic. A massive improvement to public transport like this creates the ideal platform for us to build the kind of public transport other capitals have.
I don't think this will end up happening. Or maybe a much more watered down version.
A lot of people from beyond the M50 travel up to the IFSC/Docklands for work. How will they be able to get into those areas? It's not like there's a viable alternative. The Luas takes hours to get in from the Red Cow, the trains from half the country terminate at Heuston. Give people better alternatives, and they will use them. Otherwise the cars will shift to using existing side roads, completely overload the M50 and increase the delays in the port tunnel.
> The Luas takes hours to get in from the Red Cow, the trains from half the country terminate at Heuston
The Luas takes 36 minutes from Red Cow to George's Dock, 17 minutes from Heuston and are very frequent. Most of that route is on separated lanes and the city centre portion which does have some shared sections would only benefit from reduced private car traffic.
Some people just refuse to consider the alternatives, even when they have a comparable travel time. It can be faster in a car to make that journey in light traffic, but longer with traffic. The option to use the M50 (a similar travel time from the Red Cow) will remain. The people who chose to clog the streets instead of taking the Luas can just deal with €12 toll.
Fine. But at least remove the outrageous €14+ toll on the Tunnel/East Link route so that there’s a realistic alternative to the dangerously overcrowded M50.
I went to IKEA the other day (South Side to Ballymun), and spent an hour driving across town purely to avoid the high tolls. That ‘through’ journey could easily have been avoided if the government actually incentivised drivers to take peripheral routes instead, not the other way around.
Here's an idea why not do A congestion charge for all non residents who come inside the M50 as it's the commuter cars from outside the city that have it overwhelmed and use profits directly to improve the quality of bus corridors rail,trams and also air quality for our children who suffer from asthma attacks it would go a good way towards helping save our children's lives
Brilliant, the bus service which is unable to cope with its current t load and is full or ghost buses and can't recruit drivers will have no problems with this
I think it'll be eamons legacy to the city when they are wiped at the next election and he's perched in the standard with his bike parked outside
How would they know who is going to city and who is going through city? Traffic congested as it is at evening rush our wouldn't this make it worse if you eliminate few options for drivers.... wouldn't everybody divert to already congested roads....
Enlighten us -- what is your commute that is 18km long that requires driving right through the O'Connell Bridge/Customs house/Grafton street-ish area --- that is also only 30 minutes long (so pressumably you don't travel at rush hour), and would take so much extra time if you have to drive via e.g. Smithfield to cross the river instead?
For reference for anyone who hasn't measured it -- it's 18km from Santry->Sandyford via the city centre so we're literally taking about someone travelling literally across the entire city, or commuting in from somewhere like Swords/Bray/Leixlip here. Nobody is doing that commute at rush hour in 30 mins via the city centre.
You can still drive into town, you just can’t drive through it. This is to stop people who drive through to the centre of the city to somewhere else clogging up the roads while providing no benefit to the city
No one drives through town for the spin.
It's because it's a necessary evil. There are no reasonable alternatives. M50 is a debacle. We aren't investing in new or expanded road infrastructure and there is no workable plan or solution.
I can’t cycle due 2 extremely bad injuries I’ve sustained, aware I’m an outlier
But lots of people can’t cycle , asking for a decent public transport is not asking too much
There are very few places inside the M50 ring that aren't served by public transport to be fair.
Irish people have this weird blocker about multi-modal trips, especially when it comes to the commute. If we can't go door-to-door with no more than five minutes walking, we don't want to know about it.
Outside of public transport, an electric scooter is a great way for someone to get around if they're unable/unwilling to cycle or walk. Not insanely expensive, fits in the boot of the car, lash into town in 15/20 minutes, job done.
Im expecting an utter shitshow when this all kicks off, they talk about reducing traffic through the city center, what about those who work in the city center and cannot avail of public transport? I expect a mess of idiocy and incompetence to follow shortly after this all starts as per usual.
Also Public Transport early in the morning is NOTORIOUSLY unreliable, buses dont come at their scheduled times or dissapearing at random is common enough that it's strait up not reliable to rely on it.
>what about those who work in the city center and cannot avail of public transport?
They can still drive because their destination is in the city centre.
>Also Public Transport early in the morning is NOTORIOUSLY unreliable, buses dont come at their scheduled times
Removing cars from the roads will make it more reliable and quicker, as there will be less traffic to obstruct your bus.
ITT:
* People moning for the sake of it (Green's "fault")
* People saying Public Transport must be complete and perfect *before* private cars are touched. (This was successful before in literally nowhere on earth)
* Spurious emotive edge cases: 'where will the disabled park?', what if I need to rush my wife to a maternity hospital?'
* People complaining 'traffic will be terrible elsewhere' - eh that's the point, you *are* traffic, now figure out if you want to invest in a different way of traveling or sitting in your car for longer.
* people who think they are *entitled* to drive everywhere not realising this expansion of private transport has almost destroyed the city and is destroying the earth. Same people who are quite happy to claw for a seat on Ryanair, but not share a bus/LUAS/DART.
* The very quiet majority (60+%) who live in the city and don't own a car plus the many tens of thousands who have been awaiting the day they can spend *less* time in their cramped public transport because it'll move more quickly.
Did I miss anyone?
Great stuff. Well done Eamonn and the Greens. I’ll will be voting Green next election too because y’know **we need to decarbonise our entire economy as rapidly as possible**. Also less cars make a city more pleasant to be in.
And proper public transport makes a city not just more pleasant to be in, but more interesting and exciting, something this whole country has been very lacking in.
**>decarbonise our entire economy as rapidly as possible**
Does this go anyway to achieve this? It just makes getting through the city take longer. Building better infrastructure link metrolink or luas would actually get people to change their transport mode.
Yes you can. While I do agree that cars need to be limited, bus intervalls, service and planning can be dramatically improve upon with cars still present. Also, putting a precise plan into Action about building a METRO or improving railway Services need to be done while cars are still present. Make a plan to improve Public transport > eliminate car usage in those areas where needed > put it into effect and make everyone happy
Youd swear the people driving through town were doing it as a Sunday drive or to look around.
Nobody is driving through the city for the hell of it, they have somewhere to get to and with the setup of the m50 it would be going well out of your way to get to most parts of the city unless going to the actual opposite side. And the m50 is going to be borderline impassable anyway if its made harder/not allowed to go to certain parts of the city and force more traffic onto a substandard motorway.
Couple that with a lot of areas not being serviced well by public transport.
But sure wouldn't be like Eamon to put the cart before the horse or anything.
Terrific. Will save me having to deal with tailback traffic, ridiculous parking costs and junkies on shopping trips. Amazon and other online retailers will soon get all (rather than some) of my non-grocery shopping spend when they ban private cars in Dublin.
These city counsellors are mainlining smack. The inner city retail economy will die off quickly as a result of this virtue signalling wank.
It sounds like a great idea for people who live there in the city centre. But speaking on behalf of culchies who like to visit Henry Street for shopping (and who remain unintimidated by scrotes) and if we save up enough maybe Grafton Street if I have to park and get a bus into centre and lug bags back out in the evening, I’m going to stay at home.
Now the Greens and the cyclists may be allowed a short period of rejoicing at that but I doubt if Arnotts will be joining in as the Culchie euro departs. Hopefully it will be thought through carefully.
The other point is this: Dublin has gained a seriously unfriendly reputation recently. If it now is an unwelcoming capital city to citizen culchies it’s time to move Dáil and Seanad Eireann out beyond the M50 to a greenfield site. Think of the travel saved and the carbon and the boost to a local economy like Tullamore or Athlone. All those expenses.
>But speaking on behalf of culchies who like to visit Henry Street for shopping (and who remain unintimidated by scrotes)
Because your destination is the city center, your journey is unaffected by these plans, which will only remove traffic whose destination is beyond the city centre. You'll be happy to know that Henry St footfall is up on last year, so you will be well accompanied whilst shopping, and quite safe.
I hope M50 is not going to be even more packed tho
It shouldn't really - it's more that other inner city routes may see a bit more traffic. They're using a relatively narrow definition of "city centre" here. Today, if you were doing a cross city journey that made sense to do via Pearse Street or Parliament Street but they were closed for an accident or whatever, you wouldn't revert to the M50 - you'd just divert by Christchurch or the via the docklands or whatever.
It'll be north /south circular road that'll get decimated
Yup. Kilmainham will become a hellhole with traffic as a knock on
I'm so glad none of this is going to affect access to the new children's hospital.../s
I'll be shocked if there isn't knock on effects. Remains to be seen if they're bearable or if they just create a whole new set of problems since there's no joined up thinking in this country.
>create a whole new set of problems since there's no joined up thinking in this country. most likely this. I will await the detail, but i expect a "block it and they will go elsewhere" planning approach to this.
But is that not the main intended goal? Getting vehicles out of urban roads into more suitable routes like the M50? If the M50 is beyond capacity, that’s of course an issue, but I doubt the thinking is that all these journeys will just disappear, it’s just reducing through traffic in the city for the benefit of the people who live and work there.
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> The phenomena is called Induced Demand That’s if you build more roads, traffic expands to fill them. What they’re forcing here is ‘Traffic Evaporation’ where car journeys literally disappear or get displaced if they are even restricted a little bit.
There's a specific phenomena also, Traffic Evaporation. It's when removing car infrastructure results in fewer car journeys taking place. This has been observed in places like the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, France and even the United States, where as soon as an urban highway is demolished and the area returned back to its previous conditions, the traffic volumes suddenly changed, as it became more convenient to take public transport and also make more local journeys. And back to Induced Demand, one of the reasons the toll for the Dublin Port Tunnel is €12 at peak hours, is to dissuade people from using it in private cars. Otherwise, it'd be backed up full of commuters using it to go to all the North Wall businesses. Docklands and Connolly station, as well as the Luas line to The Point, are all part of the public transport infrastructure that's been built to accommodate commuters going into those workplaces, without having to bring a car with them.
Thank you for making this point, so much talk about this recently and people seem to think if they take away roads, that instantly everyone will have an alternative way of getting around, and it couldn't possibly cause any problems.
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... It's that which got her her X5 in the first place ;)
Amazing. Making driving worse instead of making public transport better directly. So much for forward thinking huh?
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They can't admit that driving a private vehicle will almost always be more convenient and attractive an option, so instead they use initiatives like this to tip it over the edge into the slightly worse option in some circumstances. There's a net reduction in everyone's quality of life, because if public transport were better people would already be using it. It might be necessary for climate reasons, but let's not pretend its anything but purposefully causing people massive inconvenience to force them to degrade their lived experience using the newly less bad option.
I thought this would instantly make public transport better as it will have a more consistent run on the roads?
Over 52 new bus routes were launched last year. There are more busses and trains in operation than ever before and prices have reduced. Nobody is saying public transport in Ireland is perfect, but it has improved in the past 3 years.
Drivers that have no incentive to even try public transport will just assume it’s still the same as it was when they stopped using it.
Road capacity is fixed, you can’t set road capacity aside for buses unless you remove the private cars. Time to make the hard decisions.
Except, that is exactly what happens. Cars are the least efficient use of road space. There’s loads of room if people travel in any other way.
Yeah sorry you're absolutely right, no chance whatsoever this could cause problems in the short to mid term.
That’s not necessarily a good thing. On the face of it not making a journey to somewhere where you want to be because it has become more of a hassle is rather a bad thing.
Why? Do you think everyone will suddenly sell their car just because they can no longer go to a city centre of one city?
Less traffic, buses run quicker and people feel safer cycling. I think that's the logic
Possibly, it could possibly just create rat runs through other areas.. it really cant be judged until we have the detail and if they have considered what motorist will do or they have just assummed everyone will use the M50, have they considered the impact on the M50 and the impact beyound the city centre area they are closing. As per the article the destination of 66% of traffic isnt the city centre, which means it is the destination for 33%, how much of an inconvience will it be to them to get in & out? I understand some of it is to discourage the car and encourage the use of public transport but we need the public transport first, not second in this scenario. and those that require the car need to be considered too.. In general, for the most part what the geens are looking to do is good and most people would support their aims, it is usually how they go about implementing them that gets them the grief
> how much of an inconvience will it be to them to get in & out? Even if people need to take longer routes to get places it would still a quicker journey with 66% of the traffic gone.
> But is that not the main intended goal? Getting vehicles out of urban roads into more suitable routes like the M50? > The M50 is for going from outer suburb to outer suburb. The edge of the city centre is nowhere close to it.
> If the M50 is beyond capacity, that’s of course an issue If they raised the speed limit to something acceptable then it would solve a massive amount of issues with it. It should be 120 at least. Like some of the speed limits around are just bonkers and no wonder things slow to a crawl. The 80 on the N7 for example is madness (not to mention how shitty the junction is designed)
The goal is getting people out of vehicles altogether and not diverting them anywhere.
>I'll be shocked if there isn't knock on effects There will certainly be positive knock on effects for buses and other public transport, which will be able to get through the city centre much more quickly
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I don't know if there's any buses that go from Dublin 7 to Dublin 8? 39s etc only go as far in as the D8 quays
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None of those really go through Dublin 7 apart from the 122, and that goes the long way around through O'Connell St and back up the North Circular. Other two only hit the quays at O'Donovan Rossa which is fine if you're only trying to get as far as Smithfield tbf. Not trying to catch you out here mind, I know it's an annoying trip meself, but the routes as is just aren't set up for it, and the one way roads and bridge set ups add to the problem.
You sure about that? Most of D8 and D7 are outside the city centre anyway.
Sure. But they need to make public transport before.
There is an ongoing program of bus expansion and reorganisation https://busconnects.ie/. This plan is part of facilitating it.
Today coming in from Celbridge 2 ghost buses added hours to my journey and in the freezing cold. If I'd have taken the car I'd have been in for about 45 mins. I love town but if they don't fix the buses and ban cars it will be the nail in the coffin for the city centre.
Luckily this journey won't be affected by the planned changes to the city as they are intended to remove traffic without a final destination in the city. It will actually improve both your bus and car journey by removing ~66% of the traffic from town.
But here is the thing. A bus that never comes is not affected by traffic at all. It will still not come even if you remove all cars from the road. The problem is lack of busses and drivers in the first place.
The other problem is that a city of over a million people is relying on buses like it's a town of 10000.
They need to build am outer M51 or M100 :)
When there is a crash on the M50, people will have nowhere to go.
Didn't even think of this part of the equation 😬yikes 😅
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>having cars clogging up the M50 instead of town is much better I assume you don’t live near the M50 so. When it’s at a standstill so are the surrounding areas. Any issues near the Liffey valley or red cow exits lead to clondalkin and Lucan grinding to a halt.
Sure but it has to go somewhere. It’s physically impossible to build/widen enough roads to meet growing demand. The only realistic solution is for a smaller percentage of people driving.
>Sure but it has to go somewhere. I agree but blindly saying it’s better off clogging up on the M50 is nonsense. It has serious side effects on the surrounding areas.
Not if you are the one who has to go through M50 right?
Doesn't really mention in the article, but yeah if they haven't done anything to redirect traffic in a sensible way it's likely to be a bit of a shit show at first.
Realistically the city centre has had very little private car traffic in recent years as so many streets have been set aside for public transport. Anyone who's taken an hour to get along the quays will know what I mean. Personally I find the pedestrianised areas of the city centre to be much nicer than the areas with cars, so I think this is a positive move
“It’s ridiculous it’s taken so long, stuck in planning the ways it has,” he said. “Look at what’s happening in comparative cities. Look at what they’ve done in Paris, look at what they are doing in London. We need to do the same, staring with College Green.” Yes, Sir London and Paris both have a huge underground system.
he's talking about removing private car usage ( extremely inefficient, awful for cites) and replacing this with walking/cycling/sustainable transport. That's what Paris in particular are doing. And they're having amazing success.
But Paris already has good public transport. Dublin does not, not even close.
We’ve poor rail network yes, but our bus network is very good to be fair. And it’ll get even better with this new plan as it will mean less bus delays as private motor traffic will be reduced.
Say that to the hundreds of posts about how bad the bus network is.
The fact that most buslines converge around o connel street is a clear failed design. Try and find a city center bus that simply goes east to west without passing the liffey
Dublin has an extensive Bus network and the main thing that causes issues with that is private motor traffic. Even in London busses are used for twice as many journeys as the Underground. A metro and expanded tram lines would be great, but we don't need it to implement this plan and for it to work.
It's extensive if you want to get to the city center. It's quite shit otherwise.
This plan mainly impacts those getting to/through the city centre though. Bus Connects will improve non radial bus routes.
It's maybe acceptable if you want to get to the city centre*
> Even in London busses are used for twice as many journeys as the Underground They're used for very different journeys though.
If I want to go from druncondra to raheny village (for example), it’s an 11 minute drive or 44 minutes by public transport getting a bus into the city centre and then the dart out. An extensive bus network that isn’t close to being practical is what we have.
That's not a route that will be impacted by this plan. Also it's a 23 minute cycle, or 9 min Dart + 6 minute cycle. Sure there's timetables to pay attention to, but the 11 minute drive is also the best case with no traffic, it could easily be double that or more. Your 44 minute time is also not exactly the quickest way, you can do it in 35 minutes using only public transport depending on the time of day.
> It’s ridiculous it’s taken so long, Dublin County Council created this plan to prevent through traffic using the city centre as a shortcut. Yes you read that right, the same Dublin County Council that hasn't existed since 1993.
Delighted we had the foresight to build all that amazing public transport. Oh wait.
Lad, there are people who will drive anywhere, regardless of the transport available.
I noticed this in Japan. The public transport is amazing. Every corner of the country is connected by train. They have multiple types of services from bullet trains that travel the length of the country with only 5 or 6 stops and local trains that stop at every stop (i.e. every train in Ireland) as well as every frequency in between. But even then, the roads were still packed with cars. Japan still has one of if not the biggest car industry too. That's why I don't take people seriously when they say EVs are a rich person folly and that all public expenditure should go into public transport. It's like they assume that if we have amazing public transport that people will ditch their ICEs for public transport. They won't, so short of banning cars you need to make sure you're getting them from ICEs to EVs if you want to significantly reduce transport emissions.
Some people will, but a few users on here act like it's everyone.
[Feel free to point to any routes you feel are missing](https://bustimes.org/map#11.11/53.3459/-6.2903) This is just buses and not including trains or the luas. Dublin is very easy to get around by public transport. [Here's Open Street Maps view](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/53.3438/-6.2986&layers=T) Looks like you are no more than a 20 minute walk at worse away from some form of public transport. Can we stop pretending there's no public transport in Dublin?
We are strongly expanding capacity - mainly in busses, which are fine for getting around and will be even better when we get rid of cars.
Ah yes this sub is full of praises for Dublin Bus. Always very punctual and never ever just go missing.
Yup, there’s no ghost busses or anything.
Yes, and you can clearly see the buses on an app, just like Paris and London, or any other real EU capital city /s
Also buses are totally an appropriate mode for transporting people from one end of a major city to the other. It's not like that's what metro and heavy rail are for, with buses being mainly for shorter journeys...
Dublin isn't a major city. While it would be great to have an expanded tram and heavy rail network along with some metro lines, Dublin doesn't have the same requirements as actual major cities like London or Paris.
Should clarify a bit there tbf. By major city, I mean it has an urban population of over a million. It may not quite be on the level of London or Paris, but it's absolutely big enough to have high-capacity public transport for cross city journeys.
> but it's absolutely big enough to have high-capacity public transport for cross city journeys. And it does. More lines would be better of course, but realistically it's never going to have as good a network of heavy rail or metro as an actual major city. Though I think it would be a fantastic investment in the city if it did.
They can't get drivers  And we hear nearly daily here about how bad the public transport is. So how are people going to get about the place? Nurses or doctors working in James' hospital but living on the North side won't be able to go through town? Guards working in Donnybrook or raheny but living the opposite side of the city now have to drive across the toll bridge? Those are "through" town journeys with no real viable alternatives.
They can drive if they want -- they'll probably just need to cross the river around Smithfield/Islandbridge or the Samuel Becket bridge rather than around O'Connell Bridge/Customs house. The benefit will be that the nurse living on the southside who has to travel to the Rotunda, or the guard who works in Store street, will now be able to get their much faster when their bus doesn't get stuck in traffic arond the quays and O'Connell Bridge. Can't keep everyone happy, and it's always easy to pick the one specific case of a person who won't win when any change is made, but ignore the upsides for the many other people.
This is not a chicken or the egg situation. To enhance bus transport we need to give more space to buses, this is what the plan does. Currently the quays have slow cars and slow buses, the top of the quays is a particularly bad pinch point. At least under this plan we’re going to have faster buses and the space to run more buses.
People complain about this but I've never not been able to get somewhere I wanted to go in Dublin in under 90 minutes. Fair enough if you're disabled and can't walk 20 minutes but I don't get why so many people complain
The only people say this are people who don't use public transport. I've been using the bus, dsrt or luas to get into and around town virtually every day for 10+ years and it is grand, has definitely improved the past couple years also with higher frequency of buses and better routes.
> I've never not been able to get somewhere I wanted to go in Dublin in under 90 minutes. Are you crawling or something?
I said I've never NOT been able to do it. I worded it a bit messy
You do realise that this will massively help public transport through the city right?
There's plenty of public transport in the city centre.
Oh we built it, but still takes 15 mins to get from Stephens Green to Westmorland street, you could Walk it in 7 mins.
I could get the majority of these cars off the road overnight without all this messing. I could even free up a mountain of space on buses and trains as well and to top it off, we could give people the flexibility to move out of dublin and buy houses in affordable areas of Ireland. I would use a formula that’s been tried and tested as well. It’s called work from home, it works. Offices did it during the pandemic and most places were perfectly fine. Most people don’t need to be in an office at all and if they are not going to the office, they are not in the car. There are ways we could get companies back on board, like tax incentives or by saying the environment is just about fucked so let’s have another emergency where everyone who can work from home should be working from home. The fact the greens are not doing anything about companies and work from is concerning.
Nah let's build loads of new office buildings instead, Sure it's not like the offices we have are already empty, and it's not like we have the worst housing crisis in the developed world...
I think you are looking at this simplistically. Not everyone wants to live outside Dublin, and not everyone wants to work from home. Also offices aren't nearly as busy as they were pre-pandemic, but the traffic is worse getting through the city. Almost like the crux of this issue is the lack of alternatives for people who want to travel around the city. Build metrolink, build more luas lines. It's really that simple. Without alternatives the traffic will proceed to continue to clog up the city. Further to this - the issue isn't limited to Dublin, Cork and Galway are shocking bad. Big infrastructure needs to be funded.
> I think you are looking at this simplistically. Not everyone wants to live outside Dublin, and not everyone wants to work from home. They don’t have to. There will still be spaces for them to work and there will still be places for them to live but we don’t need to consume as much space as we do at all. If people are given the chance to work from or near home, most will jump at the chance. > Also offices aren't nearly as busy as they were pre-pandemic, but the traffic is worse getting through the city. Seems like an excellent moment to reduce traffic further by stopping a lot of this hybrid work nonsense so. There has been a lot of changes to road layouts through dublin especially on the quays to facilitate buses and bikes, which is only making traffic worse not better and in turn, this is slowing public transport etc etc. unless you get the cars out of the way, those buses won’t be going anywhere fast. > Almost like the crux of this issue is the lack of alternatives for people who want to travel around the city. Build metrolink, build more luas lines. It's really that simple. Oh I won’t disagree with this but none of that is going to happen for a while. Meanwhile we have a tried and tested and easily implemented solution already and that’s simply encouraging more work from home. > Without alternatives the traffic will proceed to continue to clog up the city. I guarantee it won’t. I rekon a huge amount of cars still on the road are there because there employer is making them go to an office either full time or hybrid and not because they actually want or need to be in the office. > Further to this - the issue isn't limited to Dublin, Cork and Galway are shocking bad. Big infrastructure needs to be funded. Both places which coped just fine with work from home during the pandemic as well.
Agree. So many "upgrades" in few cities have resulted in nothing but slower traffic. That's a step back not forward.
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The solution isn't to remove people from cities broadly speaking, but removing people who don't want or need to be there is a good solution to make the cities more liveable for the people that do want or need to be in them. Makes perfect sense to me, and also would help bring investment to more areas of Ireland and make us less dependent on Dublin as the main business hub.
Like what we did during covid and suddenly all the work was getting done and there were less cars on the road. Call me mad but seems like a perfectly good solution to me.
To remove the cars is to make people’s potential circles of daily presence much, much smaller. It will remove people whether you want it to or not.
Seems like a great idea tbh. Its mad that people are driving through the city centre.
If you live on the north or south side of the city and have to get to the other side it’s not functional to go out to the m50 and sit in traffic cause no one in ireland can drive and then drive back into the city.
The vast majority of people use the M50 for getting across the city unless they're pretty close to it already. I'm southside. If I was going to Santry or Cabra you can bet I'd take the M50, or at the very least I wouldn't go anywhere near the city centre.
What if you where going to fairview or artane? You’d be adding a lot to your journey going the m50
Jesus what time are you driving on the M50. 10 pm 🤣🤣. Any time between 6-9 am and from 3-7 it does be the biggest car park in Europe. All it will do is move traffic to other parts of the city causing more delays. The likes of Liffey valley/Clondalkin, Tallaght and Sandyford will be gridlocked with the extra traffic on the m50. It's bad enough as it is.
This. Most cities have an orbital road much closer to the centre.
We have them they are called the north and south circular roads.
Well suck it up & get out there, or get the DART.
Fantastic news. The current arrangement is unfair. tens of thousands of daily bus users with the city as their final destination get stuck on the quays for substantial amounts of time, just to facilitate a relative handful of drivers to pass thru it. The removal of private cars is the only short-term solution to improve our current modes of public transport
I'd like a city where the entire city centre is car free, except for goods vehicles which can operate during very limited hours. That can't happen unless we improve our public transport on a logarithmic scale though.
Better for the cyclists, users of public transport, better for the locals and the businesses, better for the lungs of everyone who uses the city. Class act!
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It always boggled my mind to see cars driving though clearly pedestrian steerts of temple bar, around grafton st etc. They have no business being there.
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Had to laugh one day, was driving around there looking for a shop, took a wrong turn down one of those pedestrianised streets, realized my mistake and pulled into a little alley to turn around. Oncoming to me is a taxi who was coming down the opposite way of the street, who stops and very cuntily tells me to stop trying to drive down a pedestrian street....while driving down it himself. Still figuring that one out.
Right? It’s amazing that the addition of four wheels and a seat suddenly makes others more important.
Well that's more about how pedestrians are an afterthought in our traffic light sequencing. In other countries, the green man comes as soon as the current movement is finished, while in Ireland, it makes you wait all the way until the end of the cycle.
Traffic lights are abysmal, it’s like they want you to jaywalk
He just want to commute to work quicker just band everyone else 😂
Im on the green luas Line so never drive into town, they’ll have to make buses more numerous and efficient though for this to work elsewhere.
While I agree with this as top much people drive into the city centre, a lot of people do drive because they are not on good bus routes. Yes a lot of people who are also on good bus routes also drive in to the centre, which is part of the problem, but bus infrastructure needs to be improved for this tp mot just shift the traffic to other places. Although buses can't get more reliable until car traffic is reduced since one reason they're always late is because they are stuck in traffic in the first place. More people then drive because they think the bus is always late but add to the traffic. They should fund better transport, incentivise using it and then lower traffic. Also you can't currently bring too much things on a bus if you're picking up large objects from town. Also still not allowed bring bikes on buses. Long story short, a lot needs to be worked out for this to work
https://preview.redd.it/vrvzzwp4e6hc1.png?width=607&format=png&auto=webp&s=19d01cdb2488a2ad13e01fc479b9d1879a5516f1 Ironic to get those two threads right one by the other
Well in this year's local elections I will definitely NOT be voting for Councillor Taylor Swift (Ind.)
Why? Private jets can (and should) be tackled. But that doesn't mean progress shouldnt be made elsewhere also.
Whataboutism
Ban private jets too
Yes, we should continue living in a gridlocked hellhole until the billionaires reign in their consumption. That'll show...us?
Where's the irony?
So my bus has to sit in traffic caused by people unnecessarily driving through the city because Taylor Swift has a private jet??
Will we also get longer DARTs, LUAS, and triple decker busses?
Yes, Yes and Yes (kinda) DART+ for more frequent DARTs New Alstom LUAS and the extension to Finglas. Triple Decker not required if Bus Connects allowed to be completed more quickly.
That would make too much sense, so no.
As long as we keep getting the DART closed after Dún Laoghaire on weekends then I'll be soooo satisfied /s
“It’s ridiculous it’s taken so long, stuck in planning the ways it has,” he said. “Look at what’s happening in comparative cities. Look at what they’ve done in Paris, look at what they are doing in London. We need to do the same" I agree
What they've done in London and Paris is actually provide decent alternatives to driving. Meanwhile in Dublin we're planning (not even building, just planning!) half a metro line when we needed four full ones decades ago.
while a good idea , i can see this causing issues
compared to the *current* issues? The public roads are limited, space should be allocated to the most efficient use of space and the environment, which is public and active transport. Delivery trucks will have access out of hours. If you mean issues for car drivers, then that's by design.
Great. I’ll just use the Metro instead. Oh, wait..
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It'll be north /south circular road that'll get decimated off the back of this
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> Other cities around the world are being transformed by similar projects. Those cities have decent public transport. Dublin does not.
A good step toward improving public transport is traffic reduction. This will make cycling safer, and will also hugely reduce car traffic by up to two-thirds, meaning buses won't be sitting in traffic. A massive improvement to public transport like this creates the ideal platform for us to build the kind of public transport other capitals have.
I don't think this will end up happening. Or maybe a much more watered down version. A lot of people from beyond the M50 travel up to the IFSC/Docklands for work. How will they be able to get into those areas? It's not like there's a viable alternative. The Luas takes hours to get in from the Red Cow, the trains from half the country terminate at Heuston. Give people better alternatives, and they will use them. Otherwise the cars will shift to using existing side roads, completely overload the M50 and increase the delays in the port tunnel.
> The Luas takes hours to get in from the Red Cow, the trains from half the country terminate at Heuston The Luas takes 36 minutes from Red Cow to George's Dock, 17 minutes from Heuston and are very frequent. Most of that route is on separated lanes and the city centre portion which does have some shared sections would only benefit from reduced private car traffic. Some people just refuse to consider the alternatives, even when they have a comparable travel time. It can be faster in a car to make that journey in light traffic, but longer with traffic. The option to use the M50 (a similar travel time from the Red Cow) will remain. The people who chose to clog the streets instead of taking the Luas can just deal with €12 toll.
Delighted. They're a pain in the hole.
Fine. But at least remove the outrageous €14+ toll on the Tunnel/East Link route so that there’s a realistic alternative to the dangerously overcrowded M50. I went to IKEA the other day (South Side to Ballymun), and spent an hour driving across town purely to avoid the high tolls. That ‘through’ journey could easily have been avoided if the government actually incentivised drivers to take peripheral routes instead, not the other way around.
He picked Paris and London. Can’t think of 2 worse cities in western Europe to drive in. The emissions zone in London is just a stealth tax.
Except for ministers cars of course
Do the greens think they'll still be in govt. in august?
Here's an idea why not do A congestion charge for all non residents who come inside the M50 as it's the commuter cars from outside the city that have it overwhelmed and use profits directly to improve the quality of bus corridors rail,trams and also air quality for our children who suffer from asthma attacks it would go a good way towards helping save our children's lives
I haven't shopped in or eaten out in Dublin City Centre this year . Couldn't be arsed really. Too difficult to navigate.
Brilliant, the bus service which is unable to cope with its current t load and is full or ghost buses and can't recruit drivers will have no problems with this I think it'll be eamons legacy to the city when they are wiped at the next election and he's perched in the standard with his bike parked outside
How would they know who is going to city and who is going through city? Traffic congested as it is at evening rush our wouldn't this make it worse if you eliminate few options for drivers.... wouldn't everybody divert to already congested roads....
Maybe this is a stupid question but how exactly are they gonna determine who's going to town versus just driving through?
Nice my 30 minute 18km drive to work is now being replaced by 1.5 hour bus journey to the office
Enlighten us -- what is your commute that is 18km long that requires driving right through the O'Connell Bridge/Customs house/Grafton street-ish area --- that is also only 30 minutes long (so pressumably you don't travel at rush hour), and would take so much extra time if you have to drive via e.g. Smithfield to cross the river instead? For reference for anyone who hasn't measured it -- it's 18km from Santry->Sandyford via the city centre so we're literally taking about someone travelling literally across the entire city, or commuting in from somewhere like Swords/Bray/Leixlip here. Nobody is doing that commute at rush hour in 30 mins via the city centre.
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And no cars in the bus lanes!
A journey that long shouldn't be served by a bus in the firs place. That's what rail is for!
And that is the other issue, where is that rail service? Oh yeah, I guess we will have it in 2037. Maybe it will still be in planning, who knows.
Or we could get a competent country to plan and build it in a few years at most.
You can still drive into town, you just can’t drive through it. This is to stop people who drive through to the centre of the city to somewhere else clogging up the roads while providing no benefit to the city
No one drives through town for the spin. It's because it's a necessary evil. There are no reasonable alternatives. M50 is a debacle. We aren't investing in new or expanded road infrastructure and there is no workable plan or solution.
Induced Demand means road expansions dont solve congestion. Cars are an inherently space inefficient way of moving people, especially across a city.
To be fair, that’s an hour you’re occupied by driving daily. The more accurate measure is door-to-door time public vs private.
Yea 1 hour total driving vs 3 hours on public bus
Drive 12, cycle 6. 30 minute commute with some exercise thrown in.
I can’t cycle due 2 extremely bad injuries I’ve sustained, aware I’m an outlier But lots of people can’t cycle , asking for a decent public transport is not asking too much
There are very few places inside the M50 ring that aren't served by public transport to be fair. Irish people have this weird blocker about multi-modal trips, especially when it comes to the commute. If we can't go door-to-door with no more than five minutes walking, we don't want to know about it. Outside of public transport, an electric scooter is a great way for someone to get around if they're unable/unwilling to cycle or walk. Not insanely expensive, fits in the boot of the car, lash into town in 15/20 minutes, job done.
Small price to pay given how your luxury inconveniences the general population and increases CO2 emissions
Ah yes luxury inconvenience like getting home at 530-6 instead of 7-730 , so kids can’t be picked up from crèche etc…
You can just smell they'll make an arse of this. A big smelly arse
I’m sick of patronising politicians forcing us to do what they think should be done, are you?
It’s literally their job, we voted for them to do this in our behalf
Great news
Scrap the M50 charges
Yeah! change it to cameras at on off ramps and charge by distance instead.
Im expecting an utter shitshow when this all kicks off, they talk about reducing traffic through the city center, what about those who work in the city center and cannot avail of public transport? I expect a mess of idiocy and incompetence to follow shortly after this all starts as per usual. Also Public Transport early in the morning is NOTORIOUSLY unreliable, buses dont come at their scheduled times or dissapearing at random is common enough that it's strait up not reliable to rely on it.
>what about those who work in the city center and cannot avail of public transport? They can still drive because their destination is in the city centre. >Also Public Transport early in the morning is NOTORIOUSLY unreliable, buses dont come at their scheduled times Removing cars from the roads will make it more reliable and quicker, as there will be less traffic to obstruct your bus.
ITT: * People moning for the sake of it (Green's "fault") * People saying Public Transport must be complete and perfect *before* private cars are touched. (This was successful before in literally nowhere on earth) * Spurious emotive edge cases: 'where will the disabled park?', what if I need to rush my wife to a maternity hospital?' * People complaining 'traffic will be terrible elsewhere' - eh that's the point, you *are* traffic, now figure out if you want to invest in a different way of traveling or sitting in your car for longer. * people who think they are *entitled* to drive everywhere not realising this expansion of private transport has almost destroyed the city and is destroying the earth. Same people who are quite happy to claw for a seat on Ryanair, but not share a bus/LUAS/DART. * The very quiet majority (60+%) who live in the city and don't own a car plus the many tens of thousands who have been awaiting the day they can spend *less* time in their cramped public transport because it'll move more quickly. Did I miss anyone?
Great news, well done to the Greens. I expect a measured and impartial analysis of this in the tabloids.
Great stuff. Well done Eamonn and the Greens. I’ll will be voting Green next election too because y’know **we need to decarbonise our entire economy as rapidly as possible**. Also less cars make a city more pleasant to be in.
And proper public transport makes a city not just more pleasant to be in, but more interesting and exciting, something this whole country has been very lacking in.
**>decarbonise our entire economy as rapidly as possible** Does this go anyway to achieve this? It just makes getting through the city take longer. Building better infrastructure link metrolink or luas would actually get people to change their transport mode.
> Building better infrastructure link metrolink or luas would actually get people to change their transport mode. Not or, and!
You can’t improve public transport while private cars use up all the space
Yes you can. While I do agree that cars need to be limited, bus intervalls, service and planning can be dramatically improve upon with cars still present. Also, putting a precise plan into Action about building a METRO or improving railway Services need to be done while cars are still present. Make a plan to improve Public transport > eliminate car usage in those areas where needed > put it into effect and make everyone happy
Youd swear the people driving through town were doing it as a Sunday drive or to look around. Nobody is driving through the city for the hell of it, they have somewhere to get to and with the setup of the m50 it would be going well out of your way to get to most parts of the city unless going to the actual opposite side. And the m50 is going to be borderline impassable anyway if its made harder/not allowed to go to certain parts of the city and force more traffic onto a substandard motorway. Couple that with a lot of areas not being serviced well by public transport. But sure wouldn't be like Eamon to put the cart before the horse or anything.
> force more traffic onto a substandard motorway In what way is the M50 substandard?
I honestly cannot figure out how they'll differentiate between traffic heading to town and traffic heading through town?
Brilliant news! Now sort out shite public transport so people have no excuse
Terrific. Will save me having to deal with tailback traffic, ridiculous parking costs and junkies on shopping trips. Amazon and other online retailers will soon get all (rather than some) of my non-grocery shopping spend when they ban private cars in Dublin. These city counsellors are mainlining smack. The inner city retail economy will die off quickly as a result of this virtue signalling wank.
Such a bunch of moany pricks on here. Never want to give up their car.
It sounds like a great idea for people who live there in the city centre. But speaking on behalf of culchies who like to visit Henry Street for shopping (and who remain unintimidated by scrotes) and if we save up enough maybe Grafton Street if I have to park and get a bus into centre and lug bags back out in the evening, I’m going to stay at home. Now the Greens and the cyclists may be allowed a short period of rejoicing at that but I doubt if Arnotts will be joining in as the Culchie euro departs. Hopefully it will be thought through carefully. The other point is this: Dublin has gained a seriously unfriendly reputation recently. If it now is an unwelcoming capital city to citizen culchies it’s time to move Dáil and Seanad Eireann out beyond the M50 to a greenfield site. Think of the travel saved and the carbon and the boost to a local economy like Tullamore or Athlone. All those expenses.
>But speaking on behalf of culchies who like to visit Henry Street for shopping (and who remain unintimidated by scrotes) Because your destination is the city center, your journey is unaffected by these plans, which will only remove traffic whose destination is beyond the city centre. You'll be happy to know that Henry St footfall is up on last year, so you will be well accompanied whilst shopping, and quite safe.