2015-2035 Transport Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area

Hopefully, the study of the GREATER Dublin area will be about more than the N7 and the M50.

For me, the biggest shambles is the way that the rings have developed, we've the centre, then a whole cluster of residential housing, then a ring around the city of industrial estates, then yet more residential developments outside the ring, and so it goes on, and the biggest mess of the lot is that there's next to no public transport into great chunks of those industrial rings, like North West, Ballycoolin, and the Naas road area, unless you want to go to the city centre first to get on the route, or travel round the M50 to get to the outer part of the route. So, someone living in Swords, or Ashbourne, or Clonee, or Lucan, and working in Sandyford has no choice about how they get to and from work, unless they want to spend as long travelling as they do working, the only viable option right now is to use the car to commute.

The same is true for areas like Citywest, or Tallaght, or Ballyfermot, and there's so many other areas that are the same. To get to work (or college) in Ballyfermot from Swords means leaving before 7 am, because there's no alternative other than to crawl into the centre of Dublin to then get another service from the centre out to Ballyfermot.

Metro North is only duplicating the same folly, which is that everyone works in the centre of Dublin, which is just not the case any more, there are way more complex interactions that are now the norm, but they are not catered for by the public transport system that's in place at present.

The whole public transport ticketing and interaction systems are still a mess, the Leap card is a poor start, and still not fully integrated. There are way too many gaps in the coverage of cross city services that don't go near the centre.

Traffic flow management. The N road system is still strangled by poor design and bad flow control. There are places where certain buildings should have been flattened and the road widened to allow the flow to work, Drumcondra being one glaring example, Phibsboro and Doyles Corner another, Inchicore and the Coombe area being another.

There's no joined up thinking on things like Park and Ride around the M50 ring, or even close to it, and it's made worse by having long distance bus services that stop every few hundred metres once they get inside the M50, rather than having an acceptable interchange close to the M50 that would allow changes onto other routes or directions.

The Airport, Total Fitness at Blanchardstown, Red Cow Park and ride, they are 3 places that immediately spring to mind as being places where an interchange between services should be possible, and M3 Parkway, though further out, is another place where hubbing between services could work, but that requires some joined up thinking and planning, and (the unthinkable) knocking some heads together at CIE to get them actually working together in the national interest, rather than the present shambles.

If transport planning is anything like as shambolic as the "planning" that's (not) in place for other aspects of infrastructure, then it's no wonder that we need another study, I've had to look closely at what's been "planned" in the last 25 years in relation to things like storm water management in Ashbourne, and the findings are that there's been NO planning worth the name, and much of that is down to the problems of political interference, the NIMBY factor, and the non accountability of state and semi state staff for their decisions.

Another study will serve to confirm what we already know, Greater Dublin's transport is a mess, like the water, and the drains, and like any other area of infrastructure that has a timescale that goes beyond the next election, anything beyond the election is never on the radar of the political system, the only thing that matters is getting re elected, and anything else is irrelevant.