I hate the M50 [Warning post #222]

RainyDay wrote: »

'real experience of working in business' - you mean like Charlie McCreevy, successful accountant, operated a medium-sized accountant practice, and prime architect of our economic collapse with his 'If I have it, I spend it' mantra?

Perhaps if we had voters who got over themselves and moved on from simplistic 'private sector good, public sector bad' thinking, we might see some meaningful change.

I don't regard accountants as being business in the way of making critical decisions that influence the future direction of the company, and based on a number of very bad experiences with a number of companies across a wide spectrum of industries, for me personally, accountants are in the same league as ambulance chasing solicitors, and I despise both.

As for Private/Public, the fundamental difference there is very simple, and the core of so many issues that we face with infrastructure in this country. If you get it wrong in the private sector, that can in the worst case destroy the company, if it doesn't, depending on the severity of the "wrong" it can mean a change of employment, with all that entails, for the person or team that got it wrong

Get it wrong in the public sector, and there's zero risk to the organisation, and in too many cases, the person or team responsible for the mistake is more than likely to get promoted out of that department into another, with glowing references, on the basis that if they're moved, they can't do any more damage to the department they were in.

We've seen countless massive failures in the public sector (PPARS, Irish Water, HSE, Ringsend Incinerator project to name a few) and the one significant aspect of all of these failures has been than there have been no dismissals, or firings, and in some cases, the people responsible for the failures are moving up the ladder rather than down it.

To go back to the M50, when that was first put as a line on a map, over 25 years ago, there would have been no problems at all to have allocated the necessary space around all the critical junctions to enable full speed free flow junctions, with no traffic lights, or other restrictions to the operation, but for reasons best known to the planners, we ended up with a cut price mess that had to be changed almost before it was finished, and to make things worse, those same "planners" decided to put a light rail system through the middle of the busiest junction in the country, and when they discovered that it didn't work, the land to sort it out had been developed rather than being zoned for the future road develpment, so we still have a mess that can't work properly, and now never will without astronomic cost implications to remove things that have been put in the wrong places. That's down to state employees and politicians, (some of which have been proven to have been corruptly influenced) not the private sector, and most of the public transport is also not private sector.

As an example, (and I don't like all of the way they do things, but I can't deny their success) Ryanair have gone from strength to strength in their activities over pretty much that same period of time.

Buses on the M50 won't work at the moment, as there is no priority system to get them past all the queues, and there's no preferred toll rate for buses, and no park and ride or interchange stations that would be essential to making a fast transit system work. The present wander round all estates, and take half an hour to get out of the local area is not what's needed, the concept of rapid transit doesn't exist even on the DART, which is not Rapid Transit when compared to many other places that are. The ideal concept that desperately needs the Metro systems is that a number of bus routes feed into a Metro station, which then provides the fast link onward into the city, or round the M50 ring, and connects at those feeder stations into other routes that feed in and out of their local areas. That's the issue that kills effective PT at present, there's no fast longer distance services that are not city centre oriented, and Dublin's work areas are very much outside of the city centre now.

There's also no way that buses can or will replace all car journeys, but there are plenty of other cities where an integrated PT system does work, but it's a system that includes buses, and rail, which is the failing of the present system, Dublin doesn't have the rail connectors that would make longer journeys in a reasonable time scale possible.

Much of the problem with Dublin is the lack of alternative crossings of the Liffey, and that's applicable to both road AND rail, but at this stage, with the way that potential reservations for rail have now been built on, the only remaining option is underground, which is massively expensive compared to surface rail.

The other problem is that buses from outer suburbs are not express services, they stop at as many places closer to the city as they do in the outer areas, what would make a lot more sense would be to have non stop services from places like Santry, or Finglas, or Blanchardstown or Lucan, or Tallaght, or Cabinteely (there are others) that only serve a very limited number of stops, on a set down only basis at peak periods, (or pick up outbound at return peaks), with the full every stop services not going the distances that they do now. That also needs interchange capabilities, at places (for example) M3 Parkway, there should be no stops for the 109 (for example) between M3 Parkway and Busaras, (Via DPT) the intermediate stops should be covered by DB services that interchange at M3 Parkway.
Same concept for services to (eg) Drogheda or Dundalk, non stop from Busaras to the Airport, and then back on to the M1 to get to the places further out, with places like Balbriggan also served by express services that don't stop every 100 metres when inside the M50 ring, that should be the job of local services that don't go much beyond the M50.

To make this work would need changes to the LEAP concept, to recognise a change of service from one to another at a point that's an interchange, rather than a final destination, which LEAP seems not to be capable of dealing with very well right now.

I'm not convinced that the people planning PT are actually looking at the bigger picture, partly because of the issues around the very real problems of making any change within DB or BE or Irish Rail, it seems to require a year's negotiation with the unions to change a route, let alone introduce a new one, which raises the question of who is actually running these companies.

What would be very interesting, if it could be done, which I doubt, would be to get all the users of the M50 toll on a particular day, to complete a survey of the start and end point of their journey, and the frequency of that journey, to get a more specific survey of the use of the route, rather than the guess work that seems to be the norm these days. I suspect it would reveal a lot of journeys that are completely impossible in a sensible time frame by PT at present. That might provide some options for new routes going forward.