[Article] Could the EU bring city centres to a halt?

markpb wrote: »

The story goes on to describe some of the ways cities have cut down on driving in the city centre or have tried to limit it. None of it is ground-breaking stuff.

The headline is an example of more of the same anti-public transport, anti-car measure tabloid crap that all our papers seem to come out with all the time. Just once it would be great if they could report the news without sensationalist headlines pandering to the poor motorist.

The Irish motorist is getting a terrible deal as it is, and now this madness.

We have to pay ridiculous amounts of VRT on new cars. Car makers bring in cars which are under equipped and with teeny weeny engines as a result.

Car makers are inserting engines that are quite simply too small, and in fact engines which are too small end up being over worked to deal with their short comings. If an engine is being worked hard, then it will use a lot of fuel. Cars like a VW Passat, Toyota Avensis are all available in under powered 1.6s here. In the UK, 1.8 and 2.0 are the smallest engines.

We have one of the worst rates of cars fitted with ESP. ESP is a device that could save scores of lives, because it stabilises the vehicle if you take a corner too fast. It can apply the brakes much much quicker than the drive, because it uses sophisticated electronics to intervence when things get dangerous when either the driver is unable to respond or can't respond in enough time. In conjunction with Traction Control, it prevents the car from wheelspinning in slippery surfaces and when pulling off.

I don't have figures to hand about Irish vehicles fitted with this life saving device, but in Germany where they have no VRT 71% of cars have this as standard. In the UK its only 33%, now they have no VRT either, but UK vehicles are equipped to a much higher standard than ours, so you can be sure that our cars are way below that.

Because we have VRT taxed on engine size it means that we all chhose cars with tiny engines. More importantly, we choose cars with petrol engines when we should be choosing cars with diesel. A typical diesel will return around 15-20 mpg more than its petrol equivalent. We all know that the higher the mpg, the less CO2 produced. A modern diesel will do around 30% better on the mpg than a petrol. A modern diesel produces around 15-20% less CO2 emissions too.

So so far we pay ridiculous amounts of money to buy cars, which come with a miserable spec list relative to other countries, with engines that in some cases are sold specially for the Irish car market because of our VRT system, these engines are wholly inadequate for the size and weight of the car concerned, which means that we get slow cars with engines that are completely inefficient because they're too small and are over worked.
Irish cars are fitted with less safety equipment than their European counterparts so as to reduce the cost of the car. ESP is a proven life saver yet many manufactureres leave it out(to be fair car importers ought to be ashamed of themselves for not fitting it to Irish cars as well, but they should at least be allowed no VRT on very important safety features) , because as a result of VRT, it makes a car a lot more expensive(in many markets ESP would be only €500, but here the system is often the best part of a grand because they put VRT on life saving equipment).

We then have the fact that we have hundreds of miles of Motorway standard road(and lots more of it to come, but it was all supposed to be here by the end of last year, and not coming in 2010 instead, 4 years late), yet we can only go 100 km/h on it, all those roads that Minister Dempsy said would be changed to Motorway and then by default have a limit of 120 km/h, which is still not that fast but nevertheless a big improvement on just 100 km/h.

We are cheaper in fuel prices than several European countries, but still a lot dearer than many others. We pay stupendous amounts of road tax, again ridiculously based on engine size, when I've already pointed out that this one size fits all approach to emissions simply doesn't work. Where else ion the world do you pay up to €1343 a year to tax your car.

We pay tols to use a lot of the good roads we have on the country, and my worst nightmare is coming next year when we will have speed cameras. Now you might think that surley this will save lives, but you'd be wrong. The UK has seen the widespread adoption of speed cameras, but no difference has been made to the numver of deaths on the roads. We know in Germany that you are as likely to die on Autobahns with no speed limit as you are with a speed limit. That is to say that unlimited Autobahns are no more a danger to your life than limited ones. The UKs very own Department for Transport reckons that speeding is responsible for a mere 5% of road deaths.

They only have speed cameras to make the Government more money and squeeeze every last cent out of the overtaxed and heavily penalised Irish motorist.


If you don't like cars and don't like using them, don't use them simple as that. Use the bus or the train(well of course you would if they worked and run on time). Don't lecture me to reduce my carbon footprint if you're still driving all the time.

But don't go and impose your beliefs and desires on the rest of us. Some of us actually like cars, we actually enjoy pushing them to the limits of what they can do.

@spacetweek no the dogs on the street can not see the benefits of the C-charge in London.

Mr Livingstone said that they would reduce the number of cars by 30% with the introduction of the C-charge. It only resulted in a 10% drop in the number of cars. He said they would raise £200 million a year with the C-charge in London. They actually raised £68 million, or just over a third of what they promised.

It has significantly reduced Londons competitiveness, the recent extension of the C-charge to other parts of London is thought to result in the eventual loss of 6,000 jobs. No matter what way you spin that, that is a lot.

And now to top it off, we see that Mr Livingstone is changing it to an emissions charge, so people who drive enviornmentally friendly vehicles will be able to drive into London as oftyen as they like again. At the moment they can't do that(unless they have a Hybrid or a car with a fuel other than petrol or diesel).

Victor wrote: »

E92, do the SIMI pay well? :pCity centres are not the place to test cars to the limit.

Actuallly the SIMI love VRT. The SIMI's worst nightmare would be if we got rid of it. Because if we got rid of it, even more people would just import from the UK than they presently do. The SIMI don't want to get rid of it at all. Because no-one would ever bother to buy used cars.

I never said city centres were the place to test a car to the limits of what they can do. But slowing down

Victor wrote:

Cars kill hundreds of people per year though accidents, pollution and obesity. Changes are needed. Motorists are unwilling to play their part and thus must be coerced.

Well maybe if motorists were given decent public transpport maybe some would change over? In Cork most buses are jam packed, some even at 11-12 in the morning! How can people use public transport if they cant even get on because the state owned companies that "provide" it use buses that are simply too small? I mean surely it wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility that we could have double deckers in Cork? They have double deckers on the park and ride here, why can't other routes have them too? Or do Bus Eireann in Cork have some sort of phobia to double deckers?

Of course cars kill people. Of course they pollute the world. But as I've already mentioned, the Government is effectively preventing Irish people from choosing more enviornmentally friendly vehicles because of VRT. Diesels are often larger in size than petrols, and are therefore hamstrung by a higher VRT rate, which them even more expensive than they already are. And as I already mentioned, VRT forces people to buy cars with engines are far too small and under powered for the size and weight of car. This merans that the engine is over worked and that is very bad for the enviornment, no matter what way you try and spin it.

Anyone who says that diesels are slow and noisy and are far worse for the enviornment than a petrol has been living under a rock for the past decade. A modern diesel produces less CO2(as much as 20%) than a petrol, less Carbon Monoxide, and fewer Hydrocarbons than a petrol. The problem of particulate matter from a diesel has been virtually solved with the introduction of particulate filters, and the Euro 4 regulations which are extremely strict. The problem of Nitrous Oxide NOx will very shorty be solved, with the up coming introduction of Euro 5(starting in 09). Some diesel cars like the Audi A5 and the new A4 already meet this standard.

A car from even 10 years ago is 20 times cleaner than a car from a car ten years before that. Things have moved on a long way since even then. Many cars produce less harmful emissions from the exhaust than they inhale in cities. We have Hybrid cars(which are actually quite a con job, but I might as well give credit where credit is due) which can go around town and produce no pollution whatsoever. We have bioethanol cars, which reduce the car's CO2 emissions by 80% instantly(although emissions at the exhaust pipe aren't actually reduced a lot compared to a normal car, they breathe in a lot of CO2 during manufacture). The problem with bioethanol is that they can't make enough of the stuff to cope with demand!

Of course we could all go back and start wearing sandels and go everywhere in a pony and trap if you like. But where will that leave us as an economy?

A car goes where you want it to go whenever you want it to go and as fast as you like(within reason of course:D). Until public transport can go a lot more frequently, more comfortably and faster than a car, it will never beat the car.

And if we are really serious about reducing CO2 emissions, why did the "genioses" at the EU decide that air travel to the US should be made a lot cheaper and more frequent? I mean a full plane uses the equivalent of 94 mpg for each passenger. A full car that averages 20 mpg with one person on board will actually have the equivalent of 100 mpg(in a 5 seater car or 140 mpg if it is a 7 seater) consumed for 5 people. Now a car that averages 20 mpg is considered to be very poor indeed, so it just gives some idea of how bad air travel is for the enviornment.

bk wrote: »

A lot of public transport beats the car every day. Take the Capital D show a few weeks ago that raced a car, the Luas and a bike from Tallaght to the City centre. The car took two hours, the Luas 50 minutes and the bike 40 minutes. You would be mad to take a car over the Luas.

That is why public transport like the Luas has been such an outstanding success.

And I like 3/4s of the population in this country don't live in Dublin:D. It is no good for me. And yes I have used the Luas when I've been in Dublin. Several times in fact.

The Luas came in half a billion overbudget. Austrailia managed to build 2,300 km of train track around the same time asour Luas was done. It cost them the same amount of money as our 25 km of Luas line.

The Luas was over a year and a half late, it caused needless disruption to the city's streets well before its opening, and they couldn't even connnect the 2 lines together when they finally did do it. And the Luas that runs from Hueston Station ruins every 10 mins, the Government said there would be one every 5 mins.

Not the ingredients to success IMHO:D!

I have used the Luas(from Heuston to the city centre) and I found it to be no faster than the bus from Hueston.

I found it no more comfortable(if anything, the bus was more comfortable) than the bus, and more than twice the price than the bus. I found it to be stuffy and packed to the rafters. Now to be fair these were mostly weekends of rugby matches, but anytime I've used it when there was no rugby match I still found it no faster than the bus(though it was a shade more comfy than the bus!)

Now, I've never used the Park and Ride Luas at the Red Cow, and I've heard that that is a far better way to get into the centre of Dublin, becase of the speed and the fact that there is none of the stress of being stuck in traffic. I didn't see Capital D, but I take your word for it.

On the rare occasions I've used it, I always found the DART to be great though, I would like if we had something like that in Cork.