What can be done to ease the congestion in Dublin rush-hour traffic ?

Idbatterim wrote: »

It would speed me up coming up to a light, if I knew it was about to go red and I could comfortably get through it, if I sped up a bit. it would get more people through I reckon...

I was more thinking about a timer on the red, although they do have them on the green in Bangkok. It would be a good prewarning. It wouldn't even have to be on for the entire red phase, maybe the last thirty seconds, as knowing you'll be stuck there for three minutes might cause people to risk going through.

Idbatterim wrote: »

I dont understand why here, unlike in the uk, the light doesnt go amber before green, that way, people are far more prepared... I will no doubt hear some crap about how that couldnt work here :rolleyes:

I think talk of a congestion charge is premature, given the shambolic state of Dublin transport infrastructure, let them put in MN and DU first...

Also the eastern bypass should be built, at whatever stage they get serious in the future about the kind of densities they currently consider abhorrent in the docklands etc, that kind of infrastructure could solve a lot of problems...

A pathetic luas out to swords via the airport is another off the wall proposal, this year the airport will handle around 25,000,000 passengers with numbers up 15% so far, year on year. What will be it handling by the stage whatever the in favour plan is, 35,000,000, more?!

Like ready, steady, go?

We used to have the red/amber combination here but it was removed as many drivers regarded this as a green and moved off. The red phase was just extended before the green.

If drivers paid more attention they would have no problem in being prepared to move off on a green light.

Carawaystick wrote: »

If there's no public transport running there's one huge reason. No public transport after 23:20 is a joke, or before 9am on a Sunday

Iwannahurl wrote: »

You have a point there. There was a letter in the Irish Times recently about such deficiences:

This is a policy decision that was taken by the Department of Transport, and the NTA have not changed this (yet). Dublin Bus have full agreement internally for operating hours to be extended.

Were 24-hour services to happen then it would require additional PSO funding to operate them, and this has not been forthcoming. 2015 is the first year that this funding has stabilised.

Personally, I do believe that they will happen, in the medium term, but initially I think that funding is needed to improve the existing daytime services when demand is greatest.

It should be remembered that the Department of Transport specifically funded the purchase of buses in the early 2000s for the 746 route from Dun Laoghaire to Dublin Airport to be operated 24 hours a day, but for another arm of the same Department to refuse the operating licence days before it was due to start.

sasquatch1 wrote: »

Stop putting all the jobs in Dublin I'm orginally from Carlow and there is tumbleweed blowing around the town in the evenings. What's wrong with the rest of the country for jobs especially if they are within an hour of Dublin.

Jobs are in Dublin because that's where companies decide to locate. There's no government conspiracy to keep jobs there (in fact the opposite is true for some parts of the country). If people in Carlow want jobs there, they need to set-up companies themselves or convince companies to move there.

I agree with the other part of your post. The idiocy of a city rejecting a high density core while also not being willing to pay for decent public transport is farcical. It's worth bearing in mind that the former is a local authority decision while the latter is a central government decision but still....

I've been a bit out of the loop on this thread and there are a couple of things which I want to answer and some other things which people have asked me.

KingBrian2 wrote: »

Levelling the city you want to know the big disruptor to road use. Digging up the road. The place is constantly being dug up and buses have to go around or we see huge congestion.

We are seeing huge congestion now because typically, we don't do these things at the outset. Luas intersection is a case in point. a) more congestion and b) higher cost than if we'd had the guts to do it when Luas was being implemented first. I don't tend to argue it's not rocket science and I was living away from Ireland when a lot of this was decided but I didn't understand then why people thought it wasn't necessary to integrate them in some way.

monument wrote: »

What part of the city needs to be levelled and for what possible transport project?

I don't mind the idea of some demolition for progress, but I can't see any notable sections of the city needing to be leveled for any transport project. These days it would likely be cheaper to go underground before you start leveling large sections of any part of the city, besides maybe an industrial estate or two.

Talk of levelling any notable amount of area is premature when there's streets and roads with space which can be reconfigured and there's still space for railway and light rail lines to be built without much destruction.

In principle I would tend to agree that there are benefits to going underground. The problem for now is I just don't see people wanting to go to the pain and expensive of a reasonably comprehensive underground system.

Quite a few of the new apartment blocks in the suburbs are in gated areas. This was appalling planning from the point of view of integrating the areas into a public transport network. We have an array of really bottlenecked streets which are used by buses, of which Suffolk/Andrew Street/Church Lane is one and Lincoln Place is another.

My point is that if we are going to look at building a mix of tram and underground, there are areas where we could profitably reappraise the landuse and get stuff out of the way and build back over it. Part of that should include removing the need for loads of buses to hit areas like the two I mentioned above. In any case, land use in the city centre is not very effective and I think the results are becoming obvious. As a caveat I'll point out that I live on the North side of the city and personally think that much of the area on the main routes around Drumcondra and Fairview could do with simply being replaced over time. We tolerate dereliction too much in the city. If, when we are dealing with that, we also cater for making the city centre more vibrant and make more of the centre residential with decent apartments over commercial space.

However, for all that I think this would be desirable, I don't think it's going to happen.

lxflyer wrote: »

Personally I think that there needs to be two bus stations in Dublin as Busaras just simply does not have the space to facilitate anymore services.

I would like to see the space between Upper Abbey Street and Strand Street that was used by Dublin Bus as a city centre parking yard until the LUAS was introduced, reinstated as a bus station.

I think having one bus station for long distance routes (Busaras) and a second at Strand Street for commuter/PSO routes. The bus stations should all be managed by the NTA.

Taking the coach services off the city streets needs to be a priority - having services to Cork, Limerick and Galway loading on street is ridiculous and causes congestion.

I fully agree with the need to get long haul coach off the streets. There's a particular issue on Westmoreland Street (or was anyway - with the roadworks in the area, I have no idea what it's like atm) in that city bus stops get blocked by long haul coaches from time to time and that leads to serious bunching/congestion of buses. That bunching tends to impact on bus journey times in a less than helpful manner.

However, assuming we're talking about the same piece of land, I'm not really sure that your proposal is an ideal solution, not without getting more land assigned to it. Street access to it isn't optimal for the purposes of getting coaches in and out of there really and it's not a particularly big plot. However, I absolutely abhor the idea of city centre land being left unused like that. Possibly it might work if the buildings between it and Liffey Street were knocked but I have doubts about access.

The issue is we tend to be a bit precious about stuff sometimes. If we want to put a decent bus station into the city centre, there's a lack of land and there may need to be some CPOing and demolition. I personally hate Busaras as a building but strongly suspect it's listed by now. What I'd like to see happen that is have it turned into an art gallery or something and move the buses to a bigger coach station. I'd put it on City Quay but I've no doubt there are a few people who wouldn't be happy with the knocking of the church there. Nor the national school. But accesswise I think it's better than Strand Street.

Aard wrote: »

Nail on the head there Mark. Until central government recognises the extra-ordinary transport needs of a global city, Dublin will continue to fall between the two stools of national vs local government.

With all due respect, Dublin is not a global city and I'd venture to say it doesn't even come close. Admittedly, more money needs to go into public transport but one of the biggest issues with that is less the national/local financing thing and more the fact that the population of the city don't want it. If you take a look at any thread on Dublin Bus here, it seems to me that there is a deep desire not to pay for things that would make life quality in Dublin better and to resent every penny that goes into Dublin Bus as wasted. And this is pretty much why we are where we are. I'd add it's not unique to Dublin Bus. People in Ireland resent paying for stuff.

One of the things I would like to see happen in Ireland (and this truly is a pipe dream) is a regional income tax which would give regional authorities some financing options for major infrastructure changes. Typically, large infrastructure projects in France are split between national government, regional government and the infrastructure owner (mostly the rail network agency for the large rail projects). I just don't see this happening and even if it did, the period of adjustment would probably still not result in infrastructure investment of note in the city.

In terms of one thing which could alleviate some issues, I would be interested to know if tour coaches (not city tours, private tour coaches) are entitled to use the bus lanes and whether, in the way we ahve rules for 5+axle trucks, they could be banned from navigating the city between 4.30 and 6. Anecdotally yesterday they didn't really help the situation.

FootShooter wrote: »

Other ways of reducing congestion is higher density city planning and putting essential city functions that people use in the correct locations. If people live closer to where they need to go then they won't need to use a car.

This really is the crux of the problem. Decades of uncoordinated employment and residential decentralisation is what has caused our massive transport headaches. Even getting coordination on a regional level has been like pulling teeth. A London-style mayor with oversight of a regional transport company like TfL is still a dream to Dubliners. Instead there is the NTA, whose arm is bent by central government. There is central government, beholden to a non-Dublin majority. And there are local authorities within Dublin who refuse to cooperate on land use and transport planning.

There are a lot of organs of government in need of surgery, and a lot of complacency about carrying it out.

Icepick wrote: »

- Build proper cycling infrastructure.
Can't blame people who want to cycle but are afraid because even some roads with cycle lanes look very dangerous to casual cyclists.

- Metro North & West

- Stop encouraging car transport. For example, replace parking places on some roads with bus & cycle lanes

All well and good, but you forgot the most important thing..

- Affordable housing (renting and purchased) within bus/cycling distances of the main business locations... so not just An Lar but Blanch, Citywest, Cherrywood etc. No-one is going to willing spend 60 mins+ on a crowded, slow, bus/train if they can avoid it.

- Decent infrastructure, facilities and services in these locations (broadband, shops, entertainment etc). Not good enough to throw up a few apartment blocks in/beside an industrial estate and that's your lot.

Do that and maybe you might get people out of their cars, but cycling won't suit everyone and unless there's at most one change (preferably get off one bus/train and get on another) then the hassle and time lost won't be worth it to most car owners... especially if the cost of this hassle is almost as much as just driving anyway.

Iwannahurl wrote: »

But what if your mayor is wont to do things such as decrease the size of your congestion charge zone?

London has a public transport system we can only dream of. That seems to be a good place to start.

What if the mayor is populist, and deliberately courts the Motoring Majority vote?

Populist? Don't you mean democrat?

Worth noting that Netherlands has a lower percentage of apartments than Ireland does. Also that Ireland has very low average dwelling sizes. Attempts to increase minimum house/apartment areas are fiercely opposed by many.

Also worth noting that very high density schemes are not an absolute requirement for an effective public transport system. The current minimum densities of 35 du/ha is enough for a bus service. Larger schemes like Adamstown and Cherrywood SDZ's tend to have a minimum of 50 du/ha. Pretty much any part of the built up area of Dublin has high enough densities for a frequent public transport system.

The challenge is that about 1/3 new dwellings built in Ireland are one-off houses in the open countryside. This is a huge amount of dispersal, which by its nature will never be viable for public transport. Desire to live in the countryside is not a problem in and of itself, but residential decentralisation and "low-densification" undermines the efforts and significant expenditure on public transport infrastructure. The government's relaxation of building regs for one-off houses will further compound this problem. It also raises questions about government commitment to improving the efficiency of the transport network.

It's not really rocket science. It should just be a matter of taking what other more advanced western European country have already been doing for 2 or 3 decades now.

Short term:
- Stop seeing public transport company as normal companies with their own balance sheets but see them as core pieces of the city infrastructure. Acknowledge the fact that first-world public transportation is for the benefit of all (including car users) as reducing congestion, pollution, ... and improve overall quality of life for all. Heavily subsidize public transportation (through our already high tax) to slash fare prices by 60 to 75% to get it back toward European average in city of similar size as Dublin. If you put fare to around 40 to 50 euros a month for unlimited travel across all public transport systems, or around 1.3 euros for a 90 minutes pass, most people will think twice about using their car to commute.
- Integrate all form of public transportation together instead of making them compete with each other. Going from point 1 in zone A to point 2 in zone B should cost the same regardless of whether the trip is done by train / bus or luas. Design a simple system of 3 or 4 orbital zones for this. The 1-euro discount on the leap card is a first small step but still miles from what fully integrated commuting should be.
- Give right of way to bus and luas over car at cross road. Traffic lights becomes green when a bus / luas approaches.
- Put forward bike and pedestrian rights over cars in legislation. Bikes on a cycle track should not lose right of way at every cross road. Increase the number of pedestrian crossing (zebras) to put them at every cross road, crossing pedestrian should have right of way over cars. It's just aligning to what is done across western Europe, nothing really rocket science here.

Longer term
- Expand public transport infrastructure
- Improve bike infrastructure, segregated cycle tracks
- For new housing estate to be built with public infrastructure in mind from the design phase (anyone seen the way buses have to make U-turns in some estates, like Littlepace for instance)