Transport 21 - if elected will the opposition implement it?

Since nothing in T21 is certain in itself unless it's a project already underway I would say that it's doubtful the entire plan would be implemented as is regardless of who gets into power as none of the details in T21 are really ironed out.

The fact that Olivia Mitchell seems to believe the interconnector is not essential because Luas now connects Heuston with Connolly just goes to show how lacking Fine Gael are in transport policy.

Perhaps it would be the case that if the Opposition do get into power it would be whichever one of the smaller opposition parties that end up setting the agenda for transport in much the same way the PDs determined so much of policy for the present Government.

Labour would be caught in a difficult position since they would be naturally inclined to support the unions even at the expense of actual progress but maybe there's hope with the Greens??

Am I reading the transport or the politics thread? I didn’t know there were so many FF heads here!

Lets look at some facts:

1 Transportation, particularly in GDA is in sh*t
2 Urban planning is in sh*t
3 M50 is in sh*t
4 Dart is in sh*t
5 Dublin Airport is in sh*t


PDs have been in government n “running” things for over nine years. FF have been in government for over thirteen years of the previous seventeen years. So the way to fix these problems is to re-elect the govmt that has presided over them? That’s novel n Irish. No wonder Cullen treats us with such contempt.

Dunboyne rail service is a result of planning restrictions imposed by Fingal (not controlled by current Government parties), facilitating developers not commuters. Anyone for Sherrif St, Dublin’s premier destination?

NavJunc elsewhere posted on Dempsey claiming rail service to navan many years ago. Most of his litany of broken promises came from FF, but he wants to see them re-elected. If we don’t learn from our mistakes, we’re doomed to repeat them.

Maybe Wednesday Wallace will do better, if she can find time to attend the Dail.

Olivia Mitchell’s rubbish about the interconnector is being quoted. Has anyone heard from her since then? She has been gagged by FG.

Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them.

Navan Junction wrote:

And how do you work that out?

Navan Junction wrote:

Meath on Track now has a General Election party policy section on it's site, prompted by the complete absence of commitment from opposition parties…..

Right, you are stating that MoT party policy section is anti opposition parties, rather than pro Navan rail.

Navan Junction wrote:

The opposition though is not engendering a debate. To quote another from Drivetime last week, the opposition are hoping that the government will lose the election rather then them having to win it..

Your mildest so far……

Navan Junction wrote:

Exactly. I think the worry for opposition parties is that they seem to have no position at all on most of these projects.

In the case of Navan ALL opposition parties have been completely silent - why would any commuter vote for them?

Ten years may be bulloney, but it is more than anyone else has promised.

The most frustrating thing is that if the opposition parties were doing their jobs, the government could have been pressurised to bring Navan to railway order stage by now.

As it’s the opposition’s fault that the Government hasn’t preformed, so we better vote the non-proforming government back in again.

Navan Junction wrote:

The opposition parties are like a silent drunk in the corner of the pub, mumbling obscenities but not offering anything useful to the conversation..

I rest my case, miLud.

Maybe. Navan Junction, instead of your current sig “2015 for Navan rail? What happened to 2004 and 2010?” you should be preparing your update “20** for Navan rail? What happened to 2004, 2010 and 2015?”

Be carefull what you wish for, it may come true!

Navan Junction wrote:

FF/PDs don't deserve to be voted back in. But neither do the opposition deserve to be voted in.

Indeed. We do not have a functioning opposition in this country apart form the likes of Tony Gregory, Joe Higgins and the Greens. FG always seem to get it wrong and Labour under Rabitte is extremely ineffectual. However, after nearly a decade of corrupt, scandal ridden FF/PD rule we need a change

Navan Junction wrote:

The reason FF seem to get back in no matter how much of a mess they create is that the opposition are useless.

The reason FF always get back in and the reason why transport in this country is a mess is because FF are the developers/builders' party. Ban any and all private donations to political parties and politicians and you wil see far more effective governments being elected.

Planning does not exist in this country to ensure sustainable, well thought out development but as a means to control the carving up of land for certain vested interests. The sprawl and gridlocked madness around all our cities was not caused by some horrendous accident. It is the result of decades of corrupt, gombeenism rule by a pack of second-rate representatives whose idea of vision is allowing buses use the hard shoulder during rush hour!!!

Instead of investing heavily in an efficient public transport system in all major cities, the government has instead roled out a disasterous road building project that only serves the interst of CRH who have a virtual monopoly on road construction materials in this country. 2 km stretches of motorway (with access to large scale commercial developments such as shopping centres) will not ease movement.

Anyway, I thought the NDP was originally meant to have been completed by 2006? Now we have Transport 21 which is (as many here have stated) just a cynical rehashing of the same tired old lame policies.

Ireland is supposedly one of the richest states in the EU (yeah right:rolleyes: ) yet we are always told that certain projects, even though essential, are just too expensive. However, certain public services have to supplied whatever the cost (although it is essential that value for money is obtained and that fixed rate contracts are signed)

Portugal (a country with an extremely unfavourable economic situation) developed a nationwide network of high quality motorways in the space of 10 years. Yes all of these were built and are operated by private companies with a toll being charged depending on distance travelled. However, there is no road tax in Portugal and if you don't want to pay the tolls you can always take the equivalent of our national roads for free.

What happens in Ireland? The government comes up with the hairbrained idea of the Public/Private Partnerships which are essentially a guise to get taxpayers to subsidise the construction cost of roadways which are then handed over to private companies for an inordinate number of years with few if any rules governing when and how to levy tolls. Highway robbery. Literally!!

Residents of Midelton (East Cork) have ben lobbying for a reopening of the Cork Midelton rail line for years. The most recent Cork area developers'....sorry...I mean developMENT plan allows for widescale development in a number of key "satellite towns" around Cork city. Midleton was designated such a town. Sprawling development has already been granted planning permission on the basis that the Cork Midelton line will be reopened. The houses have bene built but still no rail line.

Today's mess is due to a total failure to operate a non-corrupt, effective planning system. Sprawling housing estates are still being granted planning permission with no provision public transport or amenity areas. 10 years later when the population in a given area has doubled (it's not exactly rocket science. What else is going to happen when you build 1000 houses in a town with a population of 1000?) our trusted local and national gombeen men get the locals rallied up to campaign for bypasses and relief roads (code for "my buddy has some land with no road access which he wants to develop so we need to get the taxpayers to build a road that conveniently runs by that very land") which are soon clogged with unsuitable developent within a few years of being built.

The current shower need to be ejected from government and barred from public office for at least a decade. We then need to sit down and place a moratorium on all wide scale development until the transport and societal infrastructure has been put in place first.

I remember visiting a suburb of Lyons in France a number if years ago. Like most French suburbs the housing consisted of 5-6 storey apartment blocks laid out in a grid pattern with children's playgrounds, green areas, bus and cycle lanes. At the edge of the area was the same layout but without the aprtment buildings There were bus shelters, green areas, parking spaces, bus lanes, none of which were being used. Finding this strange I asked my friend what was going on. She seemed surprised. She said that it was normal for the infrstructure (roads, bus shelters etc) to be put in place years before any aprtments or other accomodation was built. The municipal authority had predicted X increase in population so had constructed the faciities for future use. Now that's planning!!!

With that sort of planning we can prevent the perpetuation of current problems

Slice wrote:

I think it's reasonable to hold the Opposition to the same account as the ruling Parties when it comes to policy - that in itself is not unreasonable given that they too are vying for our votes.

It might well be unreasonable. The government have considerably more access to the figures relating to the state of the public finances and the predictions for the likely state of those finances in the years to come. They are, so far, the only group who have access to how the figures involved in T21 were to be divvied up between the various projects.

Yet even with this unrivalled access to figures and predicted figures, the T21 plans for Navan have been rowed back from "a commitment to building a line to Navan" to "a commitment for a feasibility study for Dunboyne to Navan". And we haven't even stuck the candle on T21's first birthday cake?

How can the opposition be expected to make more of a commitment than the govt., in the absence of any publicly available projected figures for this project, or any of the other T21 projects?

The figure of 34 billion is still being used by Martin Cullen to describe the outlay on T21, yet the commitments to individual projects, such as Navan, appear to be diminishing. It is impossible for the opposition to make a commitment to this project in the absence of full figures. But at least they are not (yet) making a commitment and then rowing back on it.

The current government has a history of coming out in support of this project and then replacing what seems to be a firm commitment with yet another feasibility study. Is this the third or even the fourth time this has happened?

I have gone on record elsewhere advocating the short term implementation of a rail service via Drogheda. Paths exist for such a service and it has been proven so by Platform 11.

I am at a loss why FF and the PDs should be left off the hook by you over the non delivery of the rail service. Let's have a look at the shifting dates that have been promised for the delivery of the railway by Fianna Fail and the PDs. 2004, 2010 and now 2015. Noel Dempsey's infamous "Dempsey Delivers" poster has trumpeted the most elephantine pregnancy for any infrastructural project in the history of the state.

Why the interminable delay? The answer could well be that the M3 project is being fast tracked at the expense of the railway. The money making proposal for the promoters of the M3 is double tolling at Navan and Pace and then a stub service from Pace via Clonsilla to Spencer Dock.

Delaying the Navan to Pace section to 2015 gives the owners of the M3 super profits for a (say) seven year period.

The rail option via Drogheda gets kiboshed then for the simple reason that additional development in the catchment area of the line is unlikely, therefore no additional levies for Meath County Council, and would reduce the toll receipts on the M3.

The M3 is needed as well, but the way these deals are structured is that a cartel gets first divs on infrastructure improvements. The west link is a case in point. Expect massive amounts of money being paid in the near future to NTR to compensate for lifting the tolls on the West Link.

Always follow the money in Ireland and you'll get an answer to almost anything.

At the risk of stating the obvious, did you directly ask Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens or Sinn Fein the question? It's not like the candidates or the parties themselves are hard to contact. I'm not sure that scoring points on a bulletin board is the way to get the answer you need. At most you'll get activists from the above parties rather than those who determine policy posting here and elsewhere.

Absolutely not. The danger is that the government parties will use your comments to score points against opposition parties instead of actually doing anything, and the opposition parties in turn won't want to hand policy initiatives to the government.

I am glad that this is bearing some fruit.

I love Navan Jctn's description of the opposition as the incoherent drunk mumbling in the corner.

I think Kenny, Sargeant and Rabitte are more like three winos: slumped on a bench by the canal shouting insults at the government while the rest of us get on with our lives. That's why it's called the slump co-alition.

The government is going to win the next election - I'm going to put money on it. The opposition has zero credibility - as Michael McDowell put it last week, Enda Kenny and Pat Rabitte have been in the Dail for a combined 50 years and who can think of even one memorable achievement associated with one of them. I certainly can't.

If the Irish people really want things to change for the better, they would do well to vote for the PDs. McDowell is a good man and he'd be a fantastic Taoiseach.