What is the urban transport problem?

Zaph0d

I am a systems analyst and one of the tenets of this job is not to try to fix things without agreeing what's wrong first. This can't be done without listening to the people affected by the problem. Any other approach is a virtual guarantee of failure.

Before we spend a large portion of 34 billion on transport infrastructure in Dublin, it might be worth thinking about what the problem is we're trying to solve and how to measure the success of our efforts in the future.

If we don't do this we risk solving the wrong problem. Several agencies with contradictory and unspoken aims may work for years with efforts that tend to cancel each other out.

Proposed elements of the solution have been much discussed but has anyone considered this question:

What is the urban transport problem in Dublin?

I'm going to have a go at answering this question before proposing any solution. Maybe someone else would list what they think is the problem or where they disagree with my definition.

The problem is...

• Journey times between many locations in Dublin city are high and unpredictable.
• This makes it harder to do business and to maintain social contact between people.
• The journeys themselves are stressful and time-wasting.
• The increasing popularity of car use has many negative consequences for society in terms of health, land use, danger, emissions and noise.

I hope people will just post what they think the problem is in this thread and leave the solution to all the other threads.

CCOVICH

There is insufficient (i.e. not enough to make a journey 'relatively' comfortable) capacity on many peak time commuter rail and DART services.

antoinolachtnai

Another way of looking at it is that

- Journey speeds in Dublin city are high and unpredictable.

- To a large extent, this is because of severe road congestion.

- Roads are congested because average journey distances and times are very long.

Average journey distances are so long because the housing stock is very low-density and therefore homes and workplaces are further away from one another.

The only way to travel from the housing to the workplaces for many people is by car. This drives congestion further.

Average journey speeds are low because of the congestion.

The number of cars on the road hampers the development of rapid, bus-based (or tram-based) public transport.

The lack of public transport near people's homes drives them towards car use.

the_syco

Here's one for you: bus land bottle-necks.

Although the bus lane's are great, there are a few bottle-necks. Such as on the quays, heading into the city centre. You go past Heuston, and keep going. I don't know the specific bridge, but one you go past it, there's no more bus lane. To get to there, from Heuston takes about 20 minutes. To get from where the bus lane stops to the city centre takes upto 30 minutes.

I don't know how to solve it, but there are instances where the bus lane stops, but there is enough road for it to continue.

Its little things like the above, which makes the bus lane not as productive.

=-=

Another one would be lack of car facilities in commuter towns. This directly influences the lack of parking in the city centre. For example: Leixlip. People arrive from nearby, and in Leixlip town, to use the Leixlip train station, and park in the surrounding area (estates, side of roads, etc), but if you know you can't park, you will drive to town. I feel that if commuter towns such as this had adaquate parking, less people would feel a need to park their cars in Dublin.

Whilst on the matter of trains, the goverment should add another train onto each time. The reason is, most people coming home at 5pm will squeeze into an already packed train, to get home earlier. SOme may say to put an extra carraige onto the train, bbut this wouldn't be an ideal situation, as there'll be a max lenght of the train versus the length of the train station platform. THus an extra train would be more logical than a few extra carraiges, as the extra may not fit onto the lenght of the platform.

weehamster

That’s not what the problem is.

The REAL problem is Irish Politics and the way it’s more important to keep themselves in a job than serving the people. They interfere in matters where they aren’t qualified to make a decision, and make it appear if they know what they are doing.

Take the Transport 21 plan for example.

Dublin Transport Office hired (with taxpayers money) professional engineers and consultants to come up with the excellent 'Platform for Change'. This blueprint is widely praised as a great overall plan. This has been sitting on the Governments desk since 1999, which completely ignored it.

And now its 2005, the Government come up with Transport 21 which is nothing more than various plans stuck together with tape and adding a couple crayon drawn lines. It was done by civil servants and never access as an overall plan by professional engineers or consultants.

Capt'n Midnight

There isn't a public service alternative in many cases. I live 6 miles from work. Nowere safe for a bike there. Too far to walk. 15 minute walk to nearest bus stop and another 15 minute wait. And then you'd have to get the bus all the way into town and change to a second bus. It would be quicker walking (some days it would also be quicker walking to work than driving.)

I keep pointing out that €180M is how much it costs to run Dublin Bus. Yet we are looking at spending the guts of €34,000M on providing an alternative to having bus routes that go from A to B without having to change in the city centre.

Maybe also change planning laws so you don't have a situation like in Lucan/Clondalkin where 80% of workers there work elsewhere. The area is bounded by the Galway road, M50 and Naas Road. Also internally split by the canal and railway lines which have narrow bridges that prevent two way traffic at many crossings.

Also look at the current fashion for cul-de-sacs, the two bottlenecks on my commute are where I have to go three sides around a square and so am sharing the road with people going to the opposite direction. In many cases a small link road might free up trafic.

mackerski

The backbone of the city's transport network is the buses - today's bus routes have two features that make them unusable for too many commuters:

1. The routes are not designed to participate in a network. So instead of routes designed to integrate with each other, you have routes that (mostly) go from suburb to (somewhere in the) city centre.

2. Increasingly many commuters don't need to be in the city centre. Forcing them to transit through it increases congestion. Those that do want to be in the city centre may not need to be in that area served by the available bus route from their suburb.

Dermot

cyclopath2001

Zaph0d wrote:

What is the urban transport problem in Dublin?

The unreasonable demands & expectations of people who drive cars.

1: Inefficient use of scarce road space by motorists.

2: People choosing to cause traffic congestion instead of moving near where they work or working near where they live.

the_syco

cyclopath2001 wrote:

People choosing to cause traffic congestion instead of moving near where they work or working near where they live.

Off topic, but... if you could only get a job in D4, and got paid €20,000, but already had a house in Kildare, why should you pay 3 times the xost of your current house, to get a new house in D4? Also, as for "working near where they live", if you look at most commuter towns (the only place you can hope to buy a decent house for under €250,000), there is f3ck all work there.

cyclopath2001

the_syco wrote:

Off topic, but... if you could only get a job in D4, and got paid €20,000, but already had a house in Kildare,

I think that the link between where people choose to live and where they want to work is very much on topic.

the_syco wrote:

if you look at most commuter towns (the only place you can hope to buy a decent house for under €250,000), there is f3ck all work there.

That's why the properties are so cheap.

murphaph

Simple answer is that most of us want a house with a bit of grass to live in. Until this mentality is well and truly exorcised from the irish psyche then we're screwed.

cyclopath2001

murphaph wrote:

Simple answer is that most of us want a house with a bit of grass to live in. Until this mentality is well and truly exorcised from the irish psyche then we're screwed.

There's nothing wrong with wanting these things. What is wrong is expecting an easy commute in a space-wasting car to a distant job.

Some people want it all: cheap houses, easy commutes and high-paying jobs.

Maybe it's time to change expectations. Times have changed.

Capt'n Midnight

cyclopath2001 wrote:

The unreasonable demands & expectations of people who drive cars.

1: Inefficient use of scarce road space by motorists.

2: People choosing to cause traffic congestion instead of moving near where they work or working near where they live.

The need to travel to work could be reduced by mixing resedential and people intensive service industries when zoning. eg: call centres.

ishmael whale

I think Zaphod's suggestion is useful. In practical terms, does anyone actually believe we'll see 34 billion invested in the city? There is a need to take a step back and consider what's essentially wrong, and what practical efforts can make a difference within a reasonable timeframe, to figure out what is essential.

CCOVICH wrote:

There is insufficient (i.e. not enough to make a journey 'relatively' comfortable) capacity on many peak time commuter rail and DART services.

We also need to recognise that large tracts of the city are not served by any rail line, hence bus is the only public transport on offer and, as noted in other posts, at present bus lanes can vanish at key points like down the quays. There's a particular choke point on Westmoreland Street where at peak times buses have to queue to reach the pavement and take on passengers.

Lennoxschips

What is the urban transport problem in Dublin?

40 years of no urban planning of any kind. There's not a transport system in the world that will let everyone live in Drogheda/Kildare/Navan and commute nicely into the city. We have the same problem that places like Los Angeles have. Sprawl, and lots of it. We shouldn't facilitate it by turning intercity rail links and motorways into commuter corridors, that's not what they were designed for or what they should be designed for. We should improve intracity transport and develop more medium to high level housing in the city and its immediate suburbs (inside the M50) as well as decentralising some businesses to places like Drogheda/Kildare/Navan to reduce the need for long commutes. And stop giving free reign to greenfield developers all over the place.

Zaph0d

Many people in this thread have stated the cause of the problem rather than the problem itself. When the cause of a problem is stated there is an assumption that the definition of the problem itself has been agreed.

So we have people saying the problem is poor planning or low frequency trains or poor land use when they mean that the problem is caused by these factors.

The risk of confusing assumed causal factors with the nature of the problem itself is that you can fix a causal factor and find that the problem remains unsolved. If your computer is running slowly you can easily make the mistake of defining the problem like this: 'the problem is that my PC needs more memory'. You then solve the problems of finding compatible RAM, buying it and installing it but although you've fixed the assumed causal factor, your PC may continue to run slowly. You failed to identify the root cause of the slowness because you concentrated on the assumed causal factor. In this case, the correct definition of the problem would be response times on the machine for certain functions.

for example:

antionolachtnai wrote:

Journey speeds in Dublin city are high and unpredictable.

(I presume high is a typo for low). Journey speeds are not in the nature of the problem from the end users point of view. Who cares what speed a mode of transport moves at if it can get you to work in comfort in 20 minutes? The speed of transport is being used as an assumed causal factor of an unstated problem.

Assumed causal factors listed in this thread so far

• Journey distance
• Journey average speed
• Peak rail capacity
• Lack of public transport
• Inept politicians
• Ineffective bus lanes
• poorly designed bus route network
• Inefficient road space use by cars
• Desire for gardens
• People choosing to live far from the city

Elements of the nature of the problem

• Journey time
• Comfort
• Congestion

antoinolachtnai

I don't agree with your approach to problem analysis. It is purely superficial. All you are doing is stating the obvious. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't insightful. I just can't see where you are going with this.

(Journey speed and journey time are not 'assumed' causal factors. There is thirty years of research to back up these issues as causal factors.)

You have also made an enormous and incorrect assumption, that the purpose of the transport service is purely to serve the user. In fact, a large part of the purpose of the transport system (especially public transport) is to serve economic and social development, which is quite a different thing.

Zaph0d

antoinolachtnai wrote:

I don't agree with your approach to problem analysis. It is purely superficial. All you are doing is stating the obvious. There's nothing wrong with that, but it isn't insightful. I just can't see where you are going with this.

I don't think the problem definition is obvious at all. Many people have different ideas of the nature of the problem.

You have also made an enormous and incorrect assumption, that the purpose of the transport service is purely to serve the user. In fact, a large part of the purpose of the transport system (especially public transport) is to serve economic and social development, which is quite a different thing.

You're right, a problem usually affects different participant groups in different ways and it's important to identify these groups early, find their different needs and prioritise them.

Who do you think the participant groups are?
eg...
Transport users
Everyone in the economy
Politicians
Transport service providers
Businesses

The first two groups overlap nearly 100%

These are the steps I follow:

1. Define and agree the problem (as seen from each participant group)
2. Agree how to measure the extent of the problem.
3. Agree the scope of the problem definition.
4. Design solutions based on what's worked before for similar problems elsewhere
5. Build
6. Test
7. Deploy
8. Measure problem using agreed metrics to judge success.

There is a lot more discussion of points 4 onwards than of points 1-3. This is where I am going with this.

Anyhow, you have mentioned some factors that are in the nature of the problem such as economic and social development.

Capt'n Midnight

Comparing the cost of a car (tax/insurance/payments/running and repair costs) and that of a mortgague where you can get tax relief, a car costs thousands of euro a year.

Has anyone ever had their mode of transport taken into account when going for a mortgagaue ?

Because only when that happens on a regular basis could more people "afford" to buy closer, instead of being given a mortgague that doesn't take into account the cost (economic/health/social) of several hours commute a day.

antoinolachtnai

Zaph0d,

On specifics: in terms of 'participant groups', economic and social development isn't a 'participant group'. It's a goal of public policy which generally goes unstated.

In general: That problem-solving strategy is very familiar. That's how transport strategy has worked up until now. It might work for parts of the transport problem in isolation, but it won't produce any overall meaningful strategy.

If you follow the analysis through to the end, you will just end up building more roads (which is a good way to increase capacity but doesn't address underlying problems) and perhaps net-tendering bus routes (which similarly builds capacity but doesn't address underlying problems).

You haven't left any room for a systemic analysis of root causes and so your analysis is unlikely to make much contribution to remedying those causes.

spacetweek

murphaph wrote:

Simple answer is that most of us want a house with a bit of grass to live in. Until this mentality is well and truly exorcised from the irish psyche then we're screwed.

You've hit the nail on the head. We look at something like The Field, with the Bull going "Land is all that matters, own your own land Tadhg" and we think that's an old-fashioned thing to say. But in fact it remains deeply rooted in the Irish mentality.

Recently a couple I know went house hunting. They said they had looked at a few places out in Kildare and pretty quickly dropped the idea of living anywhere but the centre of Dublin. I congratulated them on their wise choice. If only everyone thought that way.

Capt'n Midnight

D'Peoples Voice (sig) wrote:

Western Rail Corridor Cost= €365.7m
Luas Cost= €750m

Expected passenger no's on Western Rail corridor= 1.6m
Expected passenger no's on Luas= 20m

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/09/14/story358655558.asp

Luas has overtaken the Dublin Port Tunnel as the state's most expensive national infrastructural project, running at a cost of €781 million, including a €90 million contingency plan, instead of its original €279 million.
...
Luas will carry 15 million passengers yearly compared to Dublin Bus with 150 million. At peak times, the city's busiest Quality Bus Corridor (QBC) on the Stillorgan dual carriageway carries 3,000 passengers per hour - not much less than the capacity of the hugely expensive Sandyford-Harcourt Street line at 3,500 per hour.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/09/14/story535973264.asp

Congestion is costing Dublin businesses about €1.3 billion a year in lost business, productivity and output, according to estimates from the Small Firms Association's Pat Delaney.

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2005/05/07/story199252904.asp

Turnover at Irish Rail rose from €213m to €218m and the division reported a surplus of €2.4m when the State grant is included in the figures. Excluding the subvention losses on the rail network were reduced to €238m from €301m. The number of journeys increased by (sic) €1.1m to €37.3m.
...
Dublin Bus saw a fall in its annual surplus from €7.3m to €2m on revenue up by €5m to €177m. The company said traffic gridlock was costing Dublin Bus some €60m a year.

so grid lock costs Dublin Bus 1/3 of its revenue, and it's revenue is about 1/8th of the money lost on congestion. Kinda of a no brainer really - more QBC's is what we need to get the breathing space to implement the other projects. There is no point in building roads that fill instantly. Little links yes, big grand schemes that will be at capacity before finished no. Does any one seriously think three lanes would be enough on the M50 ? Would four solve all the problems ? And we need more radial routes like the 17 / 17a / 18 (but with not with the same sort of delays and gaps) Perhaphs a 17B that does covers the 17a and 17 routes via the toll Bridge - or like they do in the UK circular routes , one bus goes clockwise and the "A" goes anticlockwise.

Other suggestions stagger school opening hours in the cities ( everyone knows how much traffic improves ) since 95% of them* (or whatever) get driven to school it doesn't matter how dark it is. Or do something about getting kids to walk to school in groups with a responsible adult. Lollipop ladies are cheaper than extra lanes on the M50.

MorningStar

Zaph0d wrote:

Assumed causal factors listed in this thread so far

• Journey distance
• Journey average speed
• Peak rail capacity
• Lack of public transport
• Inept politicians
• Ineffective bus lanes
• poorly designed bus route network
• Inefficient road space use by cars
• Desire for gardens
• People choosing to live far from the city

Elements of the nature of the problem

• Journey time
• Comfort
• Congestion

I might be getting this wrong but none of that seems to address the problem and the 2 of the last 3 natures are really the same.

The problems
1) A lot of people are all headed for the same point or direction
2) Low denity forms of transport are used
3) Urban sprawl makes for expensive high density public transport
4) The historic nature of the city makes for restrictive road layout and possibilities

Other things mentioned seemed to give reason to these problem. To blame bad planning doesn't state the problem but the cause. For anybody to suggest 40 yeas of no planning shows a level of ignorance I have not seen in a long time. Name anything built in the last 40 years with out urban planning in this city.

ishmael whale

MorningStar wrote:

For anybody to suggest 40 yeas of no planning shows a level of ignorance I have not seen in a long time. Name anything built in the last 40 years with out urban planning in this city.

I’m not clear on what you mean here. I can accept that nothing was built without ‘planning permission’, but that’s not quite the same as ‘planning’. My picture is that the present structure of Dublin results from large scale rezoning of lands without much rhyme or reason, and the process hasn't necessarily stopped.

http://www.ireland.com/focus/commuter/

But I may be missing your point completely.

Capt'n Midnight

MorningStar wrote:

Other things mentioned seemed to give reason to these problem. To blame bad planning doesn't state the problem but the cause. For anybody to suggest 40 yeas of no planning shows a level of ignorance I have not seen in a long time. Name anything built in the last 40 years with out urban planning in this city.

Lets blame corrupt officials for changing zones that were reserved for the M50 and other projects into housing estates. Lets blame stuff like that house build beside the M50 toll bridge where they got retrospective planning permission. It doesn't account for everything but there were a lot of dodgy re-zonings in the past, it would be interesting to plot on a map the zoning changes done by people who have appeared in front of tribunals compared to general rezoning to see which if either have had a worse effect on transport.

_Kaiser_

spacetweek wrote:

murphaph wrote:

Simple answer is that most of us want a house with a bit of grass to live in. Until this mentality is well and truly exorcised from the irish psyche then we're screwed.

You've hit the nail on the head. We look at something like The Field, with the Bull going "Land is all that matters, own your own land Tadhg" and we think that's an old-fashioned thing to say. But in fact it remains deeply rooted in the Irish mentality.

Recently a couple I know went house hunting. They said they had looked at a few places out in Kildare and pretty quickly dropped the idea of living anywhere but the centre of Dublin. I congratulated them on their wise choice. If only everyone thought that way.

I said this recently in another thread and was shot down for it... this mentality of "must have a house no matter how far out it is" and the resistance to high-density housing, despite the traffic congestion that results is one of the biggest problems we have.

TempestSabre

Kaiser2000 wrote:

I said this recently in another thread and was shot down for it... this mentality of "must have a house no matter how far out it is" and the resistance to high-density housing, despite the traffic congestion that results is one of the biggest problems we have.

We've been here before many times in the past.

The 1960s was a time when demand for housing was very high. Governments throughout Europe became convinced that high density housing, of the type described from the 1920s to the 1950s by le Corbusier and other architects as suitable for the "masses", was the answer to providing new housing. Many of the developments that resulted ( in the main large slab blocks, with some tower blocks interspersed with 3/4 storey housing for the slightly better off) were initially liked by their new inhabitants. However almost without exception, the schemes over time became associated with a range of social problems. This led in many instances to a mass exodus of the more stable families and the better off to what were regarded by them as more appropriate surroundings for their residentia

Its not an Irish problem.

If you had a family of 2 or 4 kids would you choose to bring them up off O'Connell Street?

spacetweek

TempestSabre wrote:

If you had a family of 2 or 4 kids would you choose to bring them up off O'Connell Street?

The type of accommodation the article describes sounds like a low-quality development. High density does not always mean low quality.

No, I wouldn't live off O'Connell St as it is too crowded and central. But I currently live in Smithfield, 15 mins walk down the quays, which is central and highly convenient, has good services and excellent public transport. No one who lives here needs to own a car. This is the type of thing I'm talking about. High density, high quality.

Lennoxschips

The le Corbusier plans resulted in neighbourhoods like the ones were there was rioting in Paris, those maffia infested tower blocks in Napoli and the Bijlmer in Amsterdam. Indeed, Dublin has even tried it itself, with Ballymun.

Nobody is advovating that kind of higher density housing. I was thinking more along the lines of "town houses" with perhaps two or three apartments in the one building. To be honest I'd much rather live in this kind of a home than a bog standard semi-detached place in a cul de sac estate in the middle of nowhere.

As for me saying that Ireland has had 40 years of no planing, I stand by my point. For 40 years we've been building massive estates in green fields, with one entrance which is linked on to the main road. More and more estates are built next to this main road and no effort is made to improve public transportation or make facilities/work available locally. The main road turns into a mess and 30 years later we build some kind of a ring road going around it. There's absolutely no architectural/social planning taken at all or an effort made to build an integrated city. The place is allowed to grow like a virus. It wasn't always like this however. Look at some places like Marino, or Ballyphehane in Cork, these places seem to have some kind of logic to them.

cyclopath2001

Lennoxschips wrote:

Look at some places like Marino,

Designed by the Germans & was very advanced for its time (1926?).

Metrobest

Lennoxschips wrote:

The le Corbusier plans resulted in neighbourhoods like the ones were there was rioting in Paris, those maffia infested tower blocks in Napoli and the Bijlmer in Amsterdam. Indeed, Dublin has even tried it itself, with Ballymun.

Nobody is advovating that kind of higher density housing. I was thinking more along the lines of "town houses" with perhaps two or three apartments in the one building. To be honest I'd much rather live in this kind of a home than a bog standard semi-detached place in a cul de sac estate in the middle of nowhere.

As for me saying that Ireland has had 40 years of no planing, I stand by my point. For 40 years we've been building massive estates in green fields, with one entrance which is linked on to the main road. More and more estates are built next to this main road and no effort is made to improve public transportation or make facilities/work available locally. The main road turns into a mess and 30 years later we build some kind of a ring road going around it. There's absolutely no architectural/social planning taken at all or an effort made to build an integrated city. The place is allowed to grow like a virus. It wasn't always like this however. Look at some places like Marino, or Ballyphehane in Cork, these places seem to have some kind of logic to them.

High density need not mean unimaginative design. Look at the Eixample in Barcelona - it's an example to every city with its quality high density housing. Streets are laid out in grids, lined with trees, and buildings stand 6-10 storeys tall. At ground level you have shops and funky bars and restuarants; above them are floors of apartments. Inside each block, which houses up to 1000 people, open spaces are being converted into communal gardens and so forth. Cars are parked in underground car parks, out of sight.

The Eixample (see the pictures attached) works because proper thought and planning went into it. The buildings look nice. The streets have are well designed and easy to navigate. The mix of residential housing and other ammenities makes it a nice place to live in. The main problem of the area - lack of green space - is being addressed by the building of communal gardents inside each of the blocks.

I think that aesthetics are crucial in urban planning. If you build ghastly-looking tower blocks like Ballymun or the Bijlmer you end up with a suburb inhabited overwhelmingly by people who can't afford to move out of it. This creates all sorts of socio-econmic problems which condemn the neighbourhood to ruin.

http://yelvington.com/albums/barcelona-2003/bcn_eixample.sized.jpg

http://images.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http://www.blahedo.org/pix/bcn/pix-Images/99.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.blahedo.org/pix/bcn/pix-Pages/Image99.html&h=479&w=641&sz=225&tbnid=HeRgcG13xYAJ:&tbnh=100&tbnw=135&hl=en&start=74&prev=/images%3Fq%3Deixample%26start%3D60%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN

http://images.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http://www.blahedo.org/pix/bcn/pix-Images/99.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.blahedo.org/pix/bcn/pix-Pages/Image99.html&h=479&w=641&sz=225&tbnid=HeRgcG13xYAJ:&tbnh=100&tbnw=135&hl=en&start=74&prev=/images%3Fq%3Deixample%26start%3D60%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN

Lennoxschips

Those are exactly the kind of town house developments I'd like to see more of in Irish cities.

TempestSabre

Cramming high density apartments, townhouse, into smaller and smaller area's with no infrastructure is a disaster waiting for happen. Doesn't matter if its a town house, or a terraced council house.

The Eixample looks great but to quote "wikipedia"

"Some parts of the Eixample are rather well-to-do neighbourhoods, especially around Passeig de Gràcia, but the Eixample also contains many decaying buildings inhabited by lonely aged tenants on the verge of poverty."

Personally I don't think its great example, or can be compared with the battery hen mentality they are building now.

Smithfield - umm where do your kids and teenagers run about and play around Smithfield? I guess you could let them run around the phonenix park. I have friends that live near there and they had to travel some distance to find a creche. While one cycles the other needs a car because his job isn't in town. For most people its not possible to move jobs to suit where you live.

homeOwner

I think this post is taking the wrong side of the problem. No matter how much money you spend improving transport and how much planning and analysis you do, the core problem will still remain: there are too many people living in the suburbs and beyond who work in dublin, (which is an extremely small city), for the city's transport system to adequetly function.

Decentralisation is the key to solving the traffic problem in Dublin. There are over 1.5 million people pouring into the city-centre (dublin 2 & dublin 1) either as their final destination or passing through north side to south side and vice versa and from the west of dublin in) every day. The only choices for most of these people are the M50 or the suburban roads on both south and northside leading to the city. And they are choked bumper to bumper. Its madness and its only going to get worse. Almost no one is going in the opposite direction. I wouldnt even consider taking in a job in the city centre if I could get one in the outlying suburbs or beyond. There will never be enough busses, trains and luases to cope with ever increasing numbers.