FG unveils traffic plan to beat the gridlock in capital

RadarControl

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1750630&issue_id=15079

IT'S GRIDLOCK as usual on Dublin's roads from today.

Operation Freeflow ends, students return to school and college, and the ban on roadworks is officially over.

The vast majority of truckers are set to continue to boycott the new €751m Port Tunnel to avoid the notorious M50 and the toll charge at the West Link - they won't be banned from the city centre and forced onto the M50 until next month.

It is a recipe for a winter of discontent on the roads in and around Dublin.

As tens of thousands of commuters brace themselves for the return to gridlock, Fine Gael yesterday called for the creation of "a civilian traffic officer unit" to support the Garda Traffic Corps.

The party also demanded extensive park and ride facilities along the M50 in order to prevent Dublin from slipping into total gridlock. Olivia Mitchell TD, FG transport spokesperson said: "Weary commuters are again facing into months of road congestion and repeated incidents of total gridlock. Transport Minister Martin Cullen must urgently start planning ways to minimise the impact of congestion on the business and social life of the city," she added. Recent events had clearly demonstrated that traffic management, including communication systems, was at best disjointed.

Fine Gael has suggested putting more new buses into service, extending working hours on the M50 to finish the work earlier, and lifting the toll barriers when tailbacks build up at the bridge.

Ms Mitchell said: "I am now proposing the creation of a civilian traffic unit within the Garda Reserve. This dedicated unit would provide additional manpower to the Garda Traffic Corps and would be specially trained in traffic management and roadside patrolling."

She said a necklace of park and ride facilities must also be developed along the M50. A total of €5m was allocated to local authorities in 2006 for park and ride facilities, but not a cent was allocated.

I agree with extending working hours on M50 and lifting the toll barriers but the rest is unworkable without proper public transporation.

Chris_533976

and lifting the toll barriers when tailbacks build up at the bridge.

This is supposed to happen ANYWAY.

Flukey

They shouldn't just lift the barriers, they should get rid of them and their tolls altogether. The same should be done with every other toll in the country.

The best way to get rid of the gridlock in the city is to get more of the people that are living in the extended commuter belt but working in the city, to work in the areas they are living. Regional development is one of the best ways to tackle Dublin's traffic problems. Tolls, congestion charges etc. are not the way to go. Positive, not negative policies should be adopted. Encourage people to get out of their cars, not discourage them from getting into to them. So, more local jobs for the people that drive long distances into the city and better public transport for those that live closer into the city are far better ideas to pursue.

mike65

Pat Kenny said this morning that Dublin Bus prices have risen for peak time fares, is this correct?

Mike.

gazzer

@Mike65.. I know the LUAS fare is going up by 10cent at peak time.. hadnt heard anything about Dublin Bus though... apart from the increase at the beginning of the year.

I would love Martin Cullen, Bertie Ahern etc to be do a bus/train/car commute for a week or so.. say from Ongar to the City Centre on the 39 (took 3 hours for a bus to make that journey recently), also from Maynooth to Connolly on the train and a couple of trips on the M50 in rush hour and see how they feel by the end of the week.. Maybe then they will get their ar*es in gear and get something done about this chronc problem.

mike65

Ah maybe I misheard, either way the peak time fares should fall surely. This states public transport policy is random and facical.

Mike.

1huge1

More buses... While the buses are very much overcrowded I really can't see how having more buses is going to cut down on traffic

not the greatest plan from fg imo

markpb

1huge1 wrote:

More buses... While the buses are very much overcrowded I really can't see how having more buses is going to cut down on traffic

not the greatest plan from fg imo

DBs lack of buses causes gaps in the timetable that would make Dart managers blush and overcrowding that means people boarding after the terminus can't get on. More buses means better service and (hopefully) more people switching from cars to buses and hopefully less traffic. Idea it is not but its better than the current mess.

1huge1

sorry im not from dublin so I didnt know, i just assumed buses would be getting caught up in traffic too and causing more traffic because of, but you seem to have a lot more bus lanes than we in limerick and cork do so i guess the more the better

still id see it money better spent on getting more luas out to the suburbs and more frequent

Flukey

As they say, 1 bus can take a lot of drivers and their cars off the roads. More buses can lead to less traffic for them to get stuck in. People say they won't use the buses in favour of their cars, because the buses are too slow. Ironically, if they did use the buses, it would help them to go faster by reducing the traffic on the roads.

Seth Brundle

Flukey wrote:

As they say, 1 bus can take a lot of drivers and their cars off the roads. More buses can lead to less traffic for them to get stuck in. People say they won't use the buses in favour of their cars, because the buses are too slow. Ironically, if they did use the buses, it would help them to go faster by reducing the traffic on the roads.

maybe if the busses didn't all head into the city centre and went around the city, etc. then more people would use them.
Currently it would take me two busses and a long time to get to work if I were to get out of my car!

Seth Brundle

A total of €5m was allocated to local authorities in 2006 for park and ride facilities, but not a cent was allocated.

what?

GerardKeating

mike65 wrote:

Pat Kenny said this morning that Dublin Bus prices have risen for peak time fares, is this correct?

Mike.

Single Tickets during peak times are up by 10c on the LUAS.

Most regular comutors should be using some kind of Multi-Journey ticket anyway.

Metrobest

Fine Gael are complete joke - where do they get their policies from?

They should be pledging more metro lines and luas lines - they should be dropping leaflets into people's houses saying "vote for us and we will have a metro line running through your area." That's what the punters want to hear, not this waffle from rent-a-quote spokeslady Olivia Mitchell.

Who's going to vote for FG's civilian traffic unit - whatever that means..?

The alternative coalition have zero credibility on transport issues - and throughout the last five years have shown no concrete proposals that would beat Transport 21. Eyeing which way the wind is blowing, Fine Gael latches on to whatever populist cause it can such as "lift the barriers on the M50" but that's just short-termism and is no solution for the years to come.

The voters are well aware of the problems of congestion, but they're not going to vote for an opposition that feels their pain - they want an opposition that offers a credible alternative and the FG-Labour slump coalition just doesn't offer that.

Ste.phen

kbannon wrote:

what?

Exactly what I noticed too!

DublinDilbert

Slight off toppic, but part of the problem is that bertie and the lads get driven every where by garda escort, so heavy traffic really isn't an issue for them... they don't have to spend 2+ hours sitting in traffic every day like everyone else....

As a garda said to me recently there is people dying in ambulances, and they don't get a garda escort to the hospital, yet bertie and the lads get garda escorts anytime they need them.

AndrewMc

Metrobest wrote:

Fine Gael are complete joke - where do they get their policies from?

They should be pledging more metro lines and luas lines - they should be dropping leaflets into people's houses saying "vote for us and we will have a metro line running through your area." That's what the punters want to hear, not this waffle from rent-a-quote spokeslady Olivia Mitchell.

It might be what they'd want to hear, but it still wouldn't be realistic, or true. Being elected on the basis of exaggeration and lies isn't really something to aspire to. The airport metro was supposed to be in place this year (page 13). They couldn't even get integrated ticketing done.

metrobest wrote:

Who's going to vote for FG's civilian traffic unit - whatever that means..?

The alternative coalition have zero credibility on transport issues - and throughout the last five years have shown no concrete proposals that would beat Transport 21. Eyeing which way the wind is blowing, Fine Gael latches on to whatever populist cause it can such as "lift the barriers on the M50" but that's just short-termism and is no solution for the years to come.

Which is something other journalists have figured out. They're supposed to be short-term solutions. The city's transport infrastructure is already too brittle now - we can't just wait for the next ten years waiting for bits and pieces of T21 to eventually appear.

godtabh

kbannon wrote:

what?

Maybe he meant not a cent was spent

Seth Brundle

kearnsr wrote:

Maybe he meant not a cent was spent

maybe the author should have said it!

DublinDilbert wrote:

As a garda said to me recently there is people dying in ambulances, and they don't get a garda escort to the hospital, yet bertie and the lads get garda escorts anytime they need them.

Would a garda escort benefit an ambulance? An ambulance is exempt from the same road traffic laws as a garda driver. If a car won't get out of the way of an ambulance, will they for a garda?

Flukey

kbannon wrote:

maybe if the busses didn't all head into the city centre and went around the city, etc. then more people would use them.
Currently it would take me two busses and a long time to get to work if I were to get out of my car!

There are some buses that don't go into the city centre, but I agree that there should be a lot more. We should have also have more of the ones that go right through the city, not using a terminus in the city. There should also be some circular routes, that is routes that have only one terminus. These would be good to link suburbs to each other. So the bus would start in point A and in a circle or oblong or whatever they could go around and come back to point A. If necessary, you could have buses on the same route going clockwise and anti-clockwise. These kind of routes could link a large amount of suburbs, without going into the city.

One of the things that does clog up buses, is people going on a bus that goes into town in order to get a bus that goes back out to their final destination, because there is no route that links their start and end points directly. So you end up going all the way into town to get a bus to get you to a place that wasn't very far from where you actually started.

More of those kind of routes would suit you Kbannon, and others. It doesn't take much imagination to come with these ideas, but Dublin Bus seems to lack a lot of that very thing. They'd argue that they don't have the buses to put on those kind of routes, but as I said, those routes would take some of the people having to go in and out of town to get to their destination, and so free up some buses to cover those routes.

markpb

Flukey wrote:

There are some buses that don't go into the city centre, but I agree that there should be a lot more. We should have also have more of the ones that go right through the city, not using a terminus in the city.

On the northside, the 17A runs from the Dart line at Howth Junction / Kilbarrack through Coolock, Santry, Ballymun and Finglas and is expected to be extended to Blanchardstown sometime this year. The 220 runs from Ballymun through Finglas and around to Blanch. They're very handy buses and there should be lots more of them but in almost all cases, traffic flowing in and out of the city has most of the priority at junctions so they're not always the very quick.

The 4 (started in 2006) runs from Ballymun, right through the city centre and south to Ballsbridge. It's expected to be extended south to Blackrock in the next few months. In general though, buses which run across the city are terribly unreliable because of the traffic in the city centre. More bus priority measures (including road closures to private traffic) are needed to solve that

More of those kind of routes would suit you Kbannon, and others. It doesn't take much imagination to come with these ideas, but Dublin Bus seems to lack a lot of that very thing. They'd argue that they don't have the buses to put on those kind of routes, but as I said, those routes would take some of the people having to go in and out of town to get to their destination, and so free up some buses to cover those routes.

Of course, even if DB did want to add new services, they first have to fight with DoT for permission to provide them and then ask for more buses and money money to pay for them. It's an uphill struggle.

Flukey

I know about the routes you've mentioned Markpb, and there are a number of others I could name for you too. They should be doing more of them though. Us, as mere commuters, can spot where they could work. We can also spot all sorts of other blatantly obvious problems on their services. The drivers would be familiar with them, but the people in HQ don't seem to know much, or otherwise some very simple measures to get rid of them, which we all could give examples of, would be put in place. A lot of them would not need one extra bus or even one cent off the minister. A bit of common sense is all that is required.

Time Magazine

Metrobest wrote:

They should be pledging more metro lines and luas lines - they should be dropping leaflets into people's houses saying "vote for us and we will have a metro line running through your area." That's what the punters want to hear, not this waffle from rent-a-quote spokeslady Olivia Mitchell.

It's pretty ironic that you call Olivia Mitchell a rent-a-quote spokeslady and also want FG to say they'll have metro lines running in your/everyone's area.

We can't build new train lines quickly. We can't add more trains very easily, Connolly/Tara St/Pearse are already packing them in.

The only short-to-medium-term assistance to Dublin public transport users is additional capacity for the Dublin Bus fleet. Buses can be arranged far easier than train lines. In the long term, FG support the Metro, etc.

The fact that Dublin Bus are a disgrace is another issue, with another policy to introduce a Regulator.

gurramok

markpb wrote:

On the northside, the 17A runs from the Dart line at Howth Junction / Kilbarrack through Coolock, Santry, Ballymun and Finglas and is expected to be extended to Blanchardstown sometime this year. The 220 runs from Ballymun through Finglas and around to Blanch. They're very handy buses and there should be lots more of them but in almost all cases, traffic flowing in and out of the city has most of the priority at junctions so they're not always the very quick.

The 4 (started in 2006) runs from Ballymun, right through the city centre and south to Ballsbridge. It's expected to be extended south to Blackrock in the next few months. In general though, buses which run across the city are terribly unreliable because of the traffic in the city centre. More bus priority measures (including road closures to private traffic) are needed to solve that

Very well, the 17A is a bus route thats been there before the economic boom.

The 220 was a once an hour service 5 years ago which has only been recently enhanced in frequency.
But are there any bus routes running directly from west/southwest of city(south of the liffey) to the northwest/north of the city (north of liffey) at peak hours where alot of M50 traffic goes from suburban homes to business parks?
For example, can i get a bus directly from Lucan/Palmerstown straight to business parks in Blanchardstown and onwards towards Coolock direction and vice versa?
If there was, i know many people that work with me who would hop out of there cars with the above alternative freeing up the M50 a bit!

_Kaiser_

I used to commute between Coolock and Blanch when I worked in Ballycoolin.
That involved either 3 buses over (27, 17A and 220) at maybe 90 minutes journey time (waiting on the 220 @ Finglas because it left early/didn't show - a lot of the time I ended up get a taxi the rest of the way), or a 27 to town and a 39 back out.

Now compare this with driving across - 20 mins door to door via the M50, or not that much longer if you follow the same route as the buses - and it's an easy choice really.

Aside from the journey time, there's the hassle of having to change buses at least twice simply to get to my destination. There's also the dead time waiting between buses, usually at stops with no shelters and exposed to the elements.

If DB are thinking of extending the 17A to (presumably) Blanch SC then that's a positive step. However, there is the danger that just extending it will result in the same problems the 39 now experiences since they extended it to Ongar.

spacetweek

gurramok wrote:

For example, can i get a bus directly from Lucan/Palmerstown straight to business parks in Blanchardstown and onwards towards Coolock direction and vice versa?
If there was, i know many people that work with me who would hop out of there cars with the above alternative freeing up the M50 a bit!

I used to live in Lucan and links across the Liffey are terrible. Castleknock is only 2 miles from Lucan as the crow flies, but it's a 15 minute drive at least, due to the lack of a direct route.

The 239 runs from Lucan to Blanch centre, but it's very slow due to the excrutiatingly long winded route. And it doesn't take you as far as the business parks.

Macy

I would've thought that park and ride's on the main routes into the city was a great idea. Have them non-stop until they get into the centre (eg inside the canals) using all the under utilised QBC's. For example, no reason that they couldn't open a park and ride facility now in Cherrywood, even if it was only till the Luas was extended, with buses straight in non-stop till Leeson Street Bridge.

My own personal view is that buses are more unfashionable to politicians than actual users. People like Cullen want big shiny legacies not solutions...

RadarControl

I am putting together a list of some suggestions to beat gridlock which I intend on submitting to Fine Gael which will beat gridlock in Dublin.

• Removal of Tolls on M50 altogether.
• The Removal of Right Turns at Newlands Cross.
• Buses going In towards city to be given 30 second priority at Newlands Cross, Lights at Monastery Rd, Red Cow,Long-Mile Rd,Bluebell,etc.
• Buses allowed drive on luas section at grade on Naas Road from Bluebell to Canal.
• Segergate QBC from all traffic and give bus drivers ability to give themselves Green light at each junction on corridor for 15 seconds, then lights revert back to normal sequence (Not hard to do London Fire Brigade has them installed in some of the appliances.)
• Purchase Oyster or some other integrated ticketing system and implement that. Stop RPA + others creating one for Ireland just get one that works already.
• Run every second or third tram on Red Line from Red - Cow Terminus.
• Remove cost of parking at Park & Ride Sites.
• Remove approval for new bus routes for BE and DB from DoT.
• All major infastructure projects to work on Sathurdays & Sundays from 10am to 4pm (Ideally it should be 24hrs a day like in States and Middle East but to pacify some people in this country we will have to compromise.
• Construction of 4 lane Expressway in each direction from M1 near Balbriggan to N7 at CastleWarden with Park & Ride sites to be built on Kildare - Heuston line and Maynooth to Connolly. All interchanges would be completely freeflow.

Seth Brundle

RadarControl wrote:

I am putting together a list of some suggestions to beat gridlock which I intend on submitting to Fine Gael which will beat gridlock in Dublin.

Why just FG - why not submit your proposal to all parties?

RadarControl wrote:

• The Removal of Right Turns at Newlands Cross.

Why not most right turns?

RadarControl

Meant to say all parties. . Not all junctions that have right turns have easy turnarounds as with Newlands Cross: Kingswood and Red Cow. I agree most right turns should be abolished. Here are some other ideas that I forgot to add:

• All tunnelling projects to operate 24x7 (Reduces costs in long run with equipment break-downs reduced which means downtime reduced and therefore increases producivity)
• Start building Metro Now.
• Upgrade extension of Green line to Metro from get go.
• Start building Interconnector Now.
• Force IE to use Phoenix Park Tunnel.
• Increase no of tracks from Connolly to Howth Junction immediately.
• Re-open Navan to Connolly immediately. Railcars from Navan could be timed to meet up with Maynooth trains at certain point at then be coupled together therefore allowing line to be re-opened without affecting capacity at Connolly in short time. When capacity increases trains from Navan could run straight through. A similar prosposal is in pipeline for the Gatwick Express.

Hotblack Desiato

I agree with most of these but:

RadarControl wrote:

[*]The Removal of Right Turns at Newlands Cross.

Outbound N7, you've just made it impossible for traffic to get from Luas P+R into Clondalkin Village.
Anyway there is a long filter lane here, sometimes it does back up into the straight ahead lane but so what? There are 3 of them. You can't claim that the right turn is blocking up the whole road, in this case.
Inbound N7, there are two right turn filter lanes.

[*]Buses allowed drive on luas section at grade on Naas Road from Bluebell to Canal.

Yep. Crazy that a bus lane serving many areas like Clondalkin Village not served by Luas was ripped up to provide track space which carries fewer people and serves fewer areas.

[*]Remove cost of parking at Park & Ride Sites.

Then it'll just be abused for parking by commuters to local industrial estates etc. Or rather, abused far more than it already is.