Commuters prefer cars, figures show

probe

Is it any wonder? CIE provides the most appalling, disintegrated, downmarket, dysfunctional, unsignposted, unreliable public transport monopoly in Europe. And they do everything to stop integrated ticketing and the entry of new operators to the market. As a result CIE group and Ireland SA/AG/Inc is shooting itself in the foot!

Quote from Irish Times breaking news:

Irish people still prefer using private transport to get to work, Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures showed today.

Signs that the Celtic Tiger is still alive were evidenced by a doubling of the number of students driving themselves to school or college; up from 2,564 to 5,131.

The figures -which cover the period from 2002 to 2006 - show that the proportion of people driving to work increased by 2.6 per cent. Over 225,000 new vehicles were on the road over the four years covered by the survey.

Of the 1.9 million workers in the State in April 2006, almost 1.1 million - or 57 per cent - drove a car to work and 7.4 per cent used a van or lorry. In 2002, 55 per cent used cars and 6.8 per cent used vans or lorries out of a working population of 1.6 million.

Nearly 1.2 million households had at least one car in 2006 - an increase of 170,000 compared with 2002.

The highest proportion of households with a car were in counties Meath (90 per cent), Cork (88 per cent), Waterford and Kildare (both 87 per cent). Four out of ten households in Dublin city had no car in 2006.

The share of commuters using buses fell slightly, but there was a 66 per cent increase in train usage, largely accounted for by the opening of the Luas in Dublin and the extension of commuter services in and around the capital.

Train usage by workers was highest around north county Dublin, with areas such as Donabate, Skerries, Portmarnock and Malahide showing increases of 20 per cent or more.

The figures show workers travelled on average 15.8 km from home to work in 2006 with journey times slightly up on 2002 at 27.5 minutes.

Almost 285,000 workers left home before 7.00 am to get to work in 2006, with 113,000 leaving before 6.30 am. Around 75 per cent were men while 40 per cent of women departed between 8.00 and 9.00am.

The Dublin Transport Office last month issued figures showing that 40 per cent of primary school pupils were driven to schools within 2 kilometres of their homes.

The trend was reflected nationally in today's CSO figures which showed that some 55 per cent of primary children were driven 4 kilometres or less to school.

Surprisingly, more secondary pupils in rural areas used public transport to get to school than urban dwellers. Over half of rural dwellers used the bus while just one in five urban dwellers did likewise.

Labour transport spokesman Tommy Broughan said the figures showed the "massive" public transport deficit and the urgency of improving public transport and cycle paths.

"The lack of comprehensive and safe urban cycleway networks is highlighted by the fact that the numbers cycling to work remains - at 36,306 - very low," Mr Broughan said, noting that in 1991 50,000 people cycled to work.

"The figures also highlight this government's appalling failure to complete the QBC networks and to ensure that Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann have regular high quality fleets of buses," he added.

"Continuing gridlock and poor spatial planning are reflected in the increase in time it takes urban workers to get to work."

© 2007 ireland.com

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/1115/breaking61.htm

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seamus

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

I'm in Copenhagen at the moment and it seems as though half of the traffic is bikes. There are literally hundreds of people using the cycle lanes, even now in the dark, with the weather at 0 degrees C. Once you're out of rush hour in Dublin, it's rare that you'll see a bike.

It's not because Europeans prefer bikes or because Europe "is flatter", it's because the facilities are there. The people cycling clearly move along without worrying that around the corner is a parked car or a huge pothole or a pile of broken glass.

Tipsy Mac

I don't think it's a case of people preferring cars, it's more a case of people knowing they can actually conduct their day to day lives easier by car rather than use CIE. You will find in areas served by the Luas that people are more than willing to leave the car at home as they know it offers a quality and mostly reliable service.

maniac101

Tipsy Mac wrote: »

I don't think it's a case of people preferring cars, it's more a case of people knowing they can actually conduct their day to day lives easier by car rather than use CIE. You will find in areas served by the Luas that people are more than willing to leave the car at home as they know it offers a quality and mostly reliable service.

I agree. More worrying is the fact that the number of people who don't have a choice between car and public transport is continuing to increase, due to the trend of development of housing in areas not served by buses or trains. It's poor planning across the country that has made people dependent on cars, rather than a poor transport service.

ScumLord

It doesn't matter which mode of transport you use in this country there all terrible. I used the train once recently to go to Dublin from Ballyhannis and it cost me €40 return. That's an absolutely ridiculous price. I've travel twice that distance in half the time on the continent, Barcelona to Paris only cost me €70 on the high speed train.

The bus service is only slightly better in that there are allot of buses and there usually on time but last time I used them could be 5 years ago it was €7 to do 30 miles. Not worth it.

silverharp

Tipsy Mac wrote: »

I don't think it's a case of people preferring cars, it's more a case of people knowing they can actually conduct their day to day lives easier by car rather than use CIE. You will find in areas served by the Luas that people are more than willing to leave the car at home as they know it offers a quality and mostly reliable service.

I know people who drive from DunLaoghaire to he IFSC because they can and have a company car and space even though not needed for business.

probe

silverharp wrote: »

I know people who drive from DunLaoghaire to he IFSC because they can and have a company car and space even though not needed for business.

I used to be like that! I drove from my apartment in Hampstead to the City of London every day during a three year stint in that country because my job provided a parking space for my company car, and the alternative was unhealthy and inconvenient. Rather than using the Northern Line (“metro”). My reasons being:

There is no air con in the third world London underground (and there is no way to install it because the tunnels are too small to allow air conditioners on the roofs of trains – and even if they took out seats and put air conditioner units in each car, there is no place for the heat to escape, again because of the tiny tunnel). It is not a minor issue – the temperature can reach close to 40C and 100% humidity in summer. And it is getting hotter each year with climate change.

While it is cooler in winter, the absence of a good airflow means that the London metro is a great place to pick up every bug and illness going around.

Add to that the discomfort of being crammed into a tight space with no seats etc. etc. Poor quality public transport deserves to be boycotted.

I now live in an area with good public transport on the Continent, and drive a car once or twice a month as a result – ie when I get the urge to drive – rather than when I need to get somewhere.

London is now trying to copy Switzerland and Germany by building the city’s first S-Bahn type of line from West to East. However it looks as if London’s S-Bahn will use single deck trains – so there won’t be seating for everybody, no space for bikes or a place to plonk a notebook computer and use it. Instead of running London’s only S-Bahn line straight through Heathrow airport, it looks as if it will run a few km adjacent to the airport with a spur link to the airport, maybe. To make matters even worse, this “S”-bahn will have lots of stops so it will still take ages to get across London. Might as well call it a Ubahn.

Why do English speaking countries – eg Ireland, Britain, USA, Australia, etc have such a massive mental block when it comes to delivering a user-friendly public transport infrastructure that the vast majority of the population uses out of free choice day in, day out?

.probe

SeanW

If you think about it, it makes sense. We force people to invest huge amounts to merely own a car - VRT, road tax, insurance etc - and these are all costs that you pay before you can get out of your driveway - so even if you only need a car to do the weekly shopping, you're more likely to make use of your investment during the commuting week rather than invest more in a multitude of annual public transport tickets.

We should have more incentives to more people owning cars but using them less. Like replacing road tax and VRT with fuel taxes and road tolls. Perhaps even a low mileage insurance scheme or two would give the people the flexibility to keep a car parked in the driveway.

@Probe, you have to remember that a lot of London's Underground was built in the 1800s when tunneling was a primitive science and you couldn't deep bore a big one. I would imagine that any newer Underground lines and extensions are built with proper tunnels.

probe

SeanW wrote: »

If you think about it, it makes sense. We force people to invest huge amounts to merely own a car - VRT, road tax, insurance etc - and these are all costs that you pay before you can get out of your driveway - so even if you only need a car to do the weekly shopping, you're more likely to make use of your investment during the commuting week rather than invest more in a multitude of annual public transport tickets.

We should have more incentives to more people owning cars but using them less. Like replacing road tax and VRT with fuel taxes and road tolls. Perhaps even a low mileage insurance scheme or two would give the people the flexibility to keep a car parked in the driveway.

@Probe, you have to remember that a lot of London's Underground was built in the 1800s when tunneling was a primitive science and you couldn't deep bore a big one. I would imagine that any newer Underground lines and extensions are built with proper tunnels.

In Switzerland a GA (General subscription ticket to all public transport for the a year) provides you with unlimited use of buses, trams, boats, trains, funicular railways, postal coaches, etc for €1824 per annum 2cl nationwide (1cl costs €2866). The most dense network of public transport in the world. Wake up in Geneva on Saturday, and decide you want to go to Zurich. When you arrive in Zurich you do your business and decide to go to Lugano to benefit from the near Mediterranean climate of Ticino for the rest of the weekend. It is all free, once you have paid the fixed annual cost of the ticket. And almost totally CO2-free as well.

If you need a car at your destination, you can rent a Smart car at the station for €1.68 per hour + about 30c per km driven. http://mct.sbb.ch/mct/en/reisemarkt/services/mobilitaet/carsharing.htm

Virtually everybody has a GA or some form of abo ticket for their city or region or whatever – and therefore use public transport at virtually every opportunity because it is “free” – once you have paid for the fixed monthly/annual cost of the ticket.

The VAT rate on cars in CH is only 7.6%, so cars are dirt cheap - but Swiss public transport is better and cheaper still.

I would imagine that any newer Underground lines and extensions are built with proper tunnels.

Methinks SeanW has never had the pleasure of living in GB!



Map: http://mct.sbb.ch/mct/en/general-abo-uebersichtskarte.pdf

http://mct.sbb.ch/mct/en/reisemarkt/abonnemente/ga.htm

.probe

probe

I was checking the Irish state public transport monopoly’s website to see if they had anything like a Swiss annual public transport ticket.

I came across Bus Eireann’s annual bus pass – so expensive that only companies can afford it for their employees!

Unlike the Swiss GA, these tickets only allow one to travel from one designated point (eg your home) to another designated point (eg your place of work).

A bus pass from Drogheda to Dublin costs €1920 PA – €96 more than the cost of unlimited travel on virtually all modes of transport in Switzerland for a year.

You’ll find the full Buseireann annual ticket price list at http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/employer_pass_fares.asp

The system only appears to operate to/from Dublin.

What a rip-off…

.probe

silverharp

probe wrote: »

I used to be like that! I drove from my apartment in Hampstead to the City of London every day during a three year stint in that country because my job provided a parking space for my company car, and the alternative was unhealthy and inconvenient. Rather than using the Northern Line (“metro”). My reasons being:

I used to live in East Finchley so I know the Northern line well. To be fair the DART between DunLaoghaire and IFSC is much more pleasant then the underground although it does suffer from congestion at times.

As I am fairly convinced that Peak Oil is very close or has already happened, the marginal cost of driving is going to shoot up over the next 5 years. Maybe there will be a new incentive to give the roads back to trams and busses. bring it on!

probe

silverharp wrote: »

To be fair the DART between DunLaoghaire and IFSC is much more pleasant then the underground although it does suffer from congestion at times.

Quite. There is no comparison between DART and an underground rail system*.

But how does one get the message through to politicians who seem hell-bent on wasting perhaps €5 billion on an Irish version of the “Northern Line”?

And instead use less money to build a faster, more user-friendly, healthier, public transport system – a la Zurich – largely by building on the existing over ground resources. A system that everybody will want to use.

I suspect not a single politician or senior civil servant in Ireland responsible for transport has ever lived in a city that depends on metro for any length of time. Virtually all new rail investment in the Paris region over the past 30 years has been RER (their version of S-Bahn) and tram.

You have to build a system that is so user-friendly that it crushes the car in terms of competitiveness. There is no alternative. Half-measures lead to traffic chaos.

.probe


*Aside from its lack of reliability – DART must be one of the most fault prone electric rail services in Europe

Capt'n Midnight

SeanW wrote: »

If you think about it, it makes sense. We force people to invest huge amounts to merely own a car - VRT, road tax, insurance etc - and these are all costs that you pay before you can get out of your driveway - so even if you only need a car to do the weekly shopping, you're more likely to make use of your investment during the commuting week rather than invest more in a multitude of annual public transport tickets.

We should have more incentives to more people owning cars but using them less. Like replacing road tax and VRT with fuel taxes and road tolls. Perhaps even a low mileage insurance scheme or two would give the people the flexibility to keep a car parked in the driveway.

@Probe, you have to remember that a lot of London's Underground was built in the 1800s when tunneling was a primitive science and you couldn't deep bore a big one. I would imagine that any newer Underground lines and extensions are built with proper tunnels.

Yip phase out VRT and road tax over the next few years but no so quickly as to undermine the value of the cars. SIMI were waffling on about how less poluting new cars were compared to say sweden where they are 17% worse then something. But it takes resources to make new cars which use CO2n' stuff. So lets just put it all on fuel, more democratic. Will also reduce our Koyoto fines - €300 million set aside for that , and will stop those across the boarder increasing our CO2 fines - buy your petrol, then again if we make more than 300m off them in revenue

Insurance is a swiz, low milage will only reduce your risk by 1/4 -1/3 even if you do nearly only 10% of the average distance , at present it's no where near pro rata.
Another idea is to have basic third party insurance covered by a tax on fuel. You would still need to pay for top-up cover if you are in a high risk group, but the cost of uninsured drivers would be born out of it. you would also need to get an insurance cert as per normal but for the average driver (by insurace cost) it would be zero cost

London's first tunnels are shrinking so the trains get smaller each version


The real kicker is that from about 1900 to 1940 Dublin had the one of the best public transport infrastructures of any city. How much would those tram lines and railways cost to replace ?
Imagine a luas extension to Blessington

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote: »

A bus pass from Drogheda to Dublin costs €1920 PA – €96 more than the cost of unlimited travel on virtually all modes of transport in Switzerland for a year.

You’ll find the full Buseireann annual ticket price list at http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/employer_pass_fares.asp

hang on
I used to have a monthly ticket (Giant hop IIRC) that did from Dundalk to Arklow and out to somewhere in the midlands and everywhere inbetween on expressways, train , dart, and city buses

it was cheaper than a daily return journey between some of the towns in between.

http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/commuter_services.asp
Medium Hop €45.00
Long Hop €61.00
Giant Hop €69.00 - = €828 pa.
Pity they don't list which towns are and it it's accepted on rail /dart /luas


http://www.dublinbus.ie/fares_and_tickets/taxsaver_commuter_tickets.asp

311

Hello ,I was just wondering ,how do people feel about being stuck in traffic and the exhaust fumes coming into the car?

How effective are air filters at reducing harmful fumes coming into a car.
I have to drive for work as a gas fitter ,so I don't have a choice.

I do worry though ,that standstill traffic can effective peoples health.

Mailman

Recirculation button does the trick.

In addition to that my car has a pollen filter which does it's bit and there is an option for an "odour" filter too which I haven't bothered with.

probe

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

hang on
I used to have a monthly ticket (Giant hop IIRC) that did from Dundalk to Arklow and out to somewhere in the midlands and everywhere inbetween on expressways, train , dart, and city buses

it was cheaper than a daily return journey between some of the towns in between.

http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/commuter_services.asp
Medium Hop €45.00
Long Hop €61.00
Giant Hop €69.00 - = €828 pa.
Pity they don't list which towns are and it it's accepted on rail /dart /luas


http://www.dublinbus.ie/fares_and_tickets/taxsaver_commuter_tickets.asp

The Bus Eireann website is as clear as mush.

1) http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/commuter_services.asp doesn’t say that the giant hop for example is an integrated ticket covering bus, rail, and Luas, or just Bus Eireann services. In relation to Cork they mention suburban rail as an optional extra (Cork <> Cobh only – what about Cork <> Mallow suburban services?). What constitutes the suburbs – no map.

2) Is the €69 giant hop ticket per month or per week? If per month, how can Bus Eireann explain the fact that they are charging €1920 per annum for a http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/employer_pass_fares.asp ticket between Dundalk and Dublin and only €69 per month under the giant hop tariff for the same journey?

3) The Swiss GA is an alternative to the car – you can go anywhere in the country, unlimited travel on virtually all modes (excluding the odd privately owned ski lift). The Bus Eireann tickets are not a car replacement. Once you have bought the Swiss GA, you might as well use it for all trips as they are free. Once you have bought a car, despite its large fixed cost, each km driven costs extra.

4) The zone map http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/zones.asp is rather dumb. Dundalk to Drogheda is 37 km – arguably a short or medium hop journey using their lingo. Yet it requires a giant hop ticket costing €69. At the other extreme, one could commute from Drogheda to Kilcullen (distance 99 km) using a long hop ticket which is only €61!

If the entire country was divided into cellular zones like http://www.zvv.ch/preise_zonenplan.asp
The tariff would be more logical and fairer and encourage more people to buy monthly or annual tickets. Eg to travel from zone 10 to 11 on the map you need a 2 zone ticket – because you are using the transport services of two zones. To travel from zone 10 to 12 you need a 3 zone ticket because you are using 10, 11 and 12 or 10, 21 and 12 to get to your destination.

To put it into Dublin terms, assuming you live in Dublin 4 and you buy a 2 zone annual ticket if there were cellular zones. This would allow you to travel to work in Dublin 2. You could go to Blackrock (call it zone 44) on Saturday shopping. And you could also use it in Dublin 6 – the other neighbouring zone. Of course transport zones are much bigger than postal zones – I’m just using it as an example. Concentric circle public transport zones do not promote maximum use of public transport.

CIE’s entire ticketing system is confused and confusing, not integrated, and all the resources seem to be wasted away on a needless smart card system. Most continental cities have had integrated ticketing for decades – long before the smart card was invented.

.probe

probe

_Brian_ wrote: »

Hello ,I was just wondering ,how do people feel about being stuck in traffic and the exhaust fumes coming into the car?

How effective are air filters at reducing harmful fumes coming into a car.
I have to drive for work as a gas fitter ,so I don't have a choice.

I do worry though ,that standstill traffic can effective peoples health.

If you want to see how much dirty air gets into your car, buy a negative ioniser and leave it in the car for a few months. Any surface in the car near the ioniser will be black within a few months – the ioniser acts like an electric magnet for dirty particles in the air.

A pollen filter is helpful, and they should be changed twice as frequently as the car manufacturer recommends, because pollen levels in Ireland can be very high due to the climate, and they cease to function properly.

Some cars offer higher levels of filtration with automatic detection of exhaust smog and similar, and automatically shut off the air intake when they detect higher levels of pollution.

Another good reason to keep a long distance between you and the vehicle in front!

.probe

John R

probe wrote: »

I was checking the Irish state public transport monopoly’s website to see if they had anything like a Swiss annual public transport ticket.

I came across Bus Eireann’s annual bus pass – so expensive that only companies can afford it for their employees!

Unlike the Swiss GA, these tickets only allow one to travel from one designated point (eg your home) to another designated point (eg your place of work).

A bus pass from Drogheda to Dublin costs €1920 PA – €96 more than the cost of unlimited travel on virtually all modes of transport in Switzerland for a year.

You’ll find the full Buseireann annual ticket price list at http://www.buseireann.ie/site/your_journey/employer_pass_fares.asp

The system only appears to operate to/from Dublin.

What a rip-off…

.probe

If you had bothered to read the site properly you would have seen that there is a tax rebate on that ticket of up to 47% through the taxsaver scheme.


There is also an all-CIE ticket available for €3880.

With the 47% tax rebate that is €2056. Not so different to your Swiss comparison after all.


Yes, our transport system is poor in comparison to the Swiss but then we didn't have the benefit of billions of € worth of stolen wealth courtesy of the Third Reich.

probe

John R wrote: »

If you had bothered to read the site properly you would have seen that there is a tax rebate on that ticket of up to 47% through the taxsaver scheme.


There is also an all-CIE ticket available for €3880.

With the 47% tax rebate that is €2056. Not so different to your Swiss comparison after all.


Yes, our transport system is poor in comparison to the Swiss but then we didn't have the benefit of billions of € worth of stolen wealth courtesy of the Third Reich.

1) You are not comparing like with like - the Swiss GA/AG allows unlimited use of all public transport. The buseireann employer funded thing I was comparing it with is from home to work only.

2) I can't find any mention of your €3880 GA type ticket on your websites. It costs more than twice the price of the Swiss "equivalent" and only delivers about 10% of the service. A shoddy, arrogant, non-integrated, Irish state monopoly that provides the most appalling public transport system in Europe at great cost to the user.

3) One doesn't have to look very far to see where Ireland's new "wealth" came from. Very little to do with indigenous business interests and the quality of Irish produced products and services. And the appalling quality of the infrastructure provided by the CIE group state transport monopoly and the arrogant staff it employs is a not insubstantial contributor the country's infrastructural chaos.

.probe

probe

John R wrote: »

Yes, our transport system is poor in comparison to the Swiss but then we didn't have the benefit of billions of € worth of stolen wealth courtesy of the Third Reich.

You’ll find the current Swiss Federal Railways annual report at the link below. The funding of the system is set out in the Income Statement on page 89. I have no doubt that if you go back to the financial reports of the company back over the last century, the sources of funding are almost identical, year in, year out.

Your references to the Nazi era in Germany are a libel on this company and the Swiss Travel System in general, and the auditors (currently Ernst & Young).

http://sbb-gb2006.mxm.ch/_pdf/RZ_Berichtsteil_e.pdf

.probe