Luas Cross City (Line BX/D) [now open]

CramCycle

LeinsterDub wrote: »

http://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/luas-cross-city-project-cost-12712071

Directed at Councillor Nial Ring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrWoG8IckyE

bk

In fairness he does have a point.

Parking, both on and off street is a major source of revenue for councils all over the country. But this creates a serious conflict of interest. On the one hand city planners know perfectly well that removing such on-street parking space and giving it over to more walking, cycling and public transport space is absolutely the right thing to do for the city. But on the other hand every space they remove hurts their own budget!

The problem we have in Ireland is that city councils aren't allowed to collect their own taxes, like they do in the US and elsewhere in Europe, instead they rely on direct government subsidies, commercial rates and paid parking.

Perhaps a solution to this would be for every parking space removed to make more space for walking, cycling and public transport, that the government increases the annual subsidy to the city council by x to offset the lost revenue.

If they were to do this, then I'd say you would see a great deal of city on street parking spaces removed and replaced with more transport infrastructure.

MJohnston

<snip> Mod:no personal insults.

Idbatterim

I see the strike to Repeal :rolleyes: blocked O'Connell street yesterday. How often will service be disrupted with moronic protests I wonder?

MJohnston

Idbatterim wrote: »

I see the strike to Repeal :rolleyes: blocked O'Connell street yesterday. How often will service be disrupted with moronic protests I wonder?

You'd be best leaving your personal politics out of it. Yesterdays protest had every right to be there, as do the many others we see on O'Connell Street. Protest is a fundamental right in our society and whinging about it is seriously silly.

LeinsterDub

bk wrote: »

In fairness he does have a point.

Parking, both on and off street is a major source of revenue for councils all over the country. But this creates a serious conflict of interest. On the one hand city planners know perfectly well that removing such on-street parking space and giving it over to more walking, cycling and public transport space is absolutely the right thing to do for the city. But on the other hand every space they remove hurts their own budget!

The problem we have in Ireland is that city councils aren't allowed to collect their own taxes, like they do in the US and elsewhere in Europe, instead they rely on direct government subsidies, commercial rates and paid parking.

Perhaps a solution to this would be for every parking space removed to make more space for walking, cycling and public transport, that the government increases the annual subsidy to the city council by x to offset the lost revenue.

If they were to do this, then I'd say you would see a great deal of city on street parking spaces removed and replaced with more transport infrastructure.

Wait I've got it! Some kind of subterranean Luas. Has any of country in the world world ever done a kind of subterranean train?

LXFlyer

MJohnston wrote: »

You'd be best leaving your personal politics out of it. Yesterdays protest had every right to be there, as do the many others we see on O'Connell Street. Protest is a fundamental right in our society and whinging about it is seriously silly.

Everyone has a right to protest, and I do respect that, but actions that cause the city bus service to go into meltdown for an extended period of time on a normal working day really aren't good. There were gaps of over an hour on key routes such as the 16 as a result of these actions. People have to get to work, or college or have appointments, and were seriously disrupted by this.

There has to be a better method rather than causing that much disruption to people's transport arrangements. Do they necessarily have to block the key public transport routes through the city centre?

There seems to be a march for one reason or another virtually every Saturday afternoon through the city centre which causes major problems for the bus service.

LUAS will suffer similar problems - it will have to be curtailed at Dominick Street from Broombridge and at St Stephen's Green from Sandyford/Brides Glen.

Jamie2k9

MJohnston wrote: »

You'd be best leaving your personal politics out of it. Yesterdays protest had every right to be there, as do the many others we see on O'Connell Street. Protest is a fundamental right in our society and whinging about it is seriously silly.

Give over, it may of had a right however it achieves nothing apart from causing widespread public disruption.

marno21

MOD: Can we please keep the discussion to Luas BXD and not individual perspectives on protests, there are other places for discussing those besides the Infrastructure forum

MJohnston

Without talking about this specific protest, protests in general are supposed to cause disruption - standing outside of Leinster House is easily ignored. So OCS will always be a target for demonstrations. Maybe this is another good reason to have a public plaza on College Green, as that might become the place where it happens instead.

Idbatterim

Ill get back on topic! We have a city of over one million people. We have one bloody main thoroughfare! Our transport "system" is a joke. given all of the issue with cross city, one big factor that should have been taken into account, was how susceptible transport is to being shut down by these protests!

TLTR, they should have put it in a tunnel, I suppose when cost is the only consideration for projects here, its no wonder we are always fobbed off with crap solutions...

Youd wonder with the benefit of hindsight on cross city, would be power thats be, now go for the same solution , a second time round, in a hypothetical situation...

MJohnston

Does that really matter given how the decisions are all far in the past, and there's no realistic chance of anything about it changing in many decades?

Questions I'd be more interested in:
- Where are the turn backs that will be in effect for any given protest?
- How often do protests or marches occur on OCS?
- Do Garda have a say in the organisation route of marches? Currently the route seems to be from Garden of Remembrance towards Leinster Street via OCS, but there are (still visible) alternatives.

LXFlyer

MJohnston wrote: »

Does that really matter given how the decisions are all far in the past, and there's no realistic chance of anything about it changing in many decades?

Questions I'd be more interested in:
- Where are the turn backs that will be in effect for any given protest?
- How often do protests or marches occur on OCS?
- Do Garda have a say in the organisation route of marches? Currently the route seems to be from Garden of Remembrance towards Leinster Street via OCS, but there are (still visible) alternatives.

As per my post above:

1 - Dominick Street and St Stephen's Green
2 - Regularly on Saturday afternoons (but not to the extreme extent yesterday which caused mayhem with the bus service)
3 - I believe so

MJohnston

lxflyer wrote: »

As per my post above:

1 - Dominick Street and St Stephen's Green
2 - Regularly on Saturday afternoons
3 - I believe so

I'm not sure it's that regular as I can't remember any in ages, but maybe there are far fewer during the winter months. I'd like to see if anyone has solid stats on this. Arguably there isn't as much disruption on Saturdays I suppose.

LXFlyer

MJohnston wrote: »

I'm not sure it's that regular as I can't remember any in ages, but maybe there are far fewer during the winter months. I'd like to see if anyone has solid stats on this. Arguably there isn't as much disruption on Saturdays I suppose.

Well I certainly notice regular disruptions to the bus services (particularly cross-city routes) as they have to negotiate protests for one cause or another - they're not normally anything like yesterday's protest, but even a small group of 20 people walking through the city centre can cause a major tailback and consequent disruption.

Sam Russell

Mod: Protest are not within the scope of this thread, or any in Infrastructure thread.

Bans for the next mention of such protests.

Middle Man

LeinsterDub wrote: »

http://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/luas-cross-city-project-cost-12712071

I'm not anti-car, but this takes the biscuit - how the hell can you have an effective on-street tram system along with all the previous on-street parking retained??? Does it even cross his mind that the extra footfall generated by the Luas Cross City project will most likely generate significant financial benefits for the city?

Then there's all the pedestrian needs - yes, a certain level of reasonable car access to the city should be retained (along with the multi-storey carparks), but the needs of pedestrians and the Luas must come first in the city centre!

MJohnston

Middle Man wrote: »

I'm not anti-car, but this takes the biscuit - how the hell can you have an effective on-street tram system along with all the previous on-street parking retained??? Does it even cross his mind that the extra footfall generated by the Luas Cross City project will most likely generate significant financial benefits for the city?

Then there's all the pedestrian needs - yes, a certain level of reasonable car access to the city should be retained (along with the multi-storey carparks), but the needs of pedestrians and the Luas must come first in the city centre!

As bk pointed out, it's financial benefits for the city, not for the city council. That's why Cllr Ring is being quite myopic in his point of view.

LeinsterDub

MJohnston wrote: »

As bk pointed out, it's financial benefits for the city, not for the city council. That's why Cllr Ring is being quite myopic in his point of view.

More people in the city means more shops and cafes and more rates surely?

MJohnston

LeinsterDub wrote: »

More people in the city means more shops and cafes and more rates surely?

Maybe, although I would guess it'd be more people commuting than anything else. Still, there will be some financial benefit to DCC, but not as great as they're directly losing through street-parking revenue. Tough luck really!

bk

It is a real and serious problem.

If spoken to city and roads planners who have told me they won't even put forward any plans that involve removing on street car parking spaces because council management will automatically shot the plan down and it never sees the light of day.

The planners are so use to this now they won't even think of removing spaces!

The only reason Luas Cross City and the quays plans are getting away with it is because they are driven by the NTA, who don't care about on street parking.

However I would argue that if some agreement was put in place between the government and councils to increase the government subsidy to councils by x for each parking space removed in favour of transport infrastructure, then I believe you would see council city and roads planners being much more aggressive with removing parking spaces.

CramCycle

bk wrote: »

In fairness he does have a point.

Parking, both on and off street is a major source of revenue for councils all over the country. But this creates a serious conflict of interest. On the one hand city planners know perfectly well that removing such on-street parking space and giving it over to more walking, cycling and public transport space is absolutely the right thing to do for the city. But on the other hand every space they remove hurts their own budget!

The problem we have in Ireland is that city councils aren't allowed to collect their own taxes, like they do in the US and elsewhere in Europe, instead they rely on direct government subsidies, commercial rates and paid parking.

Perhaps a solution to this would be for every parking space removed to make more space for walking, cycling and public transport, that the government increases the annual subsidy to the city council by x to offset the lost revenue.

If they were to do this, then I'd say you would see a great deal of city on street parking spaces removed and replaced with more transport infrastructure.

Increasing footfall, cycling etc. will increase revenue in the city center, even from commuters. This leads to more people likely to invest in opening businesses, leading to either increase in number of rate payers or just an increase in rates. They are also myopically forgetting that with less cars on the road, the cost of repair an maintenance of said roads will also reduce significantly, something that could have done up a policy document on to ask for funding typically reserved for road maintenance to be diverted to the council directly. How much of that money goes to servicing the meters, paying staff, funding the clamping companies?

bk

Problem is you are replacing guaranteed existing revenue with some wishy washy idea that it might at some undetermined point in future it might increase commercial rates revenue by some undetermined amount!

Here is how the meeting goes:

Engineer: I propose removing x spaces to make way for a bus lane

Manager of Paid Parking: What?! That means we will be down by y millions of revenue per year!

City Manager: What?! That means the city will be out by y millions per year and we will have to decide to make cut backs in either social housing or parks maintenance or street cleaning or street lighting, etc.

City Manager: So no, lets not do this.

The truth is these sort of meetings don't even get that far. The engineers know to not even bother proposing it. Why put in the effort of creating plans when it is going to get shot down anyway!

I'm not saying any of this is right. But you have to understand the root cause of the issue if you are going to come up with solutions to fix the issue and improve things.

Really there are only two solutions to this problem:

1) Government increases the subsidy to the councils to offset the loss of parking revenue

2) Government gives councils more independence, allowing them to raise their own taxes, etc. Will never happen as it would give Dublin too much power over the government.

3) Government builds a big new car park somewhere around the city and hands it over to the council to run and profit from instead of the street parking revenue.

I really can't think of any other solution to the problem, but I'm open to suggestions and I think it is well worth discussing.

CramCycle wrote: »

How much of that money goes to servicing the meters, paying staff, funding the clamping companies?

The revenue from parking fines more then pays for enforcement, etc. I believe in most cases it actually makes money, not including the majority of people who actually pay for their parking. The entire are is a major money maker for councils and it ends up financing many vital services the council offers.

Chivito550

bk wrote: »

Problem is you are replacing guaranteed existing revenue with some wishy washy idea that it might at some undetermined point in future it might increase commercial rates revenue by some undetermined amount!

Here is how the meeting goes:

Engineer: I propose removing x spaces to make way for a bus lane

Manager of Paid Parking: What?! That means we will be down by y millions of revenue per year!

City Manager: What?! That means the city will be out by y millions per year and we will have to decide to make cut backs in either social housing or parks maintenance or street cleaning or street lighting, etc.

City Manager: So no, lets not do this.

The truth is these sort of meetings don't even get that far. The engineers know to not even bother proposing it. Why put in the effort of creating plans when it is going to get shot down anyway!

I'm not saying any of this is right. But you have to understand the root cause of the issue if you are going to come up with solutions to fix the issue and improve things.

Really there are only two solutions to this problem:

1) Government increases the subsidy to the councils to offset the loss of parking revenue

2) Government gives councils more independence, allowing them to raise their own taxes, etc. Will never happen as it would give Dublin too much power over the government.

3) Government builds a big new car park somewhere around the city and hands it over to the council to run and profit from instead of the street parking revenue.

I really can't think of any other solution to the problem, but I'm open to suggestions and I think it is well worth discussing.



The revenue from parking fines more then pays for enforcement, etc. I believe in most cases it actually makes money, not including the majority of people who actually pay for their parking. The entire are is a major money maker for councils and it ends up financing many vital services the council offers.

That is such a depressing post. Sums up how backward we are.

There's no place for parking in a city centre. All city centre car parks should be compulsory purchased by the government.

LXFlyer

Chivito550 wrote: »

That is such a depressing post. Sums up how backward we are.

There's no place for parking in a city centre. All city centre car parks should be compulsory purchased by the government.

I think that's going a bit too far. Most cities around the world (including London) have city centre car parks. That traffic can be managed easily enough.

I don't see an issue with that - the real issue in Dublin is traffic going through the city centre that doesn't really need to be there in the first place. That's what needs to be removed and channelled elsewhere.

The broader issue is how we as a nation fund our public services, and reactions to the likes of the USC or indeed warer charges tells you that a reasonable number of people aren't too keen on paying extra for them.

Dardania

lxflyer wrote: »

I think that's going a bit too far. Most cities around the world (including London) have city centre car parks. That traffic can be managed easily enough.

I don't see an issue with that - the real issue in Dublin is traffic going through the city centre that doesn't really need to be there in the first place. That's what needs to be removed and channelled elsewhere.

The broader issue is how we as a nation fund our public services, and reactions to the likes of the USC or indeed warer charges tells you that a reasonable number of people aren't too keen on paying extra for them.

On the funding issue, part of the issue is that DCC chose t reduce the amount required from the LPT...had they not done that, perhaps they wouldn't be so dependent upon a counter productive revenue stream like parking income.

strassenwo!f

Thrashssacre wrote: »

Is there any reason why the line cannot be run as Sandyford - broombridge, Brides Glen- Connolly seams much better conectionwise giving dart and northern commuter services direct green line access

As has been pointed out above, the connections aren't there at this stage to facilitate, for example, Bride's Glen - Connolly.

But one of the reasons many cities retain a variety of direct tram services through central sections is that it removes a lot of passengers from interchange choke points.

For example, if there's a lot of demand for Bride's Glen - Connolly services, then those passengers are removed from negotiating the interchange at O'Connell/Abbey Street and that interchange becomes more manageable for those who are looking for something else (easier to negotiate the platforms, the traffic lights, etc., because there are fewer people jostling to make the change).

The initial plan is not to have this arrangement in Dublin, but I'm confident that it will eventually come. For example, there can currently be no direct tram connection between Broombridge and Connolly, and this appears to depend on a building at the corner of Marlborough Street and Abbey street, currently a newsagent.

That building will eventually come down, perhaps as part of a complete redevelopment of the area in and around the Irish Life Centre, and of the Irish Life Centre itself. The passenger demand figures obviously aren't there at the moment, but a couple of years of operation should show this to be desirable.

I would like to say that this will happen in 5 years, though given the stately pace with which public transport infrastructure is developed in Ireland, I'd have to realistically give it 10 years. But at the outside.

markpb

strassenwo!f wrote:

there can currently be no direct tram connection between Broombridge and Connolly,

If only there was some other way people could get direct from Broombridge to Connolly....

strassenwo!f

Yes, of course there is, but the rail route only gives people the option to take a rather circuitous route directly there, and only (currently) via Drumcondra. A tram route would go via several parts of the city, and Grangegorman, suiting people who want to go to a lot of destinations, and take not much more time.

bk

Dardania wrote: »

On the funding issue, part of the issue is that DCC chose t reduce the amount required from the LPT...had they not done that, perhaps they wouldn't be so dependent upon a counter productive revenue stream like parking income.

Just to point out, it was the city councillors who decide that for political reasons, not DCC management. DCC management would love that extra LPT funding.