Dublin 10th most traffic-congested city in the world

Pepe LeFrits

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/dublin-is-world-s-10th-most-congested-city-1.1818738

... and of the cities ahead, 7 are vastly, vastly larger cities. Only Palermo and Rome are even remotely similar in terms of size.

Dublin needs to go high-rise.

intellectual dosser

What do you mean by high-rise, and how would it help with traffic problems?

Pepe LeFrits

If people live in the city, they'll be less reliant on cars.

DrumSteve

Pepe LeFrits wrote: »

If people live in the city, they'll be less reliant on cars.

Not if that particular city is served by Dublin Bus.

Maximus Alexander

Dublin needs bicycles. As far as the eye can see.

Pave over those roads with red tarmac and set those bicycles free.

Pepe LeFrits

Worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wai4ub90stQ

yawhat!

If public transport was better across the country then it wouldn't be!

intellectual dosser

Pepe LeFrits wrote: »

If people live in the city, they'll be less reliant on cars.

I think if you did a survey you'd find most people would be against living in the city center in a high rise building long term. I also don't think that plan would take cars off the road.

Dublin needs to reduce people's dependency on the middle of the city, decentralising to the suburbs should take people out, while implementing and promoting public transport should do the rest.

January

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Dublin needs bicycles. As far as the eye can see.

Pave over those roads with red tarmac and set those bicycles free.

Not in the rain soaked lands of Ireland.

stevedublin

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Dublin needs bicycles. As far as the eye can see.

Pave over those roads with red tarmac and set those bicycles free.

Do bicycles not work on black tarmac?

Maximus Alexander

January wrote: »

Not in the rain soaked lands of Ireland.

Ah nothing wakes you up for work like a 10km cycle through wind and ice-cold rain while articulated lorries bathe you in the sludge of streets as they pass. It's breathtaking, you should try it.

stevedublin wrote: »

Do bicycles not work on black tarmac?

Only if you're prepared to wager your life on a battle to the death with the territorial motorists and their 'road tax'.

Pepe LeFrits

intellectual dosser wrote: »

I think if you did a survey you'd find most people would be against living in the city center in a high rise building long term. I also don't think that plan would take cars off the road.

They won't have a choice, owning a house in Dublin is going to become a thing of the past for many people. There isn't room for it and supply won't catch up with demand.

Living close to amenities and work definitely reduces the usage of cars.

Dublin needs to reduce people's dependency on the middle of the city, decentralising to the suburbs should take people out, while implementing and promoting public transport should do the rest.

Well if it's going up in multiple centres or going up in the existing one I don't mind, but the city has to go high-rise. Urban sprawl is a disaster and population pressure is only going to increase.

Bits_n_Bobs

Low density low rise cities are fundamentally congested. Until this is addressed by an appropriate planning policy public transport, cycling etc etc won't solve a damn thing when it comes to congestion.

TheBandicoot

Exactly. Although I fully support a huge increase in funding for public transport, the fundamental problem is that a century of piss-poor planning since independence has actually destroyed the city. It is fundamentally broken and I don't think it can be fixed at this stage.

yawhat!

People drive to Dublin from all over Ireland: Cork, Kilkenny, Galway etc. Unfortunately Public transport is so piss poor to the capital that they have to drive into Dublin and have no choice in doing so because that's where all the jobs are!

smellmepower

Until all the mish mash of quangos and semi state companies who have stakes in public transport in the city come together under one umbrella and work out a coherent strategy for improving current pt services and and introducing new ones,not to mention the Gardai and DCC actually start to enforce current traffic and parking laws,then things will never change.

The new LUAS works on College Green are a perfect example of how little anyone who's job it is to actually deliver public transport cares about the services.Taxi ranks still in place,cross city bus routes still expected to magically run on time through traffic chaos instead of easily being re-routed for duration of works etc.Same old shíte pretty much.

mistress_gi

DrumSteve wrote: »

Not if that particular city is served by Dublin Bus.

Indeed! From where I live to UCD
1. Dublin bus:
2 buses and about 1.5 hours

2. Car:
20 to 30 mins
And about the same price in petro!

It's a no brainer really!

strandroad

All Dublin needs is underground system. See Amsterdam. Imagine what their congestion would be like if they only had transport on tbe surface...

Maximus Alexander

mhge wrote: »

All Dublin needs is underground system. See Amsterdam. Imagine what their congestion would be like if they only had transport on tbe surface...

Amsterdam also has an excellent tram system, like the one Dublin might have had if our forefathers in their infinite wisdom hadn't seen fit to replace them with buses and close them down in the 20s - 40s.

LXFlyer

Just to make the point that the report quoted in the OP does not include any Asian, African (except South Africa) or South American (except Brazil) cities, and excludes some of Europe also.

So it is rather misleading to state that Dublin is the 10th most congested city in the world, given so many places are left out.

LXFlyer

mistress_gi wrote: »

Indeed! From where I live to UCD
1. Dublin bus:
2 buses and about 1.5 hours

2. Car:
20 to 30 mins
And about the same price in petro!

It's a no brainer really!

And how many people want to make that precise trip?


A bus service cannot satisfy everyone, that's why most services are along the main radial routes.


Most orbital journeys (i.e. those not going to the city centre) are such that every person's journey starts and finishes in a different place, in other words very few people are making the same journey, which makes them exceptionally difficult to provide public transport to do them.


As a result orbital bus routes such as the 17, 17a, 18, 75 and 104 are designed to serve major traffic generators along the route to ensure that loadings are higher.

Aard

January wrote: »

Not in the rain soaked lands of Ireland.

Good thing it doesn't rain in Denmark or the Netherlands.

killbillvol2

Pepe LeFrits wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/dublin-is-world-s-10th-most-congested-city-1.1818738

... and of the cities ahead, 7 are vastly, vastly larger cities. Only Palermo and Rome are even remotely similar in terms of size.

Dublin needs to go high-rise.

What a total BS article. So we're more congested than Cairo? Beijing? Bangkok? Tokyo? Shanghai? Mumbai? Etc.

Aard

This is run by Tom Tom, so it's in their interest to focus on car-centric cities whose inhabitants could best benefit from one of their products.

The data doesn't tell the story they think it does either. So according to them, LA has the highest congestion in the States. However, LA also has the lowest average commute times of the big cities.

This ranking system tells us absolutely nothing useful, and saying we should do this or that in response to it is simply reactionary.

Chris_5339762

Easy start to the problem: Massive increase in the size of the P&R at the Red Cow. Increase LUAS frequencies into town. But most importantly, the P&R has to be FREE. Its €4 per day to park there. Crazy. On top of your tram fare. The P&R should be free.

Muahahaha

lxflyer wrote: »

Just to make the point that the report quoted in the OP does not include any Asian, African (except South Africa) or South American (except Brazil) cities, and excludes some of Europe also.

So it is rather misleading to state that Dublin is the 10th most congested city in the world, given so many places are left out.

I was thinking that, anyone who has been to Delhi, Jakarta or Hanoi would tell you that the traffic there is much worse than Dublin.

And what about London ? Their main motorway suffers from chronic traffic jams on a pretty frequent basis.

vrusinov

Bull****, Dublin is far from being 10th most congested cities, their data is just wrong. It can be 10th during One Direction concerts but on average it is actually fine.

I agree that Moscow is worst, but there are many other quite big cities in Russia where traffic is comparable to Moscow. I am personally from city of Voronezh, which have similar size to Dublin, have much-much worse traffic jams and it's not on the list. I guess nobody there uses that stupid TomTom navigation.

What about NYC? Getting in or out of Manhattan is hard. What about big African cities? I am sure India is nightmare. Same as big China cities.

Aard

vrusinov wrote: »

Bull****, Dublin is far from being 10th most congested cities, their data is just wrong.

Their data isn't right or wrong... they're just using it to tell one particular story


The real story here, imo, is how the Irish Times are willing to regurgitate Tom Tom's effective advertising without any cursory criticism.

JuliusCaesar

Cyclists, including myself, can tell you that although it might rain a lot in Ireland it tends to do so often but in short durations. I commute to work by bike and wear full rain gear maybe 5 times a year, usually because the rain is so light it doesn't really matter or because I can go in between showers.

Of course it helps that my commute is 20 minutes on the bike; it takes 45mins by car and the parking is 2.50 per hour; by public transport 2 buses 60 minutes, or 20 mins first bus plus 20 mins walk. Cycling is free and I'm kept fit, so it's a win-win situation for me.

But I'm sure many people use a combination of bus/tram and Dublin bikes.



As for increasing the frequency of trams at the Red Cow, they go very frequently at rush hours (every 5 minutes or so) and maybe every 15 minutes at other times. What's wrong with that?

Maximus Alexander

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

As for increasing the frequency of trams at the Red Cow, they go very frequently at rush hours (every 5 minutes or so) and maybe every 15 minutes at other times. What's wrong with that?

I don't know if it's the same on the Red Line but on the Green Line, while the LUAS is very frequent, it's also packed to bursting point. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary to have to skip one because there is no room and, when you do get on, it can make for a very unpleasant journey.

It wouldn't surprise me if this encourages some people to take the car instead. It's basically at capacity now between about 8 and 9am so it wouldn't hurt to have a few more running during that period.