Our roads are falling apart

magicbastarder

Charles Babbage wrote: »

The range of ethnic cleansing proposals here and the lack of discussion if transport is remarkable.

if by 'ethnic cleansing' you mean 'refusal to allow people to build mcmansions down small roads from which they have to drive two miles to the nearest village to pick up a carton of milk', you have a sublime sense of humour.

my parents in law a couple of decades ago were able to build a house which is a 50 minute walk - according to google maps - from the nearest shop. you would be able to walk it in daylight on a dry day, if you fancied an hour and a half walk as a round trip; no-one would attempt it at night. they had no connection to the area where they bought. and my father in law is constantly complaining about the state of the road. there are 13 houses on a 3km stretch (four of which are less than ten years old), and three of the 13 belong to the local farmers. everyone else commutes to work.

if people want to live out in the country surrounded by fields, with no other connection to the land than a half acre lawn, that's one thing. it's another thing entirely to assume that you should have roads (and other infrastructure) as well paved as they do in the suburbs, where the population per capita per kilometre is vastly different; for example, the road i grew up on in the 80s (standard 1970s dublin suburb) has one house per roughly 5 m of road (i.e. one house every 10m, but houses on both sides); my wife grew up on a road with one house every 300m.

another example of infrastructural fun - my father in law constantly complains about eircom because his broadband keeps breaking. 90% of the time it's been clipped by a tractor pulling a high load.

magicbastarder

Qualitymark wrote: »

Electricity mostly requires the burning of fossil fuels to produce it.

how does it work out though in terms of gains through the efficiency of the generation process, vs. losses in terms of transmission loss and vehicle efficiency?

magicbastarder

i know the plural of anecdote is not data, but it's been interesting to see how a colleague of mine has fared; we work in sandyford, and about eight years ago, himself and his wife moved to a town in north wexford (they don't have any connection with the town they live near, but his wife is from wexford town). he's able to work from home maybe two days a week, but that still means he's doing 550km a week in the car just getting to work. plus, as it's a common story, he bought a badly built one off house which he's had to spend tens of thousands on in a bid to rectify the shoddy building standards, and it's only 11 years old. and he too complains about the quality of broadband.

it's clear that him moving down the country has created a much bigger load on infrastructure; he doesn't pay any more for the fact that his 'draw' on roads is much higher than normal (he doesn't pass any tolls), nor for example that he is a much greater cost to eircom because he's chosen to live miles from the nearest small exchange, but still has engineers out every so often to fix what can't be fixed without very expensive intervention. so he's driving prices up for everyone else.

bk

Qualitymark wrote: »

Not a lot better in terms of carbon footprint, though. Electricity mostly requires the burning of fossil fuels to produce it.

magicbastarder wrote: »

how does it work out though in terms of gains through the efficiency of the generation process, vs. losses in terms of transmission loss and vehicle efficiency?

Slightly off topic, but EV's are MUCH better environmentally then petrol/diesel.

Ireland already generates 25% of it's electricity from renewables, with that expected to climb to 40% in the next 4 years. 50% is generated by relatively clean gas.

Even when you use dirty coal, EV's are still significantly better then petrol/diesel, due to coal plants being vastly more efficient then petrol/diesel engines and relatively little loss in electricity transmission and electric motor efficiency.

BTW that ignores the significant amount of electricity it takes to refine petrol/diesel in the first place.

As a result, on the Irish power grid, EV's produce about 1/3rd the CO2 (and zero NOX at the tailpipe) versus even small efficient petrol/diesels.

questionmark?

bk wrote: »

Until we outright ban the building of rural houses outside of towns and villages and put the real cost of rural living on these sort of people, then it simply won't stop and it is likely to get worse with EV's

You say that but often this isn't even possible to do. There is a village in Tipp that I'm familiar with that has about 5 differant sites within its boundaries with the potential for circa 80+ houses. During the boom the county council bought these as part of their long term planning will at some stage build social housing there but it wont be anytime soon so the local farmer still uses them for his horses. Anybody else that wants to build a house has had to do so outside the village as their is no available sites within the boundaries of the village.

magicbastarder

also - you regularly hear of people applying for PP to build a house on a half acre on the family farm, because they want to live near their parents.

how many people actually *genuinely* want to live next door to their parents? are they just weird or gaming the system? they're doing it because they already own the land; that's the be all and end all of it.

questionmark?

questionmark? wrote: »

You say that but often this isn't even possible to do. There is a village in Tipp that I'm familiar with that has about 5 differant sites within its boundaries with the potential for circa 80+ houses. During the boom the county council who as part of their long term planning will at some stage build social housing there but it wont be anytime soon so the local farmer still uses them for his horses. Anybody else that wants to build a house has had to do so outside the village as their is no available sites within the boundaries of the village.

This is where proper planning regulation needs to be enforced, to stop pointless one-offs in the countryside and also to prevent landowners in villages from blocking such development. In this case it sounds more like no one will buy the land as they have to comply with the social housing requirement. There's no money in developing rural sites at the moment(depending on location of course).

Charles Babbage

questionmark? wrote: »

You say that but often this isn't even possible to do. There is a village in Tipp that I'm familiar with that has about 5 differant sites within its boundaries with the potential for circa 80+ houses. During the boom the county council bought these as part of their long term planning will at some stage build social housing there but it wont be anytime soon so the local farmer still uses them for his horses. Anybody else that wants to build a house has had to do so outside the village as their is no available sites within the boundaries of the village.

This is exactly the problem. If county councils were proactive in acquiring land, servicing it and making sites available contingent to villages then one push factor would be removed without causing problems for anyone.

how many people actually *genuinely* want to live next door to their parents? are they just weird or gaming the system? they're doing it because they already own the land; that's the be all and end all of it.

Of course people want to live near their parents. What is weird about that? Are families weird now? Many urban families as well as rural ones use grandparents for childcare and everyone wants to be near elderly parents to provide support.

And of course people who already own land, do not wish to buy land at great cost from someone else. Who does wish to buy something they already have.

FrStone

murphaph wrote: »

Rural does not automatically mean "one-off" as so many posters here seem to think).

It's fairly obvious you are a city slicker. Most people who live in rural areas would consider that living in the village is vastly more urban than living in a one off house.

Also I still don't understand why everyone is comparing or road network to the UK or to Germany, as Mary Harney wisely said Ireland is closer to Boston to Berlin.

Also the idea that one off hosting has an effect on roads is biz are, most of the road have been there since the famine they will need to be maintained anyway, you might as well have someone living alongside then.

murphaph

questionmark? wrote: »

You say that but often this isn't even possible to do. There is a village in Tipp that I'm familiar with that has about 5 differant sites within its boundaries with the potential for circa 80+ houses. During the boom the county council bought these as part of their long term planning will at some stage build social housing there but it wont be anytime soon so the local farmer still uses them for his horses. Anybody else that wants to build a house has had to do so outside the village as their is no available sites within the boundaries of the village.

The proposals being discussed here go way beyond whatever North or South Tipp council do in one particular village. Your story is no reason not to push ahead with introducing proper planning control (outright ban) on one off housing. We're discussing large scale reform of building regulations and so on-zoning around villages would have to be part of the reforms. The councils will ultimately do what they are told to do by central government.

Pick a random spot on google maps and tell me that all those one offs outside village boundaries had to go there

n97 mini

magicbastarder wrote: »

how many people actually *genuinely* want to live next door to their parents?

What happens is the site is "free", so 100% of the funds can go into the house, and so we end up with McMansions.

Up until recently there was no stamp duty on self builds, only on the purchase of sites. You will find a lot of parents still own the sites their sons or daughters built on, meaning there was no stamp duty paid on the house or the site, which only fuelled the McMansion phenomenon further.

magicbastarder

Charles Babbage wrote: »

Of course people want to live near their parents. What is weird about that? Are families weird now. Many urban families as well as rural ones use grandparents for childcare and everyone wants to be near elderly parents to provide support.

there was a certain element of tongue in cheek to my comment - but you do not have to live next to your parents to avail of family childcare, unless you've already taken as axiomatic that houses can't be built in any sort of density.

my brother and sister both use my parents for childminding. but they did not have to build houses next door to them?

Charles Babbage

magicbastarder wrote: »

there was a certain element of tongue in cheek to my comment - but you do not have to live next to your parents to avail of family childcare, unless you've already taken as axiomatic that houses can't be built in any sort of density.

my brother and sister both use my parents for childminding. but they did not have to build houses next door to them?

If you live next door you don't have to use one of those nasty cars to bring the kids to the granny.

magicbastarder

Charles Babbage wrote: »

If you live next door you don't have to use one of those nasty cars to bring the kids to the granny.

Again, your argument makes sense if you assume there's no alternative to building houses at a rate of 200m per roadway.

Charles Babbage

magicbastarder wrote: »

Again, your argument makes sense if you assume there's no alternative to building houses at a rate of 200m per roadway.

If you build the house next to parents it would only be 20m away.

murphaph

FrStone wrote: »

It's fairly obvious you are a city slicker. Most people who live in rural areas would consider that living in the village is vastly more urban than living in a one off house.

Who lives the rural way of life, the vet living in the village making callouts to farmers or the IT professional (I'm one, just so nobody thinks I'm having a go at them!) living in a one off house, commuting 50 miles into a city each day for work??

FrStone wrote: »

Also I still don't understand why everyone is comparing or road network to the UK or to Germany, as Mary Harney wisely said Ireland is closer to Boston to Berlin.

Comparisons to our nearest island neighbour are inappropriate but comparisons with the United States aren't?? Weird.

FrStone wrote: »

Also the idea that one off hosting has an effect on roads is biz are, most of the road have been there since the famine they will need to be maintained anyway, you might as well have someone living alongside then.

You have no grasp of the problem at hand when you come out with this sort of reasoning. The roads are the same but they are supporting motorised traffic weighing several tonnes. The motor car didn't even exist during the famine. The roads are being asked to deliver far far more than they were 150 years ago. The roads 150 years ago were not even metaled for the most part.

n97 mini

Charles Babbage wrote: »

If you build the house next to parents it would only be 20m away.

How many people have built houses within 20m of their parents' house? If that was a condition of planning we would have less of an issue.

n97 mini

murphaph wrote: »

You have no grasp of the problem at hand when you come out with this sort of reasoning. The roads are the same but they are supporting motorised traffic weighing several tonnes. The motor car didn't even exist during the famine. The roads are being asked to deliver far far more than they were 150 years ago. The roads 150 years ago were not even metaled for the most part.

Additionally if no-one is living on the road, and it's not an essential access road, there is some hope of turning it over to farmland, and getting it off the council's maintenance books.

questionmark?

murphaph wrote: »

The proposals being discussed here go way beyond whatever North or South Tipp council do in one particular village. Your story is no reason not to push ahead with introducing proper planning control (outright ban) on one off housing. We're discussing large scale reform of building regulations and so on-zoning around villages would have to be part of the reforms. The councils will ultimately do what they are told to do by central government.

Pick a random spot on google maps and tell me that all those one offs outside village boundaries had to go there

Could you be any more condescending if you tried.

I gave an example of a problem that is no doubt replicated around the country. It's not the only issue but it's one of them.

end of the road

Qualitymark wrote: »

One solution would be to actually funnel road tax into the roads, and put no other money into them. Road tax currently is a carbon tax, which pays for the pollution caused by the use of the car. But if the cost of keeping the roads was added to this, the tax would rise enormously.

The question is: who's bullying whom? Those who think it's more sensible to have a population that mainly cycles and uses public transport, or those who think their right to drive, pollute and have their roads paid for supersedes all others' rights?

to me public transport is a lot more important then cycling. personally i believe cycling should stick to the few greenways so that public transport can run without having to share road space with cyclists

Charles Babbage

Murphaph wrote:

Who lives the rural way of life, the vet living in the village making callouts to farmers or the IT professional (I'm one, just so nobody thinks I'm having a go at them!) living in a one off house, commuting 50 miles into a city each day for work??

Some people define their life as their social relations, not as their employment. But you probably think that weird.

n97 mini wrote: »

How many people have built houses within 20m of their parents' house? If that was a condition of planning we would have less of an issue.

I certainly know some. And 20m is particularly short, but I certainly know of situations where houses are close by and grandchildren walk back and forth to their grandparents house several times a day. This is not the D15 resident that builds in Cavan as far from anyone as possible and who has no social contacts locally. Yet in order to aim at the latter you prevent the former.

bk

bk wrote: »

But that is exactly the problem, many people seem to be quiet happy to commute 100km+ a day from their rural one off McMansion into their office job in the city.

Working in IT in Dublin I know many people who do exactly that and it is madness IMO.

I don't believe it is environmentally healthy, economically healthy, socially healthy or personally healthy.

Until we outright ban the building of rural houses outside of towns and villages and put the real cost of rural living on these sort of people, then it simply won't stop and it is likely to get worse with EV's

I'm not sure that they’re "quite happy" to commute such distances, rather that they were well paid enough to be able to afford to do so. Often they had the choice of either buying a small house near Dublin or buying a site and building for less out in the sticks.

It's the high cost of living in Dublin that has caused a lot of the rural housing to be built the way it has.

end of the road

bk wrote: »

We then need to gradually have people, with the exception of farmers, pay for the true cost of delivering services in rural Ireland.

no, we won't be paying any more for our entitlements. why should farmers be exempt.

bk wrote: »

Increase the cost of electricity to match the true cost of delivering it in rural Ireland.

no, we won't pay it. we pay enough for our electricity and any attempt to screw us will be met and stopped using all means necessary.

bk wrote: »

Yes, it is already more then urban, but it still doesn't reflect the true cost, it is currently capped and still subsidised by the urban rates.

don't care, i pay for the service and i pay enough for it.

bk wrote: »

Increase the cost of broadband and phone services to match the true cost

again, we won't be paying. we pay for the costs and pay enough.

bk wrote: »

thus decrease the cost in urban areas.

why should they have their costs decreased? were not being screwed so urban areas can get even cheeper services. we get screwed enough as it is

bk wrote: »

Eir has already made just such a request to Comreg, to allow them to split urban prices from rural prices and charge more for rural while charging less for urban, to reflect the reality of delivering such services.

what reality. hopefully if this request is met people will change to other providers and send a message that if you try screw us we will leave. and then when others try the same tac something is sorted so we won't be screwed so others can get cheeper.

bk wrote: »

Return local roads to the ownership of the homes along the road and let them pay for those roads maintenance.

were not paying ourselves for the maintenence. we pay taxes for it all ready. force us to pay and we will have to campain for grants and subsidies to do it.

bk wrote: »

should probably charge more for rural homes to reflect the higher cost of delivering services to them.

no, were not paying more to reflect some nonsense true cost of delivering services. we pay taxes so are entitled to services. if you want us to pay the true costs then you have to give us a separate subsidy to do it. a rural services subsidy.

bk wrote: »

If you think about it, really no different to how we charge more motor tax on more polluting cars to discourage them.

you can replace or buy a different car. your ideas are just bully boy and social engineering nonsense that will rightly be faught.

bk wrote: »

Rural one-off houses have far more negative impact on the environment

debatible.

bk wrote: »

so they too should be charged more to discourage them.

no, nobody has the right to discourage anyone from living in such houses. such an idea is bully boy and has no place. bann future building of such houses if you like but us existing dwellers will not be bullied

Charles Babbage

Deleted User wrote: »

It's the high cost of living in Dublin that has caused a lot of the rural housing to be built the way it has.

This is the issue.

The inflation of site value in urban areas of all sorts creates a push factor. Any realistic, as distinct from punitive, additional charge for roads in rural areas will be a good deal less than the saving in the cost of the house.

The policies proposed here would mean that some farmer on the outskirts of a village would become a multimillionaire, while his neighbour 100m down the road could not even give his children a site, instead they would be forced to buy a site from the millionaire. This kind of arbitrary enrichment of one citizen and the impoverishment of others by public policy does not down well with many people,

The entire structure of Irish property is bollix and one off housing is only one manifestation of that.

end of the road

murphaph wrote: »

21st century Ireland has a budget like 1930s Ireland. Spending it maintaining long essentially private driveways means other essential services suffer and your fellow citizens go without these services.

not spending the money still means the same thing. i'm not sure you realize how things work in this country

murphaph wrote: »

As Ireland urbanises, the political will to hand over charge of local roads to the residents along them will increase.

it can increase away, but there will be people like myself willing to fight it at whatever cost. i certainly won't be paying any more. if the urban lot don't like it so be it.

Deleted User wrote: »

Is I posted earlier, this is a problem that will resolve itself when fuel becomes too expensive for people to live far away from work & services, rural areas will depopulate as we realise that our lifestyle is unsustainable and future generations simply won't set up home in the countryside.

Don't forget that there are many small towns in the west that are dying on their feet as there are simply no jobs to be had, so this isn't simply a one-offs issue, it's a trend for urbanisation that is evolving and will end up with most of the population in a few cities and a sparse agricultural/specialised workforce living close to work. Just like it was a century ago before mass private transport was available.

It will probably take another century for this process to complete, but it will happen unless someone develops an energy source that can allow the current way of living to continue in a sustainable way.

fine, let it happen naturally then. rather then implementing bully boy tactics and screwing people over with ridiculous charges that they cannot afford to (and rightly) won't pay

murphaph wrote: »

Sometimes I think the real issue here is money and that farmers in rural Ireland want to continue to be able to sell off plots of building land for tidy sums.

whats wrong with that? they want to make a few quid. good old market forces

magicbastarder wrote: »

he is a much greater cost to eircom because he's chosen to live miles from the nearest small exchange, but still has engineers out every so often to fix what can't be fixed without very expensive intervention. so he's driving prices up for everyone else.

he isn't driving prices up for everyone else. prices would be rising anyway. if you think prices would stay the same if he and all the rest moved in to the cities i'm not sure you realize how business actually works

FrStone

murphaph wrote: »

Who lives the rural way of life, the vet living in the village making callouts to farmers or the IT professional (I'm one, just so nobody thinks I'm having a go at them!) living in a one off house, commuting 50 miles into a city each day for work??

A very good question, but if you think about it the vet does not live the rural life as he actually lives in the suburban village.

As a professional (not in IT) who commutes about 12km each day into the city (from a rural area), I would say the professional most likely lives the rural life. My house and acre of garden are completely private - I can do what I like without thinking about it. If I want to have a loud party - that's no hassle.

However despite where I work, I am very much part of the local community. I attend the local stations, I'm part of our community group who take charge of the upkeep of our area. I attend our local joint policing committee, I'm part of the Neighbourhood Alert Area.

I may not work locally but I am very much part of our community living a rural lifestyle. I'm spending tomorrow help a neighbour plant trees in a small patch of forestry he owns (as are most of my neighbours).

Reversely you could ask the question, who lives the urban life - the professional commuting into the city every day, or the vet commuting from the city to farms in the hinterland?

I work 9-5 in the city but have no real connection with it...

murphaph wrote: »

Comparisons to our nearest island neighbour are inappropriate but comparisons with the United States aren't?? Weird.

Not really, the UK has had a disastrous housing policy which proves it doesn't work. Most dual income households are priced out of living in London.

The road system is also a bit of a disaster, just wait till the summer and we will hear about all the jams on the motorway as they try and go on holiday.

It also just doesn't make sense to look to them, they have much less road per head of population - whether you like it or not we have substantially more and will continue to have.

murphaph wrote: »

You have no grasp of the problem at hand when you come out with this sort of reasoning. The roads are the same but they are supporting motorised traffic weighing several tonnes. The motor car didn't even exist during the famine. The roads are being asked to deliver far far more than they were 150 years ago. The roads 150 years ago were not even metaled for the most part.

It doesn't matter - most of the roads are built and have to be maintained to deal with todays traffic.

There are very few small boreens that are only used by residents left in rural areas. Where they do exist the council will only slap a bit of tarmac over potholes every few years at minimum cost.

If I could take the road I live in into private ownership it would be great. If the community could pay for the upkeep it would be maintained to a much higher degree than it currently is. We could also prevent access for residents. However despite living in a rural area, the road I'm located on is used to get to the next village, so it is unlikely we could ever take it into private ownership.

The only subsidy I ever got for living in the country side was broadband and I'd have much preferred if I had the option to pay for that in full myself - then I'd have gotten it in a timely fashion.

Electricity was always passing alongside my road, as was the phoneline. I have my own well and septic tank.

Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage wrote: »

This is the issue.

The inflation of site value in urban areas of all sorts creates a push factor. Any realistic, as distinct from punitive, additional charge for roads in rural areas will be a good deal less than the saving in the cost of the house.

The policies proposed here would mean that some farmer on the outskirts of a village would become a multimillionaire, while his neighbour 100m down the road could not even give his children a site, instead they would be forced to buy a site from the millionaire. This kind of arbitrary enrichment of one citizen and the impoverishment of others by public policy does not down well with many people,

The entire structure of Irish property is bollix and one off housing is only one manifestation of that.

Sort out the urban housing and few will want to live out in the countryside, the issue of the "multimillionaire" is easily solved by refusing to buy the land at an inflated price or compulsory purchase it. The neighbouring farmer's children can then live in the village without being crippled by extortionate site prices.

end of the road

end of the road wrote: »

bk wrote: »

Rural one-off houses have far more negative impact on the environment, so they too should be charged more to discourage them.

debatible.

Going well OT but all human "terraforming" of the planet is detrimental to the environment, always has been and always will be!

Charles Babbage

Deleted User wrote: »

Sort out the urban housing and few will want to live out in the countryside, the issue of the "multimillionaire" is easily solved by refusing to buy the land at an inflated price or compulsory purchase it. The neighbouring farmer's children can then live in the village without being crippled by extortionate site prices.

As I said if councils could compulsory purchase land close to villages, without having to pay an enormous price for it, and then make sites available where individuals or small local builders could build houses than the push factor would be greatly reduced. This would make an restrictions on houses elsewhere easier to implement.

IngazZagni

Such negativity. There is no simple solution. Perhaps a french style toll system? Oh great where it takes a 100 euro to get from one side of the country to the other. God help those that do it regularly. Where the motorways around Paris make the M50 look like one of the best roads in the world.

Or Spain? A fantastic road network rivalling any country in Europe. Flawless roads even in rural areas. One problem. most of the authorities are bankrupt and some of those responsible are in jail for corruption.

Public transport is not always the solution. I once lived in Amsterdam. Perhaps one of the best public transport systems there is. But what about people like me who often had to go to work at 4am? That's right I had to drive. Not everyone works nice 9-5 jobs.

Any solution needs to work for everyone, not just one that suits you and your family. That means improving roads and public transport without bankrupting the country. Not easy.