JP Morgan Boss Slams Dublin Transport Infrastructure

wordofwarning

zetalambda wrote: »

Relocating from London to Dublin is akin to relocating from Dublin to Waterford.

Do you know that nearly a quarter of the world's aircraft are financed out of Dublin? Do you know the ISE is the number 1 exchange for funds in the world and number 2 for debt? Do you know that there are thousands of lawyers and accountants in Dublin dedicated to supporting firms in the IFSC?

Relocating from London to Dublin is not on par with locating from Dublin to Waterford. Outside of Dublin, there are very few skilled accountants and lawyers. There is a reason why even co-ops tend to have their HQ in Dublin. Dublin has very skilled professionals.

When the banks start moving staff to Dublin. The big four can start moving their Irish trained staff working in London, back to Dublin

Marcusm

Free-2-Flow wrote: »

I have been in Munich and Berlin this year, their public transport makes Ireland looks like it's in the stoneage.

They had a broad clearance of buildings in 1943-45 assisted by Britain which, together with an influx of American money post 1946, greatly aided city planning.

markpb

Marcusm wrote: »

They had a broad clearance of buildings in 1943-45 assisted by Britain which, together with an influx of American money post 1946, greatly aided city planning.

What have we got since we joined the EU?

€44 billion.

Where has most of the development in Dublin been in the time?

Green and brown field sites.

Pete Moss

The problem, in my eyes, comes down to the cyclical incompatibility between our government's tenure and the timeline required to strategically implement an effective overhaul of Dublin's transport, commercial and housing infrastructure.

No one wants to stand over a policy now, which will make future political parties look better. A lot of key decisions in government are based on producing short-term term results.

Not only that, but these decisions seem to domino into pre-existing issues. I mean, take the the national children's hospital being developed on the St James's site for example. Another cock up, and that's been in the pipeline for how long now? They've planted a national hospital in the middle of an already overloaded city with limited parking spaces. Effectively inviting more traffic into an already strained road network.

Then there's the poor execution of these plans. Case and point being the on-going Luas works. That project has been a headache for everyone, large and small businesses, tourists, pedestrians, the pre-existing transport network. Of course we can't have our cake and eat it too. For redevelopment, disruption is necessary. But the scale on which the disruption effects public perception can be managed. I'd bet that a majority of Dubliners would be against further disruption to an overhaul of the city's transport network given how poorly this Luas project has been managed.

murphaph

Marcusm wrote: »

They had a broad clearance of buildings in 1943-45 assisted by Britain which, together with an influx of American money post 1946, greatly aided city planning.

In Berlin's case the underground railways had mostly been built by the outbreak of war and largely destroyed by the end of it. In Munich's case the city wasn't terribly affected by bombing but they only started their underground activities in 1972 in time for the Olympics.

Dublin has no excuse when compared with either city. There's no Marshall aid flowing in Germany today but they are still extending both the Berlin and Munich underground systems as we speak.

Infini

Hollister11 wrote: »

10 minute DARTS were due a year ago, and still aren't here due to driver strikes. That's laughable, a company being held back because the workers aren't happy.

Sack them. It's a pretty good job, there will be plenty of takers.

Actually blaming the drivers is an easy cop out I can tell you though its not simply that the drivers dont agree its the damn INFRASTRUCTURE itself thats seriously underinvested in.

The whole 10min Darts was Franks bright idea of putting the cart before the horse. Case point: Look at the havok the adding of Hazelhatch services has caused on delays.

The real issue is the current PHYSICAL infrastructure just isnt enough. Theres 5 level crossings all within a 2 mile stretch of the line between Lansdowne and Merrion that needs to be dealt with and lets not forget the wholly inadequete Northern Line between Connolly and Howth Jct that needs SERIOUS expansion to a 3 or 4 Track line as well.

And dont get me started on Fine Gael's braindead deferral/cancellation of Dart Underground.

Lets be honest we need SERIOUS and realistic upgrades of the infrastructure theres no point in simply looking for the easiest excuse that something didnt happen when its a far more structural problem than just drivers not agreeing even when they actually have VALID concerns and points about the job THEY work and know how it works and not someone in an office thinking how it works and refusing to listen to people.

end of the road

Hollister11 wrote: »

10 minute DARTS were due a year ago, and still aren't here due to driver strikes. That's laughable, a company being held back because the workers aren't happy.

nope. the actual reason is the current infrastructure cannot support a 10 minute dart frequency without huge downgrades to all other services including longer journey times. in reality increasing the capacity to all 8 car trains is a better option for now. the driver issues will be solved but that won't change the reality that if a 10 minute dart is warrented then the infrastructure to support it will have to be built. even if it was a few loops to start with that might be something.

Hollister11 wrote: »

Sack them. It's a pretty good job, there will be plenty of takers.

can't be done, there are no grounds. the plenty of takers couldn't be trained as there would be nobody to train them because you have got rid of the trainers so no service, never mind a 10 minute one.

n97 mini

Yourself isit wrote: »

Can't see how increasing property taxes in Donegal helps Dublin.

Dublin does need to get all its property taxes and use that revenue to guarantee loans for public transport.

20% of property taxes collected in Dublin go to counties like Donegal as Donegal doesn't raise enough to cover its own costs. But Donegal had the lowest property taxes in the country, Dublin has the highest.

If Donegal contributed more to its own costs it wouldn't need a subsidy from Dublin.

end of the road

n97 mini wrote: »

20% of property taxes collected in Dublin go to counties like Donegal as Donegal doesn't raise enough to cover its own costs. But Donegal had the lowest property taxes in the country, Dublin has the highest.

If Donegal contributed more to its own costs it wouldn't need a subsidy from Dublin.

for that to happen more investment to create jobs in Donegal with better wages would have to happen as currently the people of Donegal can't afford the current rates never mind an increased rate of property tax. no different to most of the country of course.

Anongeneric

Marcusm wrote: »

They had a broad clearance of buildings in 1943-45 assisted by Britain which, together with an influx of American money post 1946, greatly aided city planning.

Best description of German planning I've heard in quite a while.

Cookie_Monster

end of the road wrote: »

for that to happen more investment to create jobs in Donegal with better wages would have to happen as currently the people of Donegal can't afford the current rates never mind an increased rate of property tax. no different to most of the country of course.

How "can people not afford current rate" in Donegal? You got any proof of that statement, or just more waffle?

Free-2-Flow

Marcusm wrote:

They had a broad clearance of buildings in 1943-45 assisted by Britain which, together with an influx of American money post 1946, greatly aided city planning.

I disagree, Munich wasn't affected much by WW2 bombings.
The oldest of buildings are still there and the is an underground right below them.

magicbastarder

end of the road wrote: »

currently the people of Donegal can't afford the current rates never mind an increased rate of property tax.

maybe they should stop building houses in donegal so. gweedore actually made me angry, it was a wasteland of idiotic and badly planned houses. we'd been planning on spending a night or two there but decided not to, and went to ardara instead.

Banjoxed

wordofwarning wrote: »

Relocating from London to Dublin is not on par with locating from Dublin to Waterford.

Yup, it sure is, when you are dealing with essentially bus-based public transport, and with a bus first mentality among civil servants and politicians, who have made long-fingering and sniping at rail-based public transport investment for the last forty years an art form.

nc6000

Infini wrote: »

Actually blaming the drivers is an easy cop out I can tell you though its not simply that the drivers dont agree its the damn INFRASTRUCTURE itself thats seriously underinvested in.

The whole 10min Darts was Franks bright idea of putting the cart before the horse. Case point: Look at the havok the adding of Hazelhatch services has caused on delays.

The real issue is the current PHYSICAL infrastructure just isnt enough. Theres 5 level crossings all within a 2 mile stretch of the line between Lansdowne and Merrion that needs to be dealt with and lets not forget the wholly inadequete Northern Line between Connolly and Howth Jct that needs SERIOUS expansion to a 3 or 4 Track line as well.

And dont get me started on Fine Gael's braindead deferral/cancellation of Dart Underground.

Lets be honest we need SERIOUS and realistic upgrades of the infrastructure theres no point in simply looking for the easiest excuse that something didnt happen when its a far more structural problem than just drivers not agreeing even when they actually have VALID concerns and points about the job THEY work and know how it works and not someone in an office thinking how it works and refusing to listen to people.

With the exception of the Luas and a couple of new stations like Clongriffin and Grand Canal Dock has any infrastructure really been improved since the DART was launched back in 1984?

devnull

Something called the Phoenix Park Tunnel being opened to services?

nc6000

devnull wrote: »

Something called the Phoenix Park Tunnel being opened to services?

Has that not made things worse? I'm sure I've read plenty of people on here complaining about the knock-on effect of that re-opening has had on other commuter lines.

Checkmate19

Nobody expected brexit. Housing is a problem as the banks shut up shop when they got burned. It will work itself out over time. It's not a bad thing the banks are handing out money to everyone. However the goverment should be building house's. But its like everything is the country it will take double the time it should and double the money.

Infini

nc6000 wrote: »

With the exception of the Luas and a couple of new stations like Clongriffin and Grand Canal Dock has any infrastructure really been improved since the DART was launched back in 1984?

We still have a ghost station suffering from no entrance on the kildare line: Kishoge or something thats been sitting there for years fully built but unopened because people screwed up and wont finish the road just like with Hansfield till a few years ago.

The physical infrastructure on the Dart line itself hasnt changed at all for the last 3 decades apart from the addition of clongriffin and GCD.

Dart underground was meant to be the first proper infrastuctural change to the dart but Fine Gael thought a glorified tram is the better option which is stupid when Heavy Rail has extra capacity once the investment is made.

LeinsterDub

nc6000 wrote: »

With the exception of the Luas and a couple of new stations like Clongriffin and Grand Canal Dock has any infrastructure really been improved since the DART was launched back in 1984?

It's a sad state of affairs when the electrification of a train line is one of the high water marks for public transport infrastructure

end of the road

devnull wrote: »

Something called the Phoenix Park Tunnel being opened to services?

to be fair, that was one of those "it was there and should always have been open to passenger services and there was no excuse not to do so" projects.
so not an improvement as such but something that always needed doing and should always have been availible to passengers.

fly_agaric

Pete Moss wrote: »

overloaded city

Not getting into the whole "National Children's Car-park" debate, but reason Dublin is somewhat "overloaded" at the moment is a deliberate lack of investment in its infrastructure by many governments.

To use weasel words, some people have this idea that "starving the beast" will drive the people and jobs outward to small towns/rural areas, but it is not going to work. The world is urbanising, and the jobs and investment could go to Cork/Galway if we are lucky but more likely they will end up in a larger city (on Dublin/Belfast's scale) in a different country!

zetalambda

Yourself isit wrote: »

Frankfurt's population is 700,000. Neither Paris nor Frankfurt are English speaking.

730,000 in the city with 2.3 million in the urban area and 5.8 million the the frankfurt rhine metro area. Language isn't an issue if whole departments are moving.

So if we're to compare like with like Dublin city has a population of 495,000 with 1.35 million in the urban area and 1.6 million in the greater Dublin/Leinster area.

Frankfurt feels about 100 times larger than Dublin:

wordofwarning wrote: »

Do you know that nearly a quarter of the world's aircraft are financed out of Dublin? Do you know the ISE is the number 1 exchange for funds in the world and number 2 for debt? Do you know that there are thousands of lawyers and accountants in Dublin dedicated to supporting firms in the IFSC?

Relocating from London to Dublin is not on par with locating from Dublin to Waterford. Outside of Dublin, there are very few skilled accountants and lawyers. There is a reason why even co-ops tend to have their HQ in Dublin. Dublin has very skilled professionals.

When the banks start moving staff to Dublin. The big four can start moving their Irish trained staff working in London, back to Dublin

Yes, I know Ireland is a tax haven and in 2016, not one new company was listed on the ISE. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and all the other foreign companies that have established their EMEA HQ's here did it for one reason and it wasn't because of our skilled professionals!

trellheim

dont forget also we did actually build a ton of reasonably decent interurban motorways which had a semi-undesired effect of making people move far out, and in GDA are now mainly used as commuter runs - the jobs did not move with them though and neither did the Public transport infra to move them ( and I include the bus and train incumbents in that ) hence M50 and M7/m9 crowding

There is limited industry Cork - Biopharm is well set up down there but serious nexus areas of available and mobile professionals in law and IT and a host of other high skill KWs - its going to be Dublin every time unless you are specialized, and in an area that wants that speciality

The tax haven nature of the IFSC and just the volume of work, dictates Dublin

Now, compare to Birmingham or Manchester in UK - good transport links - plenty of jobs, plenty of large amounts of employers

n97 mini

end of the road wrote: »

for that to happen more investment to create jobs in Donegal with better wages would have to happen as currently the people of Donegal can't afford the current rates never mind an increased rate of property tax. no different to most of the country of course.

That's a blanket statement and largely untrue. Public sector workers in Donegal get paid the same as public sector workers in Dublin. Staff working for Tesco, Lidl, etc, all get the same wages. Same with ESB, eircom, An Post, etc.

The only difference would be the very high end jobs, which make up a tiny fraction of jobs in Dublin.

Ability to pay is not taken into account with property tax either. Why should a solicitor in Donegal pay less LPT on his rural mansion than a newly qualified teacher in Dublin does on their 1 bed apartment in Sandyford.

Banjoxed

LeinsterDub wrote: »

It's a sad state of affairs when the electrification of a train line is one of the high water marks for public transport infrastructure

And, by Jasus, it sure was grudged at the time. "White Elephant" was bandied about, a lot, by plenty of folks not a million miles away from the Sunday Independent, UCD and TCD. Garret waded in, saying that seeing as most development was four-houses-to-an-acre in the 'burbs, bus was better value and that he wouldn't have authorised DART if he had been Taoiseach in 1979.

If you seek a monument to why Ireland won't get an almighty bonus from Brexit, look no further than that.

BlinkingLights

Yourself isit wrote: »

Frankfurt's population is 700,000. Neither Paris nor Frankfurt are English speaking.

Selective stats there. Frankfurt metropolitan area is 5.8 million. City limits don't define it very well.

I find Dublin tends to include the entire Pale in its calculations when it's trying to big-up itself.

The reality is you can literally see the countryside in central Dublin. That's no bad thing but we need to get past this ridiculous thing of trying to underestimate the size of large metro areas abroad and inflate our own. It does nothing to help realistic debate. It does not realistically take in Kildare, Meath etc etc as is often claimed. Those are not areas you would throw into a metropolitan area calculation. At that rate Cork is over half million as you could claim the entire county on that basis.

You've one metro area of about 1.3 to 1.5 million and another of about 270,000 - 300,000 at a push. The other 3 cities are very small and the rest are small towns with scattered hinterlands.

Dublin is comparable to Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Raleigh, Providence, Perth (Aus), Ottawa, Glasgow etc.

Cork compares quite closely with say Reykjavik, Bergen, Plymouth and many French smaller cities.

In my opinion the single biggest and most significant difference between irish (and most British) cities and their continental and US counterparts is the total lack of urban autonomous government. When cities' public transport and other infrastructure is a national political football, nothing gets done.

This is why we can't do long term urban planning and why Dublin and Cork have such poor infrastructure. Urban projects need to be run by and have their financing managed by cities themselves.

As soon as you've say a metro project becoming a political issue in a rural area hundreds of km away, it just stops making sense.

Same applies in rural areas, what does a Dublin or Cork city type know about the needs of say someome living in Offaly or Leitrim.

You're getting inappropriate one size fits all approaches from national government and CIE companies (other than Dublin bus).

Public transport should be devolved to city council's / metro authorities and rural transport to county council.

Cities also need executive, accountable mayors and councils.

I'd also advocate, slim, executive mayor setup for smaller towns. Maybe exec mayor and a voluntary council.

lawred2

Yourself isit wrote: »

Frankfurt's population is 700,000. Neither Paris nor Frankfurt are English speaking.

I've lived in Frankfurt. Greater Frankfurt would have a population at least three times that of Greater Dublin.

And it's public transport is enviable.

It's a real city of the world. And the English language is not an obstacle/issue/concern where professional Germans are concerned.

lawred2

BlinkingLights wrote: »

Selective stats there. Frankfurt metropolitan area is 5.8 million. City limits don't define it very well.

I find Dublin tends to include the entire Pale in its calculations when it's trying to big-up itself.

The reality is you can literally see the countryside in central Dublin. That's no bad thing but we need to get past this ridiculous thing of trying to underestimate the size of large metro areas abroad and inflate our own. It does nothing to help realistic debate. It does not realistically take in Kildare, Meath etc etc as is often claimed. Those are not areas you would throw into a metropolitan area calculation. At that rate Cork is over half million as you could claim the entire county on that basis.

You've one metro area of about 1.3 to 1.5 million and another of about 270,000 - 300,000 at a push. The other 3 cities are very small and the rest are small towns with scattered hinterlands.

Dublin is comparable to Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Raleigh, Providence, Perth (Aus), Ottawa, Glasgow etc.

Cork compares quite closely with say Reykjavik, Bergen, Plymouth and many French smaller cities.

In my opinion the single biggest and most significant difference between irish (and most British) cities and their continental and US counterparts is the total lack of urban autonomous government. When cities' public transport and other infrastructure is a national political football, nothing gets done.

This is why we can't do long term urban planning and why Dublin and Cork have such poor infrastructure. Urban projects need to be run by and have their financing managed by cities themselves.

As soon as you've say a metro project becoming a political issue in a rural area hundreds of km away, it just stops making sense.

Same applies in rural areas, what does a Dublin or Cork city type know about the needs of say someome living in Offaly or Leitrim.

You're getting inappropriate one size fits all approaches from national government and CIE companies (other than Dublin bus).

Public transport should be devolved to city council's / metro authorities and rural transport to county council.

Cities also need executive, accountable mayors and councils.

I'd also advocate, slim, executive mayor setup for smaller towns. Maybe exec mayor and a voluntary council.

Generally I agree, transport matters for Dublin and maybe Cork should be devolved for sure but devolving transport to county councils would be ridiculous. It should well be within the remit of a national agency to manage transport matters outside of Dublin and Cork.

BlinkingLights

I would have no major issues with devolving regional transport in counties to councils / groups of councils in very rural areas (Sligo/Leitrim/Roscommon comes to mind)

The issue is more about organisation of routes and planning of services long term than about funding. You could still fund it centrally, but just plan it locally (with a contribution from local funds too).

I don't necessarily think that our county structure is appropriate to start with. I'd prefer that we moved towards having fewer, larger administrative counties with proper accountability and decent scale and systems and just kept the historical ones for the GAA and old time's sake!

I'd preferred to have seen work done on that than the ludicrous notions of merging say Cork City and County Councils which just creates situation where you've a large urban and a large rural areas being slammed together for no reason other than they share the same name. The needs / interests don't match up at all. However, creating a regional authority for West Cork, Kerry and South Limerick might have made sense but, I'm sure there'd be all hell if you suggested such sacrilege !

At the very least we should be looking at linking up the smaller counties like Leitrim, Roscommon, Sligo, Donegal etc into administrative regions and ensuring they've economies of scale for shared services.

Bigger counties like Cork, Dublin, Tipperary, Waterford etc probably function quite well.

I also don't see the logic of having multiple county councils in Dublin. It should be a single metropolitan authority. In fact, that was the most obvious immediate merger and instead it was broken up...

I would see Ireland as maybe being 10 administrative counties at most. I would scrap about half or more of the 28 administrative counties.
The 5 city council are most definitely needed though and I would reintroduce town councils in a different form for all of the towns over 10,000 with small mayoral setup for small towns (possibly mostly voluntary)

There's no reason why the concept of counties couldn't continue to exist for tourism / GAA / historical value, much like Munster, Leinster, Connacht and Ulster do for historical reasons and for sport.

Being locked into an administrative structure that dates back to counts and baronies and other total irrelevancies seems a bit pointless.

Ireland has a situation where we basically have too many local authorities and they serve little or no purpose as they have no power and are effectively run by an appointed administrator (City/County manager) in vague consultation with the council.