Cities around the world that are reducing car access

loyatemu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119553381#Comment_119553381

aye, you need a carrot and a stick.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119553365#Comment_119553365

I lived in Blanch for years with family in Clondalkin.

There was no easy way to get from Blanch to Clondalkin without a car. You'd be looking at a bus to city centre and then a bus from city centre to Clondalkin. A few hours of travelling involved.

The family in Clondalkin also have no easy way to get to Liffey valley without a car.

This is the country we live in.

As I said, most people don't want to pay thousands on cars, fuel, insurance, tax, NCT, maintenance. But ultimately people don't want to spend hours on PT to go between areas just a few KM apart

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119553579#Comment_119553579

The Blanchardstown-Clondalkin situation will change when the all day W4 bus route launches hopefully next Spring.

As to your second point, surely the 76 links Clondalkin and Liffey Valley? It actually goes into the shopping centre!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119553643#Comment_119553643

In Ireland, we build houses before the infrastructure, amenities etc are in place. It can take decades for that to happen.

If we fix Blanch/Clondalkin it will already be decades after people moved there.

If we're really serious about reducing cars we'd be looking at building an underground system to efficiently link the city.

Until something like that happens, they're just collecting revenue off of motorists.

Citizen Six

We are looking at an underground system. It's just still decades away.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119554763#Comment_119554763

Metrolink is the nuclear fusion of Irish public transport, its always "just 20 years away"

Citizen Six

I'm just looking forward to being able to travel on it for free, as I'll be old enough to get the travel pass by that stage. 😂

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119554698#Comment_119554698

So the massive (and long overdue) expansion of orbital bus routes that is a main feature of BusConnects will have no impact??

I don’t disagree that it should have happened long before now, but the scale of additional bus services that are planned to launch in the next 18 months is significant and will make travelling around the city much easier.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119553579#Comment_119553579

This doesn't really address the point. You are again taking your specific situation and generalising it to the population at large.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/more-than-half-of-travellers-use-cars-for-journeys-under-2km-1.2303451

One-in-five journeys made by Irish people last year were for distances of less than 2km yet over half of us still use the car for such journeys.

People 100% absolutely do want to be in their cars when they have absolutely no need for it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119557950#Comment_119557950

Weekly shop. Everybody does it. Most live less than a few Kms away from a supermarket.

Very hard to walk home with a family shop though.

Tesco are the only ones that deliver.

People dont want to be in cars. They are necessary.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561351#Comment_119561351

People dont want to be in cars. They are necessary.

This does not remotely track with my experience of people. Hell, when its convenient I will often take the car instead of public transport cause I'm lazy.

A weekly shop is exactly that - weekly. Given the massive preponderance of short distance trips by car it is ridiculous to suggest that they are all for transporting massive amounts of heavy goods.

Seth Brundle

People dont want to be in cars. They are necessary.

I dont believe that people are saying that they are not necessary. They're not necessary for every journey made though! Ireland has become over-dependent on cars. Our planning system to date has encouraged this dependency but we need to change.

Grassey

Square tallaght following suit now. Today they announced removal of free parking.

€1 for 1st 3 hours

€2 per hour after

€30 for 24 hours

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561395#Comment_119561395

I do fully agree. There is way too many cars on the roads and nobody is benefitting from it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561474#Comment_119561474

that seems fair enough. 3 hours is plenty for most shoppers, and most have €1 lying about in change down the side of the seats

if you’re there for 4,5,6 hours then it’s probably an event, a dinner or something, against which €2 an hour is insignificant extra

and people parking longer are probably a sticking the car there while they go to work, and that shouldn’t really be facilitated

seems like a good price structure to me

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561351#Comment_119561351

supervalu deliver too, but i suspect on a much smaller range than tesco.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561474#Comment_119561474

Hurrah! Hopefully if another 2-3 announce the same within the next week or two it'll snowball to the point where it'll be unusual to find free parking

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561394#Comment_119561394

There are other options; https://www.dublininquirer.com/2022/08/31/could-dubliners-do-their-big-shops-on-foot-instead-of-by-car

Why do we make trolleys available only to those who have the shortest journey- to the car park?

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119563093#Comment_119563093

I have thought for a long time that supermarkets, or other enterprises, should look at doing 'shopping boxes' that contain a mix of dry goods, cleaning products, and other long shelf life goods. These would be in various packs, A1 - A9, B1 - B9, etc. that each would contain a mix of products that are generally bought together in weekly or longer amounts. So I could go in and buy box A3, 2 of the J6, and one of N2, all delivered to my home. Now that may account for most of two weeks shopping for me.

This system is already used by the various veggie boxes that some growers use for in season fruit and vegetables. You do not know exactly what will be in the box, but that is OK - you have a fair idea and are not disappointed to find that a few things are ones you do not buy - but you will try them out anyway.

These boxes could be the result of the analysis of what customers buy with their loyalty cards. These boxes could be filled directly in the warehouse and delivered directly to homes, and could well cover 80% of people shopping. Their shopping trips would then be for buying high cost items and high choice items. Also, fewer deliveries would be required to the supermarket if there was a major take up of this idea.

Interesting add-ons could be freebies, or free samples, and other promotion types of items.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119563093#Comment_119563093

There are of course, and I much prefer shopping daily or thereabouts anyway.

But there are oodles of "low hanging fruit" of car use when there isn't even the pretext of the need for it beyond "I don't like public transport" or "I like being in my own car".

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119564565#Comment_119564565

Something like this?

https://twitter.com/pidge/status/1563488020141330437?s=21&t=kO41yuwI2cYS_Ppc8NSPdw

More details on options and sizes in the full thread

dontmindme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119554835#Comment_119554835

Indeed...remember this being said in the 1970s

McGrath5

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119561474#Comment_119561474

The outrage this is causing is bizarre, I’ve said it before but it’s a tiny amount in the overall cost of car ownership.

Grassey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119565876#Comment_119565876

I know.

A number of people I've spoken to are now flat put refusing to go to the square to prove a point... And will drive further to go somewhere with free parking.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119564867#Comment_119564867

That is the veggie box. It works for small scale veggie product selling to a small number of tolerant customers.

What I have in mind would be operated by large supermarkets or online operators like amazon. Essentially a large but limited no of selection boxes would be offered such that a few of those boxes would satisfy 80% of the requirements of 80% of the populations weekly shopping requirements.

If such a service was operating successfully with a significant uptake, it would have an impact of city centre traffic.

Citizen Six

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119566598#Comment_119566598

They are all talk. They won't change their habits over the sake of €1.

cgcsb

I was using public transport in Dublin a lot last week, and I do have to say it really has improved immensely even from 5 years ago. I have been travelling around Europe this year so I have a good idea of what's happening around the continent. Obviously in Dublin we have ongoing issues with staffing and traffic enforcement, which can hopefully be resolved and Dublin is really lacking good rail coverage which will hopefully be addressed in the coming decade, no doubt at great expense and delay.

We tend to do ourselves down a bit but having been travelling around Europe a bit this past year, I think we're catching up, and on some parts of the score card I do think we've surpassed some other European cities that have have good rep in terms of transport.

Earlier in the year I was in Amsterdam and couldn't help but notice how expensive public transport was, much more so than Dublin and fare integration is pretty poor, you can't get a train from the airport say and use the same ticket/smart card fare to transfer to metro, tram or bus.

Also Amsterdam has to take, at times comical, revenue protection steps to protect their high fare system. If you get on a tram you'll find 2 of the 3 doors are exit only, little barriers stop you going in and you have to get on at the centre doors where you are met with person in a mini ticket office on board the tram behind a place glass screen who shouts at you to tag on and tag off or buy a ticket from them. The little portable ticket office takes up about half the carriage, a very inefficient set up. If you get on a bus you have to get on front doors only so the driver can sell u a ticket and watch you tag on.

Berlin is doing really well in terms of PT with their new low fares, and it's a totally open system, they seem to have abolished ticket inspections, probably no point of ticket inspections. On the downside as usual DB, seems simply incapable of having a reasonable maintenance schedule with lines closed for prolonged periods of days and even weeks for what seem to be minor enough. Then when there are spontaneous disruptions they do not tell you whats going on, you just have a really quiet announcement in a bedlam noisy station and if you have to ask someone you're clearly stupid. In Ireland usually there'll be a lad in a high vis getting up on a chair roaring directions at people in the main stations. Perhaps this is more a cultural issue than an infrastructure one.

Italy, a disaster top to bottom, nothing positive to say about it at all. Poorly managed, poor integration and no information. Poor rail coverage, I'd say even worse than Ireland on a per head basis.

France, good system, good integration, reasonable value but intercity fares are very pricey.

Spain in my view is the unsung hero of public transport. Everyone whines about Spanish easy going attitude and honours germanic efficiency but in practice, I see Spain with a modern, reliable, fully integrated, cheap to use system with great coverage across the entire country. The good service I'm sure is partly due to Spain's railways being relatively new compared to the rest of Europe. Nevertheless Spain is my top pick for public transport.

p_haugh

I was in Bordeaux the other week, and overall the public transport was pretty good. Tickets are paper-like, and allow you to reload the same ticket type up to 10 times before needing to be replaced. Works across tram, bus, the ferry service and even their equivalent of Dublin Bikes if you get a certain ticket type. The base ticket type is around €1.70, and gives you 1 hour travel from validation, similar to our 90 minute ticket. Both the trams and buses allow you to board at any door and have validators throughout the vehicle. Obviously they also have an equivalent to the leap card, along with a mobile phone ticket app. Interestingly enough, tickets used via the phone are validated using Bluetooth, not NFC! One thing to note is the airport express service (takes ~30 minutes) from the main station is not all that well integrated on the likes of Google maps etc. and costs around 7 euro. Route 1 also goes from the main station - Airport, and takes around 45-50 minutes, but is significantly cheaper. They're in the process of extending a branch of the A Line Tram to the airport as well, so it will be even better connected. Something I noticed, is that a lot of the branches on the tram network are single line. Surprised that hasn't become a thing for the Luas, as it means cheaper (and potentially more frequently done) extensions to the network.

p_haugh

Some good news for once?

https://twitter.com/JanetPHorner/status/1567520427630632961?t=JCRmQ_Z4mT0cFhoAsjLjUw&s=19

I was passing through this morning and was thinking, even with "college green" closed to private traffic, they can still come along Dame Street as far as the turnaround spot outside Bank Of Ireland. It should really be that private cars shouldn't be allowed past the George's Street junction (or the turn off for Trinity Street to retain access to the car park there).

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119574973#Comment_119574973

Buses in Dublin are great except for two things. 1) too many cars (which had been done to death on this forum) and 2) they don’t take contactless bank cards. I find that a big frustration, hunting around for cash or having to go buy a leap card for visitors (or if I’ve misplaced mine). Almost everywhere around Europe now accepts contactless cards on public transport