Dublin ranked as second worst city in the world for traveling by car

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121625993#Comment_121625993

So if you had to go from Blanch to Stillorgan at peak rush hour, you'd be faster by bus? Door to door.

You could be a 5 or 10 minute walk from the bus stop. Then wait 5 minutes for the bus if you're lucky.

Then get off the bus in Stillorgan. Walk another 5 to 10 minutes to your actual destination.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121625453#Comment_121625453

That's not my experience and I travel at peak times.

Every second tram starts at Sandyford and they have lots of room.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121626048#Comment_121626048

I got it the night of the riots and it was jam packed, but that may have been cos of the riots.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121626031#Comment_121626031

No, not unless there is a bad accident on the M50 (not exactly uncommon).

But this is a particularly difficult route with an obvious alternative motorway. It's not typical of an average journey. Basically any route into the city centre will be faster by public transport. Some cross city routes will also be faster depending on transfers.

The majority of journeys people take in rush hour are quicker by public transport. One suspects this is why far more people cross the canals by public transport than by car.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121625985#Comment_121625985

That certainly isn't true where I live. Because of a good quality bus lane and very frequent service, it is much faster to get the bus into town then drive. Easily half the time.

It is very noticeable how on week days, our car park if full, pretty much everyone takes the bus. Most people only use their cars weekends and evenings. But no one in their right mind takes the car into town (plus cost of parking).

Of course that certainly isn't true of every part of Dublin, there are certainly areas without such good service and then the car might be faster, but it certainly isn't true for most areas.

There is a reason why 75 to 80% of people take public transport into the city. And it isn't because they can't afford a car, Dublin is a relatively well off city now, most can afford cars. But if you live somewhere with DART, LUAS or good Bus service, it is almost always faster then being stuck in traffic.

bartkingcole

Congestion charges

Flat rate annual passes for public transport (remove tax reliefs and price it in)

develop a Metro system that does not take decades to build

simplify the planning process.

kids should walk to school.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121626202#Comment_121626202

Well.

That's a good thing so.

The fewer car journeys and more bus journeys, the better.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121626048#Comment_121626048

Is Sandyford station busier now with the new apartments there?

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121625234#Comment_121625234

I'd have to disagree with you there Andy, it was never designed for anything. And councils have made efforts in the last 20 years to cap the cars coming into the city like the introduction of bus and cycle lanes and biggest of all is the limited number of car parking spaces commercial buildings are allowed to have in underground car parks.

The Original building plans for the building I'm in was to go down 2 levels for car parking. DCC said no, cause we don't want cars coming in.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121623330#Comment_121623330

There are times in the last 6 months where I've not been able to get onto the Luas at Trinity. I don't think it's maxed, but its very very busy

Beta Ray Bill

@bartkingcole

Congestion charges

No, they won't work, and business in town will push very hard for them to be extended to the M50 ring.

Like the Port Tunnel is now rammed with cars willing to pay the €10 to get into town, and the expense of Buses like the Swords express which often has to wait to enter the port tunnel as the congestion is so bad.

kids should walk to school.

While this thread is about car traffic I do fully agree with you on this one. The amount of times I get on the DART and its absolutely rammed with kids going to private schools. They have nearly always 2 bags with them for School and Sports, which are thrown all over the carriages. They're a blight on public transport. Schools should only be allowed to accept students from a defined catchment area.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121627388#Comment_121627388

That’s why have the service pattern that we do, with trams in the main alternating between:

• Broombridge-Sandyford
• and
• Parnell-Brides Glen

That ensures that people can get on trams despite heavier loadings from further out.

Hence it is not “at capacity” as in the example above a tram starting at Parnell can sweep passengers up as it’s usually pretty empty behind one starting from Broombridge.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121627432#Comment_121627432

I understand that, but the trade off is frequency the further out you go.

I totally get it, I get the DART every morning and if the DART is coming from Howth its not to bad, if it comes from Malahide its generally more full.

I think they will need to introduce service patterns as you suggested once the Dart is extended further North (Although that kind of exists already with the commuter service)

SharkMX

How come we never get the results of any studies about where we rank for quality public transport for the country? I wonder why alright.

I live 20 mins walk from a train station.

If im going anywhere in the train line i will always get the train. If im going anywhere within 8kms and the weather is ok, i'll cycle. Absolutely anywhere else though and I have to drive. There is a bus but unless you are going along that bus route its no good and takes ages.

The last few months when i get the train to work i cant get a seat either coming in to work or going home. Im almost at the point where im going to start driving again. Sick of standing on the train. Cant even get a seat on the bus in the rush hour but that takes nearly 2 hours to get to work by bus anyway, so i dont bother with the bus anymore.

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121627544#Comment_121627544

C'mere.... It's not pretty reading....

It's mostly about cost and simplicity as opposed to effectiveness and efficiency

https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/climate-crisis/2023/05/04/dublin-is-worst-capital-in-europe-for-public-transport-ticket-pricing-finds-greenpeace/

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121627477#Comment_121627477

That is how you manage the loadings. It is standard practice across public transport networks.

Hence my rebuttal of the other poster’s assertion that the Green Line is “at capacity”. It isn’t.

DART+ includes plans for services starting at different locations.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121627575#Comment_121627575

That report was very flawed.

Anyone can buy a monthly ticket from Dublin Bus head office or any railway station. They’re not restricted solely to the taxsaver scheme.

The report didn’t rate the fare capping that automatically applies using LEAP at all in coming up with the ratings, despite that being the cheapest option.

They insisted on only rating monthly ticket prices That’s bonkers.

It therefore produced totally skewed results.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121628075#Comment_121628075

It was the opposite, they actually took the weekly cap rather then the monthly ticket:

Dublin has an electronic ticketing system, it acknowledges, with weekly payments recently capped at €32. Greenpeace has taken this price as the basis for the ranking, in the absence of a monthly ticket. Nevertheless, the regular price is the second-highest out of all cities analysed, it says – with €3.16 per day after the price level adjustment

So best case scenario, we were second highest. If they took the monthly ticket it would have been even worse.

Monthly multi mode ticket (without tax saver): €155

Leap Weekly multi mode capping: €32 x 4 = €128

Sure with taxsaver at the highest rate of tax, it drops to €80

But all of these are pretty poor value. By comparison others have mentioned Vienna has unlimited annual travel for just €365 or €30 per month with no messing about with taxsaver nonsense.

For most people who are just commuting into and out of work every day, the €2 90 minute ticket is the best value. But that still ends up at like €4 per day which 4 times Vienna daily price!

The €2 90 minute ticket (and €1 versions) has been a great success. But taxsaver and monthly tickets is bascially broken and badly needs to be overhauled.

Also lets be honest, anyone who has travelled around Europe will know that Dublin's public transport is far worse then most European cities. It isn't even in the same league as cities with multiple Metro lines and wide tram networks.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121628166#Comment_121628166

I think you’re not quite getting my point.

The report was rating cities on two fronts - the ease of availability of monthly tickets and then the prices.

The problem with the Dublin rating stems from the first of these.

If you go into the study, you’ll see that they applied a zero rating for the lack of a monthly ticket (which is wrong), which pushed Dublin right down the ratings, as they applied a very large score to that particular point.

But even worse was that the study didn’t accept substituting the monthly ticket with the automatic LEAP caps for rating purposes of availability of a monthly ticket option means they are very skewed results.

The LEAP caps should have meant a full score of 20 on that front but they awarded a score of zero.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121628188#Comment_121628188

I'll have to dig into the report, but according to the article they did substitute the weekly capping for the monthly ticket.

Either way would it honestly made a real difference to the outcome?

The monthly tickets are terrible value for money and hard to get too, honestly I don't think having to go all the way to Dublin Bus HQ or a railway station to buy one is at all acceptable or really accessible.

Lets be honest, the monthly/annual tickets are really only for taxsaver folks, but only really worth it if you are on the higher rate of tax and many employers don't offer it.

So while you are technically correct, it is available, Greenpeace are correct that it might as well not exist.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121628287#Comment_121628287

Again the report was rating cities on two levels:

1) Availability of a monthly ticket and discounts for older people and students

2) Value for money

They combined the scores of both categories and came up with the rankings.

You are correct to say that they used the LEAP cap for the second category above, but they gave Dublin a score of zero for the non-availability of a monthly ticket in the first category instead of 60 points (the biggest element of that category - should have said 60 in my previous post). They did correctly rate the availability of discounts for older and younger people.

That meant that the overall ranking was much lower than it should be as there is a monthly multi-mode ticket available from any station or Dublin Bus, and in any case the fact of LEAP automatic capping means that there is effectively a monthly ticket available via the caps and doesn’t require you to go to a station/office to get it, as it’s automatic.

The value for money issue is a different point and was correctly assessed.

The devil is in the detail with these things and that report isn’t a completely fair assessment.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121628321#Comment_121628321

So looking at the report, it isn't that they ignored the existence of the monthly ticket. They substituted the weekly capping for it.

However their criteria says they will only award points if the monthly ticket costs €3 or less per day, otherwise they award 0 points for that category. However as the weekly capping works out at €4.57 per day, it thus got zero points in that category:

A country or a city scores full points in the “full-price long-term ticket”

category if there is a long-term ticket for all means of transport costing €1

per day or less in the case of a country, and €0.50 per day or less in the

case of a city. If the price is higher than €7 per day for a country or €3 per

day for a city, no points are awarded in this category. For amounts in

between, a linear scale is applied.

So they did account for it correctly, They just thought it was too expensive, which I'd completely agree with.

LXFlyer

Well I do still think that is misleading to give a zero score on the availability front.

I fully agree that monthly tickets should be priced to give value for money over the price of paying fares individually - what the NTA did by hiking the prices up and saying people could avail of Taxsaver was wrong.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121628451#Comment_121628451

Yes, I was just looking at that and it is all correct per their criteria.

They award 20 points for having a ticket, the first column tiled "Availability of climate or network tickets". They then award 0 points in the next column called "Full-price long-term ticket"

They award 0 points in this column because the price of the monthly ticket is over €3 per day, if you take either the monthly ticket or the weekly capping:

You can see in Annex 2 that they used the €32 weekly capping. That would work out at €4.57 per day. So as per the red highlighted box above you get 0 points for this category.

So no, they didn't ignore the monthly ticket, they actually took the best case scenario by taking the weekly capping instead, which is cheaper then the monthly ticket. But they graded it as still too expensive.

bk

I think this is actually a pretty fair reflection of our ticketing. It is pretty good if you are disabled, elderly or a student. The €2 fare is pretty decent, but the monthly and annual tickets completely suck, aren't fit for purpose and should be scrapped and redone. And they should be available in the Leap app and not having to go all the way to DB HQ, etc.

bk

BTW with regards to Luas, the numbers release today show that in 2023, passenger numbers have returned to the 2019 level or even slightly more.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121627388#Comment_121627388

It is true to say that there have been planning measures for a good few years now to discourage excessive car use, with good reasons too. Less parking means more housing.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2023-11-10/council-slashes-parking-requirements-ushering-in-new-era-of-development-rules/#:~:text=By%20Austin%20Sanders%2C%20Fri.%2C%20Nov.%2010%2C%202023&text=As%20we%20reported%20last%20week,2%20to%20eliminate%20parking%20mandates

Cycle lanes were only provided where space didn't take anything away from vehicular traffic up to about five years ago. So basically, they provided cycle lanes where they weren't needed, and didn't provide them where they were needed.

Podge_irl

A ranking of public transport that focuses almost exclusively on price is utterly stupid anyway. It is an embarrassment of a report.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121630478#Comment_121630478

Sure, it is just one element of public transport, though an important one. But lets be honest, it isn't like Dublin would do well on any other criteria either, the result would be the same. No Metro lines, small tram network, over reliance on buses, only a couple of 24/7 routes, only starting to get EV buses now, no tap to pay. We are WAY behind the rest of Europe.

If anything, the free travel pass is pretty much the only item that we might beat other cities on.

SharkMX

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121628763#Comment_121628763

Quick, better increase the price to decrease demand so they dont have to worry about increasing capacity :)

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121627406#Comment_121627406

Schools accepting from a catchment area only works when there are enough schools in each catchment area.