The Recovery Has Barely Started And Dublin is at breaking point

smurgen · 27-10-2016 11:12PM

Fratton Fred wrote: »

I'm not saying any one subsidises any one else, all I am saying is that the European head office of the worlds largest company is there, which will skew the GDP figures somewhat.

Somewhat.you're ignorning the wealth of companies in cork. lilly,pfizer,gsk,boston scientific,stryker,tyco,apple,citco,bny,dell,novartis,musgraves,depuy,intel,flextronics...the list goes on. All this with minimal input or help from the government.time fornthe government to start diverting funds away from dublin to other "towns". It may actually help dublin in the future.

tomofson · 28-10-2016 01:24AM

MilesMorales1 wrote: »

And the aggressive junkies and aggressive beggars yes.

For some reason I knew there was going to be some sort of attack on the disadvantaged somewhere in this thread. Well it is boards.ie after all that sort of thing is encouraged.

Macy0161 · 28-10-2016 08:35AM

ChikiChiki wrote: »

These reasons are why the roads are clogged up. Public transport is not connected well enough and forces people into their cars.

Metro west or a luas alongside the M50, with drastically improved and increased Park and Rides and stops linking with the Maynooth and Sligo rail lines? IIRC metro west didn't go as far as Sandyford, which was real miss as far as I'm concerned.

Far from ideal, but double track and electrify the Sligo line as far as Longford. Like I said, far from ideal to be commuting that distance, but people are doing it now (on train and by road), and in the scheme of other large cities like London, that commute wouldn't be that unreasonable - just needs a decent and fast service. Also a large relatively untapped housing stock!

Demand is there for park and rides, once their in the right location. Too often they're too close to the city. Even expanded bus services with secure park and rides would work. Plenty of places on the M11 that have Dublin Bus/ BE bus services, but just don't have parking (or bus capacity) to take anyone who can't just walk to the bus stop. Train Park and Rides are overflowing in the likes of Wicklow Town and Greystones (and again capacity issues).

MeatTwoVeg · 28-10-2016 08:51AM

Macy0161 wrote:

Metro west or a luas alongside the M50, with drastically improved and increased Park and Rides and stops linking with the Maynooth and Sligo rail lines? IIRC metro west didn't go as far as Sandyford, which was real miss as far as I'm concerned.

Macy0161 wrote:

Far from ideal, but double track and electrify the Sligo line as far as Longford. Like I said, far from ideal to be commuting that distance, but people are doing it now (on train and by road), and in the scheme of other large cities like London, that commute wouldn't be that unreasonable - just needs a decent and fast service. Also a large relatively untapped housing stock!

Macy0161 wrote:

Demand is there for park and rides, once their in the right location. Too often they're too close to the city. Even expanded bus services with secure park and rides would work. Plenty of places on the M11 that have Dublin Bus/ BE bus services, but just don't have parking (or bus capacity) to take anyone who can't just walk to the bus stop. Train Park and Rides are overflowing in the likes of Wicklow Town and Greystones (and again capacity issues).

So, where did you study for your transport planning degree?

Fratton Fred · 28-10-2016 09:43AM

smurgen wrote: »

Somewhat.you're ignorning the wealth of companies in cork. lilly,pfizer,gsk,boston scientific,stryker,tyco,apple,citco,bny,dell,novartis,musgraves,depuy,intel,flextronics...the list goes on. All this with minimal input or help from the government.time fornthe government to start diverting funds away from dublin to other "towns". It may actually help dublin in the future.

I'm not ignoring anyone or anything. You should note though, that your figures are based on the income per head, not the total income. Using your figures, Ovens probably has a higher of GDP per head than Cork City.

The simple fact though, is that one third of the country's population live in the Greater Dublin Area, so it is always going to get a higher level of support overall, but the actual spending per head in Dublin is probably lower then it is in other regions though.

Macy0161 · 28-10-2016 09:53AM

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

So, where did you study for your transport planning degree?

If I was going again, I'd love too. Wasn't aware we had to have credentials to post in any forum, never mind an After Hours one?

Most of that is based on my own experiences of trying to find alternatives to the car, which I have done over the years.

I took the last (official) space in the Greystones Park and Ride earlier in the week. There's such demand along the N11 for BE that car parks in the likes of Ashford are Pay and Display/ time limited during weekdays for no other reason than to stop people parking up for the bus.

Andrewf20 · 28-10-2016 09:54AM

Perhaps the city simply needs to move outwards. How about incentives to build business districts outside the m50 in places like saggart, clane, balbriggan, leixlip etc. The hope being that people don't need to go near the city.

Also, I'm suprised those BMW bikes with the side impact bars (are they even still made?) are not more popular. In Vietnams big city's mopeds / small bikes are very effective space wise. Although they don't have a dreary Irish weather to contend with.

MeatTwoVeg · 28-10-2016 09:59AM

Macy0161 wrote:

If I was going again, I'd love too. Wasn't aware we had to have credentials to post in any forum, never mind an After Hours one?

You don't. It just amuses me the amount of people who think they know what solutions will work, in what is an extremely complex field with a huge number of variables.
It takes years of study and probably another 10years relevant post graduate experience to be anyway competent in the field.

Chips Lovell · 28-10-2016 10:02AM

Grayson wrote: »

See, this is the problem. Your solution to a nasty rent crises and increasing costs is to tax poor people more. You mention Scandinavian style services, well they pay more tax. The higher earners especially. You pay no state tax on roughly the first 40k a year. Yet it works because the government there realises that you need a certain amount to survive so they don't tax anyone on that. You get taxed heavily on the surplus.

This is a bit misleading. You pay no national income tax on the first 40K, but you're still liable for municipal income tax, which is, on average, 32%.

We're still a long way off Scandinavian tax levels.

Some commentators point to the “Nordic model” of relatively high taxes and public expenditure as one we should aspire to. To reach Nordic levels of income taxation (including PRSI) everybody in Ireland would have to pay more but the increase would bear most heavily on the bottom half of the income distribution. For example, if the tax rates in Ireland were at the average of the 5 Nordic countries a single person on half average earnings would pay an additional €3,200 per year and a single individual on two and a half times average earnings would pay about €2,000 more.

Macy0161 · 28-10-2016 10:18AM

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

You don't. It just amuses me the amount of people who think they know what solutions will work, in what is an extremely complex field with a huge number of variables.
It takes years of study and probably another 10years relevant post graduate experience to be anyway competent in the field.

But a lot of us are the potential users of the schemes, so our experiences and expectations, must also have some validity?

Everyone has different reasons for living far from work, and I'm willing to accept some of that it personal choice so I have to deal with the consequences.

In theory, I commute on a corridor served well by public transport and cycle lanes (it always comes up as the prime tolling route), but there are big capacity issues on the Public Transport options, and how I get to the locations to access it remains a problem. The most workable alternative to the car for me has turned out to be driving so far and cycling the rest of the way. However, where to leave the car remains a concern and isn't viable for many (if more did it, the result would be more parking restrictions!).

Idbatterim · 28-10-2016 10:21AM

I had to show a colleague how to get to a client yesterday, taking the bus and then walking twenty minutes in Dublin city centre is the best option, as no luas or bus actually make any sense to take, for the second leg of the journey!

Its comedy, all of the those bull**** rural white elephant motorways, that cost a fortune and are overkill, money no object for roads. Look at what has been spent on rail v roads since the boom, I'd love to know the exact figure, but its probably 95%+ on road, about a billion on rail in terms of luas including cross cit and the city centre resignalling project...

MeatTwoVeg · 28-10-2016 10:31AM

Idbatterim wrote:

Its comedy, all of the those bull**** rural white elephant motorways, that cost a fortune and are overkill, money no object for roads. .

Our motorway network is one of the few legacies of the boom we didn't piss away.
Despite paying the highest land acquisition costs in Europe (we created 100's of millionaires in the agricultural sector), our motorways were delivered for a lower cost per km than the EU average.
Well done the Construction private sector.

We'll have this asset for decades more.

We should certainty continue to invest in urban rail projects, but intercity rail really is a white elephant. It's slower, more costly, less efficient and more polluting than transporting the equivalent numbers by bus.
I'd disband IE, rip up the rail lines and replace them with greenways.
We'd save billions.

Fratton Fred · 28-10-2016 10:38AM

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

We should certainty continue to invest in urban rail projects, but intercity rail really is a white elephant. It's slower, more costly, less efficient and more polluting than transporting the equivalent numbers by bus.
I'd disband IE, rip up the rail lines and replace them with greenways.
We'd save billions.

Rail is the future. A bus will only ever be able to travel at 100kmh, rail is almost unlimited.

Arklow to Dublin is about 70k from Dublin and currently takes nearly two hours by train. A decent high speed line would do this in under 45 minutes. This suddenly makes Arklow a commuter town and means 90% of the people who do the journey at the moment, would stop using their cars.

MeatTwoVeg · 28-10-2016 11:26AM

Fratton Fred wrote:

Arklow to Dublin is about 70k from Dublin and currently takes nearly two hours by train. A decent high speed line would do this in under 45 minutes. .

You want to invest billions of euro to beat the time a bus can do the journey in by a few minutes?

Mmkay.

Fratton Fred · 28-10-2016 11:33AM

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

You want to invest billions of euro to beat the time a bus can do the journey in by a few minutes?

Mmkay.

At some point, if this country is to progress, it needs a decent rail system. Otherwise, Dublin will just keep growing and the rural areas will just get more detached.

people should be able to live anywhere within 50 to 100km of Dublin and have the realistic possibility of commuting in to the city other than by car.

taking a two lane road and turning one of the lanes in to a "Lana Bus" isn't investing in public transport, which seems to have the governments policy up until now.

DonalK1981 · 28-10-2016 11:53AM

Pinch Flat wrote: »

Years of underinvestment has got us where we are. We underinvest in virtually everything - public infrastructure, health, education, social services. The evidence is all around for us to see.

Not TD salaries though...

ChikiChiki · 28-10-2016 11:55AM

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

You want to invest billions of euro to beat the time a bus can do the journey in by a few minutes?

Mmkay.

Buses are much slower than high speed rail. As they get to Dublin they get caught up in the traffic. Coming from Arklow, the N11 as you get into Dublin does be hectic in the mornings. Loads of traffic lights on it that cause havoc. High speed rail is the way forward. People have lives outside of work and will choose the most efficient methods of transport available to them. If we had high speed rail from Dublin to Cork and Belfast and vice versa it's easily commutable. I know people commuting up to Dublin daily from Thurles and Nenagh, one by car and one by train. As is, it's a nightmare for them.

Ireland is expanding at an enormous rate, there are about 120 jobs posted daily in my field alone at the minute, many of them are actually analysis jobs for UK based firms scoping Dublin. It doesn't look good for them as Dublin is not ready to receive this volume of business and wont be ready for a very long time. Office space, housing and transport are all at breaking point.

We need to invest billions in infrastructure to continue to be competitive.

MeatTwoVeg · 28-10-2016 11:56AM

Fratton Fred wrote:

At some point, if this country is to progress, it needs a decent rail system. Otherwise, Dublin will just keep growing and the rural areas will just get more detached.

So your solution to the problem of Dublin growth is to create more commuter towns?

Terrible idea.

Other areas of the country should be made more attractive for business growth and investment. Motorways have already helped achieve this for a fraction of the capital and operating costs of a rail system.
If we lived in continental Europe. Maybe rail makes more sense.
But a country our size, with our population densities?
Nope.

What we're currently doing with intercity rail is pissing billions away for no good reason.

28-10-2016 12:00PM

Surely one of the ways you make other areas of the country more attractive for development and business growth is providing fast reliable public transport to them?

hmmm · 28-10-2016 12:01PM

As a country we should be glad we have Dublin (I say this as a culchie), which is just about big enough to compete at a European scale. Google/Facebook/Citibank etc. are never going to open up in Castlebar or Kinsale, they want a big city with the supports they need, access to staff, transport links and the type of environment they think will be attractive to global talent.

It's very short sighted to say that the solution to the problem Dublin has is to spend more outside Dublin - we need to be glad we have a cash cow and help it compete. We rarely build pro-active infrastructure - we wait till things are about to break down, build something we should have built 20 years ago, and then clap ourselves oh the back for our foresight in building it.

28-10-2016 12:05PM

hmmm wrote: »

As a country we should be glad we have Dublin (I say this as a culchie), which is just about big enough to compete at a European scale. Google/Facebook/Citibank etc. are never going to open up in Castlebar or Kinsale, they want a big city with the supports they need, access to staff, transport links and the type of environment they think will be attractive to global talent.

It's very short sighted to say that the solution to the problem Dublin has is to spend more outside Dublin - we need to be glad we have a cash cow and help it compete. We rarely build pro-active infrastructure - we wait till things are about to break down, build something we should have built 20 years ago, and then clap ourselves oh the back for our foresight in building it.

Alot of MNCs have set up in Cork, and fast links to Dublin are needed. Rail and Road should be upgraded, and houses/apartments need to be built, and Cork needs a Luas(A Cluas?) ASAP.

SEPT 23 1989 · 28-10-2016 12:06PM

Fratton Fred wrote: »

At some point, if this country is to progress, it needs a decent rail system. Otherwise, Dublin will just keep growing and the rural areas will just get more detached.

people should be able to live anywhere within 50 to 100km of Dublin and have the realistic possibility of commuting in to the city other than by car.

taking a two lane road and turning one of the lanes in to a "Lana Bus" isn't investing in public transport, which seems to have the governments policy up until now.

railways are a symbol of British Imperialism Fred

Grayson · 28-10-2016 12:10PM

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

You want to invest billions of euro to beat the time a bus can do the journey in by a few minutes?

Mmkay.

Plus higher capacity and more comfortable than a bus. And it works. Nearly every city in Europe has something similar. Relatively high speeds connecting to commuter towns and a good tram or metro in the cities.

Seriously, when I travel to other countries I'm always amazed as how easy it is to get from city to city. At the moment it's probably just as fast to get a bus to Mullingar than it is to get a train. The reason is that the motorway is fast but the train slows down at so many places. There used to be (I don't know if it's still there) a place just after Enfield where the train had to slow to a crawl and would rock from side to side because the tracks were so bad.

Grayson · 28-10-2016 12:12PM

btw, when I say high speed I don't mean like Japanese railways

It'd be nice to have that between major urban centres but I don't know how feasible it is, both in cost and usage. I mean fast as in it can manage a decent speed.

Macy0161 · 28-10-2016 12:47PM

MeatTwoVeg wrote: »

So your solution to the problem of Dublin growth is to create more commuter towns?

Terrible idea.

Would it not work both ways? Making these towns commutable to Dublin, would also make them easily accessible from Dublin.

Fratton Fred · 28-10-2016 12:49PM

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

railways are a symbol of British Imperialism Fred

Someone should tell the French, they're damn good at them.

Fratton Fred · 28-10-2016 12:51PM

Macy0161 wrote: »

Would it not work both ways? Making these towns commutable to Dublin, would also make them easily accessible from Dublin.

That's it exactly.

One of the reasons why Reading has had such a booming economy is that firms can relocate there and still attract talent that want to live in London.

28-10-2016 12:59PM

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Someone should tell the French, they're damn good at them.

I think he means rail in Ireland is a symbol of British Imperialism. Under British rule we had one of the best tram networks in the world and a wide reaching rail network. We wanted to show we aren't a puppet nation so we ripped it up and downsized or in some places abandoned rail systems. The Phoenix tunnel springs to mind.

Grayson · 28-10-2016 01:04PM

Deleted User wrote: »

I think he means rail in Ireland is a symbol of British Imperialism. Under British rule we had one of the best tram networks in the world and a wide reaching rail network. We wanted to show we aren't a puppet nation so we ripped it up and downsized or in some places abandoned rail systems. The Phoenix tunnel springs to mind.

This is what the lines looked like about 1900

This is what they are today.

MeatTwoVeg · 28-10-2016 01:17PM

Macy0161 wrote:

Would it not work both ways? Making these towns commutable to Dublin, would also make them easily accessible from Dublin.

Of course they should be accessible, but we don't need two publicly funded modes of transport effectively competing against each other to achieve accessibility.
We can provide the required accessibility more cheaply and efficiency with roads, we simply don't need to provide rail too and it's an extremely inefficient waste of tax revenues to seek to do so.
By all means let's provide rail solutions within urban areas where population densities and lack of traffic space justifies this, but trying to provide high speed rail connections to every medium sized town in Ireland is a colossal waste of money.

The Recovery Has Barely Started And Dublin is at breaking point

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