Cities around the world that are reducing car access

It should be pointed out that many of the cities doing these things (car bans, congestion charges etc) have massive Metro/Subway type systems. London Underground, Paris has an extensive Metro system. New York has lots of parks, pedestrian paths everywhere and they took the cars out of part of the Broadway/Times Sq. area, but again, they too have an extensive subway system as well as a massive electric commuter railway network.

This idea that the AA is responsible for all of Ireland's problems is bizarre to say the least.

CatInABox wrote: »

Indeed, the AA is actually extremely pro BusConnects, at least from that radio interview that had the AA guy destroying an "An Taisce" spokespersons criticisms of the BusConnects plan.

From that, I'd assume that the AA would also support Metrolink, as they'd be able to see the benefits of moving more people without cars.

No, the main opponents to change in Dublin are from car park owners, and also from the retail sector. The opposition from the car park owners is obvious, but the retail sector are always fearful of anything that may impact on footfall. There's still the belief that car users buy more, just because they have a car to bring stuff home, when all the data shows that public transport user spend the most in retail shops.

Actually I think Dublin Chamber are in favour of BC and also of College Green Plaza

Can we stop treating the AA as some kind of representative body?

They haven't been a member organisation for years. They are an insurance broker selling products to motorists.

Podge_irl wrote: »

Yeah, after Fukishima. Germany, of course, being notorious for regularly having earthquakes and tsunamis.

Not to mention the various disasters attributed to the oil and coal industries over the years, but hey look over there, a solitary extremely rare combination of events.

Wind still can't act as baseload. Nuclear and wind could have taken coal off line much quicker. By 2038, we will have passed the point where we can reverse the man made impact on the climate, might as well continue to burn coal in 2038

Sam Russell wrote: »

Teslar think batteries might backup wind turbines.

Probably, but an electricity grid based on wind supported by rechargeable batteries is only theoretical at the moment. There are a number of battery storage projects being installed in the midlands at present, we'll see how that works out. We do need some kind of proven baseload right now. Burning coal at Moneypoint and burning peat mixed with palm kernel shells imported from Cambodia in Edenderry, Loughrea and West Offaly power can't continue.

We're also spending mega bucks supporting wind and batteries and we're also paying for a massive undersea cable to connect us to the French grid so that we can baseload with French nuclear. The problem with the later being that we're basically at the mercy of French energy policy and trusting them not to strike too much on non windy days.

Take into account the future of cars is electric, we're switching to a mostly electric rail system and we're also building acres of data centres, we're going to need some serious increase in output. The ESB favoured converting Moneypoint to a small nuclear reactor to give us energy security but politicians are too heavily involved in what is a highly technical matter.

I fundamentally reject the idea that nuclear energy is "unproven" in any way. It has been an unqualified success anywhere that it has been done properly. There is more than half a century of hard evidence to prove this.

You talk about the Polar Vortex in the United States? Guess who kept everyone alive, warm and empowered :pac: during the Polar Vortex?
No less than Exelon Corp. which operates a whole load of nuclear reactors.

That's before we look at Europe, where most of the countries that have small carbon footprints per kw/h of power generated/used also have lots and lots of nuclear. Cases in point, France and Sweden. Meanwhile, Germany was still commissioning coal fired power plants as of 2014 and dramatically out-pollutes not just France and Sweden but other nations as well, all in a bid to support their "Energiewende" which is just an expensive way of killing birds and bats, as well as wasting enormous amounts of rare earth metals and other materials.

Nuclear unproven? I don't think so.

SeanW wrote: »

I fundamentally reject the idea that nuclear energy is "unproven" in any way. It has been an unqualified success anywhere that it has been done properly. There is more than half a century of hard evidence to prove this.

You talk about the Polar Vortex in the United States? Guess who kept everyone alive, warm and empowered :pac: during the Polar Vortex?
No less than Exelon Corp. which operates a whole load of nuclear reactors.

That's before we look at Europe, where most of the countries that have small carbon footprints per kw/h of power generated/used also have lots and lots of nuclear. Cases in point, France and Sweden. Meanwhile, Germany was still commissioning coal fired power plants as of 2014 and dramatically out-pollutes not just France and Sweden but other nations as well, all in a bid to support their "Energiewende" which is just an expensive way of killing birds and bats, as well as wasting enormous amounts of rare earth metals and other materials.

Nuclear unproven? I don't think so.

If nuclear power is so great, why do countries build their plants in isolated areas close to other countries?

Zebra3 wrote: »

If nuclear power is so great, why do countries build their plants in isolated areas close to other countries?

Energy production, coal, nuclear gas or even wind generally is found in areas of low land value. Such is economics in general. Land closer to cities has more value as other uses. Not sure what you mean by 'close to other countries' seems difficult to avoid in Europe. I the UK's case they are mostly coastal due to the abundance of sea water as a coolant.

cgcsb wrote: »

Energy production, coal, nuclear gas or even wind generally is found in areas of low land value. Such is economics in general. Land closer to cities has more value as other uses. Not sure what you mean by 'close to other countries' seems difficult to avoid in Europe. I the UK's case they are mostly coastal due to the abundance of sea water as a coolant.

I mean "close to other countries" as in Britain and Sweden building them in areas that could potentially effect Ireland and Denmark while minimising the risk to their own territory.

Zebra3 wrote: »

I mean "close to other countries" as in Britain and Sweden building them in areas that could potentially effect Ireland and Denmark while minimising the risk to their own territory.

Being close to other countries is incidental, the plants tend to be coastal for the sake of coolant and in areas of low land value and where they are accessible to the high voltage national grid. Both the UK and Sweden have nuclear power plants very close to their major cities. Sweden has one about half way between Malmo and Gottenburg. There is also one close to Sweden's main airport just a few km north of Stockholm.

All of the UK power plants are close to Major UK cities.

Zebra3 wrote:

If nuclear power is so great, why do countries build their plants in isolated areas close to other countries?

Firstly if you want to talk about "isolated areas" you have to start with windmills - to get any real energy out of them you have to carpet-bomb your country with the things, and they really do have to be built in out-of-the-way places, like every single hill and mountain top that you can put one on that would otherwise be unspoilt. Don't believe me? Drive from Cavan to Derry, they've basically carpet bombed every mountain top in Northern Ireland with those vile monstrosities. That also requires enormous amounts of new grid infrastructure in places where it would not otherwise be required to reach these super-remote windmills.

As for nukes, France has them all throughout its country. Like, everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

BTW France started building its nuclear program seriously in the 1970s, likely as a response to the oil crisis of '74, when no-one gave two figs about global warming. By accident, they solved their CO2 emissions problem from electricity because they now emit about 50-100g CO2 per kilowatt hour which is among the best in Europe (Sweden, Switzerland also have extensive nuclear programmes so they too emit very few CO2 emissions per kwh.

If you wanted to write a book called "how to stop climate change without really trying" you could literally just put in a picture of France in the late 20th century.

Sam Russell wrote: »

Well, let us look at Chernobyl - That is a disaster that has cost the envionment more than any gain got from nuclear energy. Now Three Mile Island is another case.

Well of course Chernobyl was a disaster - it was run by Bolsheviks. What would you expect? Comparing a Bolshevik nuclear programme to a Western one is like comparing food supplies in the Soviet Union, where you had to queue for weeks to buy a loaf of bread, to the West, where all our supermarkets are (usually) well stocked and there are usually plenty of them near most people. Apples and Oranges. Three Mile Island was not great, but it did not have serious consequences beyond the plant property line. Fukushima was another example of nuclear not done properly (note the original caveat "anywhere that it has been done properly". There were dozens of nuclear plants along the same Japanese Pacific coast that were subject to the same earthquake, the same land drop and the same tsunami as Fukshima-Daiichi but did not go into meltdown, because those plants were built properly with properly sited emergency facilities and sufficiently high sea-walls.

No real enviromental study has answered the question of radioactive waste. Of course the USA made artillery shells ot of depleated uranium and used them in Iraq. I suppose that is one way of getting rid of it.

Huh? They use D.U. as a material for its physical strength in munitions, they still have loads of of nuclear waste to manage.

So there is no doubt that elctricity can be generated by nclear power plants, but the cost of those pants, and so the cost of electricity per unit is heavily sbsidised, and the externalities like waste treament are left for future generations.

It can be done at reasonable cost (the French did it in the '70s and '80s in their country, Sweden and Switzerland did something similar), energy generation is largely free of CO2 emissions, many countries have used nuclear energy for generations without issue and the waste, while not optimal, is manageable. Oh and, wildlife like birds and bats are actually doing much better in the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl whereas in the "woke" West, environmentalists and their windmills are killing more bats than White Nose Syndrome, which admittedly is quite an achievement, even if a terrifying and depressing one.

There is no need to threaten wildlife like windmills do, you do not have to carpet bomb your country with these massive, expensive, ugly, bird chomping bat killing monstrosities, those gargantuan monuments to absurdity, ideological blindness and intellectual laziness.

If you're serious about stopping anthropogenic climate change (not to mention nice things like not driving bats to extinction because of windmill strikes and barotrauma), nuclear energy has to be part of the solution. Facts don't lie.

There was a remembrance ceremony for the 50 killed in the oil tanker disaster (in a long line of systemic and catastrophic failures) in Cork a few weeks ago. Anti-nuclear activists continue to point to the 0 deaths freak accident at Fukushima. Ironically this accident only a few years after some English hippies insisted the state build Moneypoint coal plant instead of the Carnsore point nuclear station. Moneypoint now still accounting for a large chunk of our GHG emissions.

bk wrote: »

Great, though I think this is also an important part of what they are doing:



We seem to be struggling to add anything but a few more buses and ticket prices are going up all the time.

Also while I totally agree with removing parking spaces, the problem our city councils face is that they raise so much of their review from paid parking. So government would need to increase it's financing of local authorities to make up for such a lose.

What do councils need money for? they no longer collect waste, they rarely/never clean/maintain the streets. They refuse to build new social housing, the projects they work on (e.g. liffey cycle route) just get mismanaged so badly that the government steps in and carries out the work directly. You're basically paying them to sit in there and issue decrees of support for Palestine.

cgcsb wrote: »

What do councils need money for? they no longer collect waste, they rarely/never clean/maintain the streets. They refuse to build new social housing, the projects they work on (e.g. liffey cycle route) just get mismanaged so badly that the government steps in and carries out the work directly. You're basically paying them to sit in there and issue decrees of support for Palestine.

There's a bit more to it than that. DLRCoCo made an effort to make their budget understandable - see pages 5-8 of this publication.

https://www.dlrcoco.ie/sites/default/files/atoms/files/dlrtimes_winter_2018_screen.pdf

CatInABox wrote: »

Finally, some good news, and some good news reporting as well. The Times have an article on the Fitzwilliam Cycle Route, saying that it's received wide public support, with only a few submissions in opposition to it.



I've only included a snippet, because you can register for free to see it, and I have to admit, I've been impressed by the quality of articles that the Ireland edition of The Times have been putting out, so even a little support like that will help them.

Not just the times but most papers I notice lately are getting bashed in their comments sections on the articles they have attacking bus connects and metro. Perhaps that'll inspire change. The one they had about the poor unfortunate Dunville residents was universally slated.

I've seen "car free" areas work. The partial pedestrianisation of Broadway on Times Square in New York is an unqualified success. The Oslo thing may well work too.

But it bears repeating that all of these places tend to have extensive and high quality public transport options as part of the set up.

Forget apples and oranges, comparing Dublin with Oslo is like comparing apples with vacuum cleaners. They bear no relationship to each other. At all.

For example, Times Square in New York sits atop an enormous public transport interchange. It is possible to reach large portions of NYC with one subway ride (no changes) from Times Square and the junction is one subway stop (though if the weather is OK you could walk) to Penn Station and Grand Central, where one can connect to Long Island via the Long Island Railroad or further via Amtrak, Westchester County and Southeastern Connecticut via Metro North Railroad at Grand Central. So it makes sense that a place with such good, well used public transport and heavy pedestrian traffic would pedestranise.

The same is true of Oslo, which has the most dense Metro per person of any city anywhere on Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo#Transport
The following is worth particular emphasis.

Oslo has Norway's most extensive public transport system, managed by Ruter. This includes the six-line Oslo Metro, the world's most extensive metro per resident, the six-line Oslo Tramway and the eight-line Oslo Commuter Rail. The tramway operates within the areas close to the city centre, while the metro, which runs underground through the city centre, operates to suburbs further away

A 6 line Metro? Six tram lines - strictly limited to the central area and immediate region? Eight heavy rail commuter lines?

Does this sound anything like anything that might ever exist anywhere in Ireland in the next 100 years? If not, then how in the Sam Hill can Oslo or its policies be compared to anything in an Irish context? Am I the only one here that sees a serious problem with this?