Will road projects speed up when the Greens are voted out?

Chris_5339762 · 30-01-2022 07:47PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118555571#Comment_118555571

The trouble is, due to mismanagement of public transport by government after government, there simply aren't enough PT projects ready for construction to spend money on. All of the public transport work is studies/planning, and will be for the next few years as well. It's actually really hard to spend say, a billion on PT at the moment.

30-01-2022 08:21PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118555910#Comment_118555910

A similar problem exists with the "million a day" for cycling. There simply aren't enough projects ready to go to use the money but that's gradually starting to change as councils / depts get things moving

veryangryman · 30-01-2022 08:21PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118535758#Comment_118535758

Anyone who needlessly makes my unavoidable purchases more expensive is a gowl and that is not immature, it is fact. I can be professional and try to vote them out but alas my 1 vote won't cut it so one needs to vent their frustration with said gowls from time to time.

Same for the minimum unit pricing task force setup to introduce more stealth taxes. Also gowls. The least they could do with the money raised would be to improve infrastructure.

Yes the second point is off-topic but I wanted to confirm that I don't discriminate with my usage of the word. And it is very, very appropriate currently.

SC024 · 30-01-2022 10:11PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118528953#Comment_118528953

perhaps but there is a cohort out there that will run down to the local a & e with a runny nose or a cut finger where most people would ignore it & rock on. If we build more A&E's you'll have more silly visits along with the genuine cases that actually need it. In much the same way you build more roads you will have more people taking the motorway for exit 7 to 8 to get a pint of milk in order to have a gander at the new road & see what all the excitement was about. you will also have people that it makes there lives easier. Should we stop building roads? stop building Hospitals too ?

marno21 · 31-01-2022 12:11AM

The article is just a rundown of the 8 projects and dissatisfaction from TDs/Senators in the affected constituencies. Nothing major or noteworthy.

What I find baffling is that these 8 projects have been slowly moving along since 2018 with low funding in most cases. The N24 has taken 4 years to get to the stage of not even the route options being published. Had they given these 8 projects 200/300k for the coming year, they'd have pottered along in a Roads Design Office for the year making no major progress, but instead, having been defunded, all have been turned into political footballs and are now headline news in local constituencies, despite their defunding not making a whole lot of difference to what actually would have happened on the ground. These 8 projects are now after moving up the priority list due to the threat of "cancellation", which will likely see them given more priority than had they kept their mouths shut and given them the usual 200/300k for 2022. A spectacular own goal only the Irish Green Party could score.

markpb · 31-01-2022 12:12AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118556676#Comment_118556676

For most people, if you walk into ED you pay €100 for the privilege. The same doesn’t apply to driving. The marginal cost of driving an extra 20km on a motorway is tiny and you don’t pay it at the time so most people don’t consider it even deciding if they should drive the extra trip/distance.

Seth Brundle · 31-01-2022 09:16AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118556081#Comment_118556081

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557855#Comment_118557855

Minimum unit pricing (assuming you are referring to alcohol) has been in preparatiuon for nearly ten years. It has pretty much nothing to do with the greens. It was included under the Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 which was a couple of years before the current government were voted in. But hey, sure blame the greens for your anger anyhow.

veryangryman · 31-01-2022 10:34AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557887#Comment_118557887

Where do I say I blame the Greens for MUP?

I was answering thequery on calling people who deserve it gowls, using MUP as an example. You're right, not everything is the Green's fault. My anger issues originate from things these people do, but thanks for caring :)

Seth Brundle · 31-01-2022 11:03AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118558203#Comment_118558203

You were replying to a post in a thread about the greens. The post you replied to doesn't say much but it did literally say "Up de greens!". It is a reasonable presumption that you, like the rest of us, are discussing the greens unless you are confused as well as angry!

marno21 · 31-01-2022 10:26PM

Lads there's more than enough material to discuss from the thread title without going near MUP. On topic please.

Seth Brundle · 01-02-2022 12:01AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118562356#Comment_118562356

That was my original point though. The greens get blamed for loads of things (including it seems MUP) despite having either nothing or next to nothing to do with the thing. There are numerous reasons to be disgruntled at changes or lack of change but blaming the greens who have pretty much no influence overall within government is just daft and gives a green card to those actually responsible.

veryangryman · 01-02-2022 12:30AM

The greens were around in the 2007 to 2011 gov and held the balance of power just like now. So anyone who thinks they didn't help kill shannonbridge and edenderry is deluded.

Drop Electric car prices to affordable levels and make PT an actual thing outside Dublin and then I'll withdraw my gowls comment.

KrisW1001 · 01-02-2022 06:19PM

Electric cars are already cheaper than diesel/petrol cars... over their lifetime: EVs cost about €10~15k more to buy, but cost around €2k less per year to run, with a quicker payback if you do more mileage. I’d argue that instead of giving nice prices to people who can already spend big, what we need to be doing is allowing people to pay those high initial costs off more easily without getting into long-term (and thus higher interest) finance agreements.

But realistically, our biggest problem right now is that there are almost no second-hand EVs around: most people who will change a car this year won’t be buying a new car, and to them it won’t matter a damn if a new EV is the same price as a new petrol car.

I agree with you about PT, but PT isn’t free. The money has to come from higher taxes (good luck with that…) or by redistributing the existing transport budget.

01-02-2022 06:32PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118563008#Comment_118563008

So anyone who thinks they didn't help kill shannonbridge and edenderry is deluded.

Shannonbridge was killed off by ABP decisions against its continued use in 2019.

Edenderry is not killed and recently got a 7 year extension to its operation approved by ABP.

Neither have anything to do with the greens unless you have evidence otherwise. Note suspicions and conspiracy theories don't count as evidence

AugustusMinimus · 02-02-2022 10:12AM

The biggest issue is not in the country but rather in towns and cities and it’s not just the Greens causing the issue.

The biggest issue for me is the continual building of huge, impenetrable blocks of housing estates with only 1 entrance and exit. It causing absolutely huge traffic hit spots and putting pressure on existing road infrastructure.

To make it worse, urban road improvements only happen when the system is in complete meltdown (See Carrigaline). I’m not calling for a full American style grid system. However, just look at Cork.

City centre is mega busy (Expected). The next layer of streets built in the first half of 20C has little traffic because it is grid system. The outskirts are then hugely clogged up again because no effort was made to improve infrastructure and again these huge blocks of housing estates.

All road projects are put in the back burner because of the perception that road improvements will hurt public transport usage. It’s absolutely crazy.

magicbastarder · 02-02-2022 10:27AM

The biggest issue for me is the continual building of huge, impenetrable blocks of housing estates with only 1 entrance and exit.

to a certain extent, this is not just about roads; a lad on twitter a couple of years ago put out a challenge to see who could find the most walled off housing estate, for people walking. IIRC someone was able to point out that to walk to a house less than 100m from their own involved a 40 minute walk.

if you've to walk 15 or 20 minutes to go for a pint of milk because housing estates are designed to be impermeable, that will just create more car traffic.

Chris_5339762 · 02-02-2022 11:29AM

https://goo.gl/maps/jjexwNHKR3BJBwxB9

This was always a good one. Utterly ridiculous that there isn't a gap in this wall.

hans aus dtschl · 02-02-2022 02:26PM

I have to walk 850m to reach the house 15m from me. The area I live in is frequently bumper-to-bumper with local traffic dropping kids to school or going to the shop, and it's a hostile area for active transport. We can do an awful lot to improve traffic, without even needing to ban cars and build new roads!

Probably off topic.

But back on-topic, I didn't vote Green in the last election (I'm not "party faithful") but I don't think that the Greens are a significant source of road project delays, nor do I think that the Greens being voted out will result in roads projects speeding up.

I read it very often on Boards about how the Greens are the source of so many problems, but on most issues I've seen, I don't think the Green party are the source of the problem. That doesn't mean I think the Greens are innocent of all wrongdoing, definitely not, but I think there's an awful lot of politicking going on right now. It's definitely worth investigating on a per-project basis, what the source of the hold-ups might be. For sure, in some cases it will be the Green Party, but I think the political spin at the moment is that "the Greens are blocking most of the roads projects" and I don't think that's the reality. From what I've seen anyway. It could also be spun the other way, that there's a correlation between the Greens being in Government and roads projects going ahead. But that's not true either.

Sam Russell · 16-02-2022 09:24PM

Mod: This is not the Politics forum, so it is not the place for political discussions, and in particular, raw partisan politics.

Much of this thread is spent knocking one political party with no balance, and has no relevance to roads. For example MUP has nothing to do with roads, the Green Party, or with infrastructure.

If the standard of posting does not improve, the thread will be closed.

McGrath5 · 17-02-2022 05:03PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118569559#Comment_118569559

This was my one haha - for bonus points the residents of each estate successfully campaigned for the railings to be coated in a anti climb paint ie if you try to hop over those railings you'll destroy your hands and clothes.

magicbastarder · 17-02-2022 05:36PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118569559#Comment_118569559

not 100% relevant, by my niece had a friend when she was younger called 'sarah cross the wall'. because when sarah would visit her to play, or vice versa, the kids would simply be lifted over the garden wall (it was a fence, actually) to spare the ten minute walk.

Will road projects speed up when the Greens are voted out?

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