Dublin. 3rd slowest city to drive through.

Dublin most definitely needs bus networks and bus connects. Buses are the backbone of any excellent public transport system like London for e.g.

The Bus Connects routes will be a gamechanger for many when planning permission is granted for the road widening etc. that is required to have bus lanes going directly into the city from places like Clongriffin. They will be utterly pointless though without bus lane enforcement, and I don't know if the powers that be have the balls to implement cameras etc to stop this as it would annoy too many motorists having to stay out of the lanes. Works in London though.

Imagine thinking Frank McDonald has anything relevant to say about urban planning. Someone should just distract him with running a living museum instead of keeping Dublin as one.

A minor note: AA Roadwatch ceased in 2021.

One major contributor to it is our (or at least DCC's) aversion to high rise. Instead of having a dense population centre we have a sprawl which means far more people have to travel further distances. I can't get my head around how this isn't raised as an issue more often, from an environmental energy usage point of view it makes far more sense to have higher densities, Green party should be pushing stongly for it.

You are absolutely correct. They have a load of projects going through planning stage. Implementation will be starting around the time of the next election, it is so important that the Greens get into government as it is likely that a SF government would cancel some of the projects in order to spend the money elsewhere.

The planners didn't hang around the right golf courses.

It's not too long ago that Big Eamon was part of the campaign to delay and redesign Metro.

Not sure that they are? 😕 Dublin is heading towards being a mid sized European city. I admit I am a non expert but would have thought rail/metro/tram type systems that are predictable and carry tons of people per unit of time are the backbone and busses are a supporter + fill in the gaps in a good rail network and provide service at the edges. Dublin does not have a good rail network, and probably won't have anything much better than what it is today for guts of another 2 decades at the very pedestrian pace being set by govt. for building any more.

With rate of population growth here...well it looks a bit ugly. Just a gut feeling but a full implementation of "Busconnects" (edit: incl. all those nice old trees at the side of roads getting the chop + loss of vital parking space for the 4wd or BMW saloon!) might be needed alright to keep it from getting unmanageable.

Is there a worse use of land so close to a city centre than golf courses?

I don't think plans for low density housing in Clontarf would be approved under the current guidelines, so will be enough room for 1500 apartments, minimal if any car parking spaces too...

I mean DCC and CIE own most of the land there so it could be purchased at a reasonable cost..

I can only assume that the land was already zoned for low density housing, and the old bungalows they replaced were of an even lower density than the monsters that are built on those sites now....