The government are currently investigating increased parking, congestion charges and speed limit reductions in order to help the country meet its climate goals. Looks like a split in the coalition is emerging over the proposals, which are likely to be deeply unpopular. Do you see anything of the proposed that could be considered politically palatable?
It also helps if you're able-bodied, as well.
As I said earlier , the focus needs to shift from trying to make it more difficult to use your car to trying to make it easier to use Public transport.
Equally, we need to update the planning process so that people can't object to anything and everything just because.
I'm not suggesting that it be a free for all , but the objections have to be real and tangible and set against the larger societal impacts.
What we have today where people are objecting to developments (whether that be housing or transport/infrastructure) when they don't even live near the location is complete nonsense.
You're 'a few' km from portmarnock - on a rural or suburban road?
He can bring all the memos he likes until he's blue in the face. The people will decide how far is far enough.
And if he wants to get them on side for any of this stuff, he had better start providing quality, safe, reliable and economical public transport.
Its been said many times on these pages, the fact there is zero light or heavy rail under construction in this Country as we speak, is a disgrace and an example of Ryan's failed balance of policy.
sounds fake.
Heard Jack Chambers on the radio about this earlier.
We're going to have not one but two consultation processes on these measures before any decisions are made.
Meanwhile the need for reductions in emissions will become greater the longer its postponed.
A bit like our approach to building public transport infrastructure. Just push it further into the future.
We're also unlikely to see much reasoned debate. Introduction of a congestion charge but what about people in donegal or the woman in rural Ireland.
Emer Higgins (FG) was on radio earlier. Some of her constituents have to wait over an hour between buses to the city centre while the main road into dublin is just a stones throw away.
I'd broadly be in favour of these measures once viable alternatives are in place. Trains, buses, trams etc are already full. Bus companies finding it hard to get drivers etc.
If the government were serious about climate change, a short term solution until infrastructure is built could be going back to the days of the pandemic and telling businesses that their employees should work from home where possible. Another solution would be increasing funding of public transport to a point that would support a wage point where supply of bus drivers equals demand for such skills.
Two carrot options there but we're more likely to see the stick first.
If we only kept and maintained the rail infrastructure that was there already.
They should run the Luas until maybe 4am at the weekend to help get people home after a night out in the city.
By car or school bus transport maybe? Congestion charges and increased city centre car parking is irrelevant in this scenario.
I mean even living in Dublin I find this stuff galling.
Years drag by with no changes to DART, no metro to the airport, glacial progress in adding luas lines, no school bus network at all meaning if you don't have a DB that passes near the school then you're driving (and it means a lot of added journeys as the school holidays are clear evidence of)..
Where we live in North County Dublin, only a few kms from Portmarnock and Malahide, there are mimimal footpaths (forget about cycle lanes) - meaning car journeys for most cases. If we can't even focus hard and fast on populated areas - what hope is there for sparsely populated areas?
To solve these issues - the plan is just to make getting around more expensive?
Fu(king brilliant. Real geniuses.
they are completely unrelated charges to what is being discussed. there are more cars on the road now than ever so they're not doing very well at pricing people out of cars either.
Fine to penalise cars if services are there- the point many are making is that those services are non existent in some areas or very poor in others - there’s no alternative for many right now other than to take their car- the Greens yet again have shown what a bunch of unimaginative twits they really are when all they can dream up is tax tax tax - it was the same over 15 years ago or so when they were last in government but obviously voters have forgotten what a bunch of useless idiots they really are. All of this is just a smokescreen to distract from the fact that successive governments have done nothing to improve a chaotic transport system
yeah like the motor tax, fuel prices etc don’t apply if you live outside a city or town.
As if it’s just a single charge and not a concentrated effort from all sides to price people out of owning a car.
this is the kind of rabbling nonsense you hear from the ever beleaguered "rural ireland" any time measures like this are even discussed. but i chose to live in a mansion in the middle of nowhere! what about me?!?
I didn’t state that the Green Party only has flexi time- don’t know where you’re getting that from. And my comments were focused on those who don’t live near their workplace- of course being in a city will be easier to commute- I’m not talking about those in a city- they’re fine- it’s everyone else that has a challenge getting into the city from outside of Dublin
Why would someone in rural area be subject to congestion charges and extra parking fees?
Daft argument.
they're trying to make moving people around more efficient and cleaner
might as well Kim! 😂
don’t be long tho or “The Man” will have me sucked dry 😂
how many people in rural ireland have chosen that life though?
like the lad i used to work with who moved from clondalkin to ballycanew and then complained about how long it took him to get to work.
or my parents in law, who live 4km from the nearest shop and now need the car to do anything.
What's this? The government using the climate crisis as a grift to extort money from people?
I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you.
First of all I'd ask why she's set up her life so that she has to be driving around like that every day. Anyway the proposed measures wouldn't affect her, no one is taking your car, relax. This is what's called "concern trolling", people use disabled and old people too for this.
How is a mother in rural Ireland supposed to bring her 3 kids to school in the morning to two different schools located in different rural areas both 10km from her home and still make it into work for 9am?
Nothing wrong with trains and trams....the answer is to do both, build the public transport and also make life easier for people with cars. That's how you increase the standard of living!
Rural Ireland will never have a good public transport system due to low population density and that is just a fact.
Except this is actually increasing choice of how you move around and where. Spending thousands of euro every year on a car isn't my idea of choice, it's a very expensive requirement. But hopefully that'll change with measures like this and massively increased cheaper public transport.
what's the saying - an advanced society is not one where the poor can afford a car, but the rich take public transport.
something like that anyway.
Removing public transport like the trams and trains was the backward step Ireland made. We should have kept the infrastruture in place and now we are trying to rebuild.
Moving the population onto a good public transport system is the most forward step Ireland could ever make, we are a joke at the moment now compared to every country in the World that you can't even jump on a train from the airport
lol, not needing to own a car should be seen as a massive boost to our standard of living, not the other way around
More people on public transport means more investment in bus/train/luas services. I expect that is part of proposal on how to beef up these services to cater
What a depressing vision for the country to have us dependent on rubbish Irish public sector led public transportation. Like worker peasants in Romania during communist times when no-one could afford a car. It's such a backwards, anti-development step that clearly reduces our standard of living and our choice about how we move around and where we move to - shooting oneself in the foot comes to mind due to green brainwashing. Honestly the Greens are worse than SF and I never thought I'd say it. At least SF are populist and therefore not massively ideological.
If you are in a city, it will be cheaper to use public transport than owning and maintenance of a car.
Buses and trains run all the time, why would you need flexi time?
Why would only Green party have flexi time?
M7 and M4 are choc full everyday simply because there’s no viable alternative - cities like London Paris and many others have underground tubes to navigate around the city- we have nothing comparable - the Luas serves Dublin people and can barely cope now at peak times - there’s absolutely no viable alternative to the madness that is the commute on these routes
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