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?
Sometimes a couple share one car, sometimes children are driven by parents who have a car, and elderly people are often driven by people who have a car. And some people use things like car clubs. So yes, the vast majority of people in this country benefit from having cars, either by being the direct owner, or being given transport by the direct owner.
Any claim that the vast majority of Irish people do not benefit from private motoring is a lie.
But then one should only expect intellectual dishonesty and mendacity from the poster who repeatedly falsely accused Ireland's 2.8 million license holders of collectively "killing 2 or 3 people every week"
Could’ve sworn you said you lived in London a lot longer than a year ago……..
You said most people in Ireland don’t have cars but you are factoring in children to validate that claim and yes children are people.
Most people that travel to work, drop kids off to school/medical appointments etc etc are driving cars as opposed to using PT or walking or cycling- are you saying that isn’t true?
Do you fly home?
I think you need to read up on your statistics.
The vast majority of people benefit from car ownership. Only 8.7% of over-18s never use a car.
You might as well talk to yourself lad
Andrew is just going to bury his head in the sand unless you’re calling motorists murderers or something. He can’t see past his handlebars to piggy back off a phrase he likes to use.
Wait till you hear about how people share the benefits of this big, large vehicles called buses, and trains, and trams.
It's not me saying it, it is just about every traffic survey saying it. Here's Dublin's modal share with more people using public transport than driving, about 1/3rd of people driving as it happens.
Isn't it funny how you get car-blind when you spend your life looking out of a windscreen?
I think you need to stop moving the goalposts and asking different questions until you get the answer you want.
Can a train take me from anywhere I am, to anywhere I want to, at any time of the day or night, carrying as much stuff as I want? Didn't think so. I'll keep my car, thank you very much. And I won't vote for any politician or party that threatens my ability to get around.
And I don't need someone with a proven track record of mendacity to help me (re)define words like "parking" "storage" and "accidents." So, thanks, but no thanks.
It's not that I don't know what a bus is.
I just don't see them all that often out here in rural Ireland.
It's funny how you see so little and learn so little of the world, staring at the ground in front of the handlebars. We could all resort to insulting tropes like your one of people being car-blind. Unfortunately, all it does is irritate others and reduce the strength of your arguments. When people talk about the arrogance of cyclists, there is clearly some truth to the meme. Don't feed it.
Yes that is the point of public transport, to take you places you want to go. Do you think other countries with public transport based systems just bring people to random spots they never wanted to go to?
Thousands of people randomly walking around confused because public transport brought them to random places, is that what you think public transport is? 😂
"carrying as much stuff as I want", I know personally in my car it is empty apart from passengers and maybe a buggy. Rest of the time the boot etc is collecting dust and I would say the same for 99% of road users. Carrying around loads of shite in the car just add additional fuel ebcause of the weight so not a great idea for your pocket
How do you not see buses in rural Ireland? it is a fairly extensive network
https://www.buseireann.ie/pdf/1473240111-Network-Map.pdf
Maybe for tourists?
I'm still approx 20min drive to the nearest bus route. And going by that map, my county (Limerick) is one of the better serviced ones.
That wouldn't be anyway atypical in rural Ireland.
Electrification or wfh are realistically the only ways of reducing c02 for rural commuters. Our population is simply too dispersed, no amount of stick is going to shoe horn people into a rural public transport system for commuting. It's just not a viable alternative.
Showing a very deep ignorance of rural Ireland if you think that is fairly extensive, also you are ignoring, how frequent the buses are and what times of the day do they operate. The main issue around transport is people getting to and from work
FYI I live in the countryside
One major downside of rural Ireland living is every movement has to be done by car.
Hmmmm I'm suspicious when you say countryside as opposed to rural!
Where I live, and I'm super lucky to be able to wfh, a lot of people commute to Limerick.
Around here, if you were to turn that 45-50min car commute to public, you would realistically be talking somewhere around two hours.
And you'd still be driving 20mins by car.
Most people who make the commute wouldn't be working in the city centre, it would typically be one of the industriul/commercial areas surrounding the city. That commute would by public transport would look like, 20mins to bus, one hour to city, wait for and take connecting bus to industrial zone.
That's if you worked near the city. If you worked in one of the towns around the city, forget about it.
Nice strawman there, I don’t think Eamo is sneaking around at night taking people’s cars away from them.
The other major downside is the mindset it feeds among people who expect the world to be designed around making it easy and cheap for them to do every movement by car.
That’s exactly what is being demonstrated here, people who, because they have a car and do everything by car, assume that everyone else has a car and does everything by car.
Things are changing, folks.
and people who are able to commute by bike or public transport think that for everyone who do not have this option they are either foolish for living/working where they are or are simply lying about the realities of trying to commute from rural Ireland without a car.
What's wrong with that exactly? The motor car is a great piece of engineering typically designed to make our lives easier. Nothing wrong with that at all. Do you want us back on horse and cart in the pissing rain?
Just in case you haven’t been following the news for the past couple of decades
let's say they set up a congestion zone within the canals in dublin - how many people commute by car into or through that zone, who would not qualify for a resident's 'permit'? note, you can cross the east link without entering it, if driving from north dublin to south dublin or vice versa.
the canal cordon count for 2019 showed 46k private cars, but obviously this would not include residents of the zone, who may have an option of a free pass.
In other news, Ireland could be wiped off the face of the earth tomorrow and there would be no discernable decrease in Global emissions.
Making the lives of ordinary people miserable seems to be a worthy green goal these days but a bit of perspective is required when dealing with fanatics.
And just how do you propose redesigning rural Ireland so cars aren't required?
I'm happy with future cities that aren't designed around cars. I believe that the future for rural Ireland is electrification and wfh, but I don't think it will be anyway fair or useful to disproportionally impose on the people that live there, until that state can be reached.
There's plenty else we can be doing to reduce our co2 output until that point is reached. There's also plenty we could be doing but aren't to bring that shift to wfh.
...... And my wife and I being unable to get to work is going to fix that, yeah??
What you'll more than likely see is that residential areas around the cordon will be even more packed with commuters parking in the area and jumping on buses to beat the charges.
I don't think congestion charges are going to apply to rural Ireland though, so as people continue to choose to live rurally then you're going to need a car. On the plus side you get much cheaper housing and far more space than city dwellers and don't have to endure many other problems part in parcel with city living.
Less cars in a city benefits those who live in the cities greatly though.
Except that's not what's happening here.
What's happening here is that any suggestion that people should drive private cars less, whether by using public transport or cycling or walking or not building their McMansion up the boreen beside Mammeh is immediately shot down with responses about how you can't carry your disabled granny on a bike when you're buying your new washing machine.
There is no one transport solution that works for everyone for every journey. The suggestion to drive private cars less doesn't mean private cars are banned and everyone has to use other forms of transport all the time. It's just a suggestion, in this case some policy suggestions, that people should drive private cars less.
It's almost as if people are afraid that they'll lose their 'but everyone does it' excuse if more people switch away from private cars.
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