Who to vote for to massively improve public transport?

no, not people like me, the majority who live in rural or suburban Ireland and will never be served by what the Green party claim they will deliver in this Utopia of theirs. Those who clicked on Thanks are the ones I expected to do so.

I can only base my opinions on my observed reality. I'm in Dublin every weekend, I live in Wexford and spent over 10 years living in meath, aswell as my teen + 20's years living in kildare and dublin. Couple that with being a fan of trains in general (#autism_yo) and I reckon I've quite a rounded experience of what our PT network is.

We may have one bus that negates th example that I mentioned but we do not have town to town buses in the GDA. We don't have the coverage that we had 100 years ago. One of the biggest towns in the commuter belt, Navan, where I lived and commuted from for years, has one irregular bus to Blanch that takes 2X the time of a car journey and goes nowhere near the industrial parks, and has no rail network. Ever tried getting a train to Donegal? Or a bus from Enniscorthy to Ferns? Other than wexford bus (a private company who are actually pretty good and miles better than CIE) there are few options.

The bus connects scheme promised a lot and has delivered some, but as you rightly point out there's lots more to do. Joining up the luases was a great development too.

Lets take a couple of real world examples, right. I work in Blanchardstown. One of the industrial parks, well served in the past from the city center but a nightmare from anywhere else. (In reality I work from home 100% but my base is blanch if I ever have to go in for a client meeting or something, rare but it can happen). To drive from where I am to work is about 1.5 hours. More in traffic at peak, so lets say 2 hours. There is no park and ride facility, despite my office being 10 minutes and probably less than 10km from the M50. So I cannot drive somewhere , park up, and take public transport (or indeed take public transport the whole way). It was the same when I lived in Navan, commuting to a different location in Blanch. There was no bus - I could drive 10 mins to a local bus stop and get a bus that took 2 hours for a 45 minute drive, but left me over an hours walk from work. The bus route there was I think the NX but they renamed routes since so Im not sure.

So, in neither of those situations, even if I was living in the local town, there was no suitable public transport, to one of the biggest industrial and FDI areas in the country.

they've helped this suburbanite anyway, great improvements on cycling infra for those of us working in town, and also a 24 hour bus route serving where i am that was never there before so that's great for nights out. obviously "rural ireland" will always hate the greens as the greens don't want transport to revolve around private cars any more, which is a logical stance to take as we can't keep clogging everywhere with cars.

More cyclists use the cycle track at Leeson St bridge than motorists driving over the bridge. If you build and maintain quality cycle facilities, cyclists will use them in droves.

of course they're used outside of city centres, lots of people cycle from suburbs to work in centres every day

Cars are not evil although the Greens consider them to be the bête noire. They are a component of the holistic transport solution which the helpless commuter is forced to default to as the portions of the solution which aren't personally owned by the commuter are lacking.

Park and Ride has been paid lip service by the Green Party.

Amsterdam is given an example of a city with great public transport with trams and bike lanes everywhere cited by Green evangelists on city breaks who never see the outskirts of the city. That isn't why Amsterdam works. Amsterdam works because the cars arrive at the Park and Ride locations at the edge of the city and proceed no further. Parking at P&R is plentiful, safe and cheap with trams waiting to whisk passengers in to the city.

Luas has only 2600 parking spaces at p&r parking spots...that is nowhere near enough. Amsterdam has near triple the number of parking spaces in a compact country with commuter trains everywhere and blanket coverage of public transport within the city.

It's almost like there isn't a quick fix

I genuinely have no idea to vote for in the next election

Public transport is a big thing, but I bought my house close to a rail line. (Grew up beside a rail line) So I'm kinda mostly covered already. Rail out to Rathfarnham would help slightly if it was here "Now" but it would be for at least another 10 years at which point my kid will be finished school and I won't need it.

The Big problem we have is that people in Dublin think Public Transport and immediately think buses. People who don't live near or use the DART or the Luas Green line, don't understand how vastly superior it is to the likes of buses.

I lived in Rathfarnham for a few years and the Public transport (16 Bus at the time) was beyond CRAP! like absolute F-Tier junk in comparison to the DART.

The DART itself however is under threat, some of the Rolling stock is over 40 years old at this point without replacement and there is also attempts to curtail the service for the sake of not having to invest in big projects like Howth Junction points issue.

Are the current Luas P&R car parks oversubscribed?

The rate of adoption of e-scooters which are a personal mobility solution would suggest otherwise so a partial quick fix is available.

I was roaming around a Spanish City last week where the shared scooters are banned and privately owned e-scooters were zooming absolutely everywhere...ridden considerately and the majority were wearing their helmets.

I can't stand the greens, for their generally rightwing stance, eg bailing out the banks and insisting that diesel cars and mercury-filled lightbulbs were going to solve all of our environmental probelms. But in fairness to them they only joined the government in 2007 when the **** had already hit the fan only we hadn't noticed it yet. They had no money to spend and anyway Frau Merkel had decided that the Irish taxpayer needed to pay for the dodgy deals that some of Germany's biggest banks had carried out in the IFSC.