Clean Air/Congestion Charging set to be introduced by 2030

You can see the improvements in public transport and car sharing, hiring and eBikes means it not having a car is more doable than ever in cities.

But outside it isn't. And while owning and running a car is expensive there's no really initiative to reward low mileage use of a car. So if you have one you might as well use it.

All that's left is forcing people into the alternatives.

In the flip side of this, with housing crisis and lack of options and capacity for many driving is still a requirement for large numbers of people. So it's always going to be there.

Do you use any…

The Greens need to own their ideas - good & bad.

We have a significant accommodation problem in our towns and cities in particular. And the people most affected are students, lower paid workers and more elderly singles. The Greens spearheaded a campaign in the FF/Green government to ban bedsits, which were an affordable type of accommodation for these groups in society. The urban Greens argued from their leafy gardens, that bedsits were of poor quality and that banning them would lead to a better standard of accommodation. As usual with their ideas, they never put in this 'better standard of accommodation' before it was implemented. Hence we now have students like our, priced out of any accommodation and obliged to long health damaging commutes.

The Greens need to own their ideas and the public need to be reminded regularly just who was a player in how we got where we are.

Likewise with pushing cars off the roads, another great Green idea and would be wonderful in cities and towns and throughout the state for that matter if we had good quality public transport options in place first. But the standard Green tactic here now is get legislation rolling on these things, before they are booted again, and then hope that infrastructure will follow to fill the holes.

Is it busy, cheaper or more frequent, more options than 10 years ago. Mine is..

Lame? Are you fifteen or what?

I think anyone who is genuinely interested in this topic ought to listen to Claire Byrne's interview with Paschal Donohoe on the Today programme yesterday morning.

It is absolutely clear that no FG led government (and I reasonably assume no FF one either) is going to back the introduction of any of these measures ahead of the delivery of the Metro, DART+, and all of Bus Connects being up and running, and the Tram system in Cork too.

Its clear this proposal will be banged around for a while as a bone thrown to Eamon Ryan, but will fall with the end of this Dáil. Any other discussion around it is largely moot.

The timeframe being mentioned for this proposal is extremely lackadaisical for a serious pollution issue.

Most European cities started introducing LEZ and ULEZs from the 2010s on, so Dublin only considering introducing one in 2030 is real long fingering of the issue (and it should be noted there’s no mention of introducing it for any other city or town in Ireland).

To set it in context, a car would need to be a pre-2006 model car to incur a charge were we to adopt the system used in London. It should be obvious that a small percentage of cars on the roads in Dublin today are pre-2006 cars and that percentage is falling steadily due to those cars reaching “end of life”. It is therefore ridiculous to delay introducing the scheme until the 2030s for the sake of the “old bangers” on the road and that a date of 2026 would be more than generous provided it was accompanied by a “scrappage scheme”.

Who cares if what journey you do. In my opinion they are valid scenarios.

I would however say its being disingenuous saying you don't see improvements, when there are obvious improvements on those routes and/or scenarios. I accept the issue of capacity issues. That's very common. I've actually decided on occasion to take the car even though it's a lot more expensive, and longer because I couldn't take the overcrowding some days.

I will say taking on a new job or such I do factor the commute and will avoid jobs that drag me into heavy congestion in the car, with no rail alternative. It's just not worth it anymore.