Cities around the world that are reducing car access

I was just going to say multimodal is kind of the low hanging fruit of city transport everywhere and probably what we should try and achieve. P&R's outside the city, mass transit into the city and all sustainable modes prioritised within the city itself. Maybe congestion charges and higher city centre parking charges are needed as part of that, but I'd definitely be inclined to push the price of on-street parking way up because that generates so much traffic.

Again these typically aren't short-term decisions that people make.

The long-term sunk cost of a car is far more powerful than any short-term negative media. Tempting people out of the car is really difficult once they have one. There are very powerful benefits to car ownership: fast, cheap on-demand transit, typically end-to-end, in a personalised comfortable space with a guaranteed seat. It's exactly the same thing as the motorways we were describing earlier, people quickly build their life around it. The only real counter is to slowly erode those very obvious benefits while improving the other modes: it's a long-term process rather than a short-term one.

That's also why it's so frustrating to hear edge cases like "what about a one-legged man who wants to take an anvil to Donegal this minute" when we're trying do develop holistic systems so that large numbers of peopele don't become car-dependent: the aim is to have people grow up without needing the car. The edge case is entertaining, but not important. Same here, the media noise about curtailed services isn't anywhere near as important as the repeated lived experiences of people trying to use the service. If they have one bad day's commute in a year they're probably not going to buy a car but if they're stranded in the rain twice a week every week it's a different story entirely. The lad sitting in the car listening to the news about it is almost irrelevant.

Cancellation rates in November of 10% to 22% for some routes, including recently added BusConnects routes, does very little for that slow transition away from the car and its 0% cancellation rate.

We will see.

Cancellation rates from September until today are very similar, so it isnt a november problem.

If the bus service remains unreliable, people will move back to cars or save up to buy one.

Perhaps BusConnects has been pushed out too quickly and with an absence of required driver numbers to make it work.

I do think the approach of skipping stops to get the bus to the terminus on time is counter intuitive for passengers and means that your bus stopping at your stop is down to pot luck.

Trains dont operate like that and neither should buses

That stop skipping approach alone is enough for me to stick with the car. Reliability. Pure and simple.

There was fundamental flaw in how the bus live timetable was designed. It's not 100% live but pretends to be. That was a serious error in judgment. People have no faith in it. Buses disappearing and reappearing just degrades any confidence further again.

Separately to that there's bigger issues with infrastructure and resources.

However even after all that, you shouldn't plan a journey without allowing some contingency time. Breakdown on the M50. Train breakdown. Etc. I put in a time into Google for a car journey it could be 25-60 mins in heavy traffic. If this was another country it might be different. But in a congested city with limited public transport that's how it is.

Different for everyone. But the train is far more reliable and consistent than the car for me. At some point that has to become true more of the public transport network.

The bicycle is even more consistent.

It reminds me when I was in Germany a long time ago getting on a bus there were loads of people having an argument with the driver. When I asked what were they were complaining about. I was told that the bus was 3 mins late....and it was the second time that month.

Yes a long time ago. Hence I said a long time ago.

Germany had a combined ticketing system bus train tram many decades before Ireland had it's 90 min fare. Even now our leap card system is archaic.

All I'm saying my expectations for Dublin bus has always been very low. From long experience.

Just to be very clear here, Ireland doesn't have a 90min fare. Dublin is the only city with such value. If you have to take 2 busses in Limerick to get to work or College for example it's at least €2.70 in each direction, our sole commuter rail service from Castleconnell (15km from the city) is €3 in each direction when bought online

Congestion charges have been proven in London to be able to change behaviour but only when backed up by the public transport system you see in London. It could, in theory, be introduced here but would have to have more exceptions for people who don't live near enough to public transport. I think introducing it here without first improving public transport would turn traffic off the city streets on to smaller side streets, which wouldn't be a great idea at all

A better option, I think, is if you place a tax on petrol and diesel at the forecourts in our cities, particularly (or even exclusively) along high quality public transport routes. That way you are not impacting those who need to travel outside of a city for work as they can just refill elsewhere but the car that never leaves the city gets an extra tax. Use the extra revenue from the tax then to bring down public transport fares in the city

People who live on such a commuting route, but cannot use it because they work somewhere not served by public transport would end up penalised

They wouldn't because they could fill up near their workplace or on their way to/from work

EVs will eventually make such taxes obsolete

You could add a charge to public or workplace charge points in the cities but eventually, yes, such extra taxes won't be as effective for EV owners who will largely charge their cars at home

The excise duty lost is a seperate issue but would be largely recouped from the avoidance of EU carbon fines, an increase in homegrown fuel sources, more jobs and more taxation, and public hospital bills for lung issues into the future

Yes, but do they have access to public transport to their workplaces and/or universities?

Take somebody for example who might live in a south Dublin suburb but works or goes to college in Maynooth. To use a "beyond the pale" example somebody who lives in Cork and commutes to Fermoy for work. A congestion charge would affect them directly but an extra tax on the fuel near where they live could be avoided by refueling near where they work

You definitely don't need the scale of London's public transport network but it does need to be speedy, reliable and punctual. You can achieve that without having 700 bus routes on 5-15 minute frequencies

Doesnt a limited traffic zone ban cars from the city centre unless the car owner lives in the city centre?

That would be a very different thing than deprioritising cars in favour of public transport.