Luas Finglas

Ah so we will take your ancetodal evidence of your mate in work in place of actual travel data from technology companies.

I really don't see why people online bandy about congestion reports with such weight because the objective isn't to facilitate the free flow of private traffic in and around the city, quite the opposite, it's to facilitate the free flow of public transport and restrict private vehicular traffic. It's totally inconsequential how fast or otherwise that traffic may be once public transport and public services are unaffected.

All good points though all european capital cities still allow cars to travel into and park in the city centre or central area.

Car users are the highest spending visitor in the city centre, per capita.

It does makes sense to deprioritise cars in favour of public transport, but we should not outright ban them from driving and parking in the city.

Those who use a niche brand of satnav!

My own guess when I hear those rankings is that it's because Dublin has very few major roads that allow fast unobstructed driving and has an obsession with traffic lights that often have illogically slow change times, so even in light traffic you're still stuck waiting for significant amounts of time.

Cities like Bangkok are far more congested at street level but at least in Bangkok's case there's a very extensive expressway network touching nearly every corner of the city, so averaged out across all drivers it maybe comes out faster to travel whatever distance they were measuring because more people using the expressways masks the street level congestion

Idk. I am not surprised that car users spend more than PT users in a city centre but these are infrequent shopping, dining or entertainment visits. Car users who are commuting to work do not spend more than PT users commuting to work. Indeed, what is more valuable to the economy as a whole? Somebody spending money in a shop on some imported product or somebody working in the IFSC and contributing positively towards Ireland's balance of payments? It's much more nuanced than how much money a particular demographic spends in a city.

I was in Bamberg a couple of weeks ago. Lovely little medieval city, ruined by cars bloody everywhere. Hardly any pedestrianisation and it really took away from the place. Germany, especially states that are centres of car manufacturing like Bavaria tends to faciliate the car way more than say the Netherlands or Luxembourg. Those a pleasant places to be in. Do people spend more time in pleasant environments or unpleasant ones? Genuine question. I could imagine that pedestrianised city centres encourage people to stay and people get hungry or thirsty and spend more money. If a city is unpleasant and you just want to get in and out, that must have a negative impact on spending in that city?

To try and get back on topic somewhat…

Now that Luas Finglas has an operational Railway Order, can they put out tenders even if funding isn’t projected to be in place for the year? Or at least start getting tender-ready…?

Surely there’s something that can be done while the government is playing political ping pong with West On Track…?

Alternatively, is there any chance that the government will magically find some way to fund this project before the end of the year? There does seem to be a lot of mounting media pressure about it, or at least there was…

It’s ironic that this is maybe the one situation where we need the negative media attention on a rail project and of course the Indo and the Irish Times are keeping shtum…

It's 4km extension and 4 stops and still can't be funded.

Absolutely brutal ambition in this country!

Connecting up the power may be one thing, but there is plenty of work to be getting on with in the meantime. The bridge over the Tolka being a good starting point.

We really are a useless shower if we can’t build a 4km light rail line that is connecting to a system in place already.