Dan Boyle - Green Party Suggestion - Reduce Speed Limits

Propellerhead wrote: »

well, I suppose it will help the Gardai increase their arrest total without having to deal with any pesky real criminals, and allow a few people who cycle to work in Dublin 6 feel morally superior to the rest of the people of Ireland, who can't afford to live so close to their work.

Funny; I earn **** all, yet I walk to work in 20 minutes (in the centre of Dublin).

You’re totally missing the point that nobody forced anybody to buy anything. People decided to buy badly-built houses in badly-planned areas for extortionate amounts of money – nobody forced them.

serfboard wrote: »

Now, if it is not the responsibility of government to provide/provide for (i.e. plan for) housing for its citizens, I don't know whose it is. But hey, Fianna Fail weren't going to "interfere" in a system that was making millions for their most loyal supporters.

Town planning has been virtually non-existant in this country – no argument there. But the fact remains that people knew (or should have known) what they were letting themselves in for when they were buying properties in the so-called commuter belt.

Reenascreena wrote: »

1. They could start by putting in place proper planning laws.
…
…investing heavily in public transport, especially outside of Dublin…

Regarding planning, John Gormley has made it one of his priortities:
http://www.greenparty.ie/en/news/latest_news/new_measures_annouced_to_improve_the_effectiveness_and_efficiency_of_local_planning

As for public transport, how much is “heavy” investment? €34 billion (as per Transport 21) seems like a fair bit of investment to me.

Reenascreena wrote: »

If we were wiped off the face of the earth tomorrow it would make NO difference.
We were 0.2 per cent of world CO2 emissions in 2004 (source) and are even less significant now with the growth of developing countries.

That is not the point. As I already said on this and other threads, if Ireland (or any other country for that matter) demonstrated that carbon emissions could be significantly reduced in an economical manner, other nations would take notice and (probably) follow suit.

Reenascreena wrote: »

3. At the last census, 2006, the population of Dublin was 1,187,176 (source). The population of the entire state was 4,239,848. Therefore about 3/4 of the population do not live in Dublin. A significant proportion of these people are reliant on the car for transport. That is simply a fact of life which must be taken into account.

Not relevant to the point I was making. If people are not prepared to walk distances of less than 1 mile, then it makes little difference whether public transport is available to them or not, as such short walking distances are impossible to eliminate.

Reenascreena wrote: »

The only way to affect change on global warming is to influence those who can do something about it.

So the fact that Ireland has some of the highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the world (16.93 tonnes in 2005) is the government’s fault, is it? Nothing to do with the population of Ireland?

Heroditas wrote: »

Well seeing that they own (via ESB Power Generation) the vast majority of power stations in the country - such as Poolbeg, Moneypoint, Tarbert, Aghada, West Offaly, Great Island etc etc..... yes they should be taking it on.
The independent companies are taking it seriously, maybe it's about time the state owned companies did likewise.

But the government are providing the incentives for independent companies to invest in renewables. If ESB choose not to go down the renewables route, then they're going to lose out to the competition. Having said that, don't ESB own Hibernian?

This is going OT.

djpbarry wrote: »

But the government are providing the incentives for independent companies to invest in renewables. If ESB choose not to go down the renewables route, then they're going to lose out to the competition. Having said that, don't ESB own Hibernian?

This is going OT.

The only incentive made available to independent electricity generators is that it's a free market. I should stress that I'm not talking about CHP units here or little wind turbines or solar panels to heat your water tank, I'm concentrating on major electricity generating facilities that can provide megawatts of electricity to the country.
Anyway, the thread is indeed going off on a tangent.

Back to bashing Dan Boyle. :P

I sent the following mail and received a reply about 10 minutes later. So fair play to him on that.

Dear Minister Boyle,


I would like to register my disgust with you at the suggestion you have put forward for reducing the motor way speeds to 100kph. It is nothing short of a joke that you would do this. For years this country has been subjected to a substandard motor way system and now that we are finally getting our act together you want to negate the benefits of this infrastructure by reducing the speed limit on these roads needlessly.


I travel alot on the new M6 and M9 bypass and while these roads are of excellent quality it is extremely frustrating to be restricted to 100kph when 120kph would be far more realistic and just as safe.


During the current economic climate some people might suggest that this would be a sneaky way into tempting people to break the speed limit to boost revenues from fines. I hope that this is not the case.


Rest assured that these new limits would be a step to far and I am sure you will find that your first foray into government will be the last one for a very long time should you proceed with it.

Dear Colm ,

Thank you for sending me this email (although I am not a Minister). This proposal has been made in the full knowledge that it would provoke a strong reaction against it. The intention has been to highlight that we lack immediate measures to tackle the problem of our unacceptable high carbon emission levels, which if they remain the same will have a serious economic effect in having to purchase unnecessary carbon credits. It is far from barstool begrudgery. Strong research exists from Germany that even a 10km decrease in speed limits would bring a 12% decrease in carbon levels from transport. We have adopted this measure in Ireland before. It is being given serious consideration in other countries with more advanced road networks than we have. It has actually being into practice more stringently in Spain where the current limit is 80KM an hour. I am not confident that this proposal can be accepted in Ireland but the debate that has been provoked at least raises the question if not this what. We have to start using our cars differently if we are to have any hope hope of reducing the carbon impact from transport. I'm pleased that many alternative suggestions have begun to come to the fore and the cabinet sub-committee will have many other choices to consider. We need people to engage with this process and in making this proposal I hope I've helped.

Dan Boyle.

Senator Boyle,

Apologies for the incorrect salutation earlier and many thanks for your quick response, which is a very pleasant surprise.

I appreciate the fact that you are doing what you believe is best for the country in the long run. However I believe policies need to be moved away from penalizing the private citizen to help the environment to policies that help both the private citizen and the environment. An ever improving public transport system would be one such policy. The challenge is to discover and implement more of these dual-benefit policies, it is a great challenge but nobody said being a public representative would be easy.

I am sure you do not want to engage in a one on one debate with the many people that will find this proposal extremely negative but I just wanted to register my complete disapproval of same.

Once again, many thanks for your quick reply.

Regards,
Colm

And on that note, I think a lock is required given that it would appear that the OP was based on some political trollery.