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7 November 2001
GREENS LAUNCH TEN POINT PLAN FOR TRANSPORT AND DEMAND GOVT. LAUNCH NATIONAL TRANSPORT REVIEW
With Priority For National Public Transport Schemes
As the ‘No Confidence’ motion in Minister for Public Enterprise & Transport, Mary O’Rourke is debated in the Dáil, the Green Party has called on the Government to immediately launch a National Transport Review
Green Party Leader, Trevor Sargent T.D. launched the Green Party’s ten point plan for a National Transport review and called on the Government to carry out, as a matter of urgency, a transport review which would prioritise national public transport schemes.
The ten point transport plan includes, among other items, calls for the prioritization of the amending of the National Spatial Strategy to include a transport review which would prioritise national public transport schemes; the immediate setting up of the promised Greater Dublin Planning and Transport Authority; the immediate adoption of the Dublin Transport Office’s radical plan to save Dublin from gridlock and the reassessment of the current plan to build five national motorways simultaneously.
Mr. Sargent said that “the Government’s Roads Study 1998 demonstrates that building motorways with a daily capacity of 55,000 vehicles is grossly excessive and a criminal waste of investment capacity. The Green Party, unlike this short-sighted Government believes in value for money. The current ‘over the top’ road building programme demonstrates the Taoiseach is a
waster of taxpayers money. He is wasting money on roads which are too big and this will cost taxpayers when Ireland is eventually fined for creating excessive greenhouse gas emissions. He is also costing businesses dearly by not investing sufficiently in rail and public transport generally and this is making people late for work due to breakdowns and late running services.”
Deputy Leader, Cllr. Mary White, speaking of the motorway plans for the Dublin – Waterford route, said that “spending upwards of £526 million, and this figure excludes the compensation payouts to affected landowners and householders, on a road that will slice twenty minutes of driving time off a journey from Dublin to Waterford is economic madness”. “Now more than ever we need balanced regional growth. We do not need an orgy of road building that will cut off local communities from each other and foster a sense of alienation. Statistics in the Roads Needs Study of 1998 prove that car traffic volumes do not warrant such a road.”
“It is time to question this road building programme and to consider more sustainable methods of improving our infrastructure, by upgrading our present roads, building bypasses around towns with a noted traffic problem and by introducing an integrated transport policy plus the restructuring of the National Roads Authority to make it more accountable and more democratic. This is called balanced regional growth with vision.”
Transport spokesperson, Cllr. Eamon Ryan, said that “Ireland’s lack of a public transport infrastructure is the greatest disincentive to economic growth and new outside investors in our cities. Minister Mary O’Rourke is guilty of doing too little too late to solve a crisis which was visible ‘like a slow train coming at the start of her term’. For example, the Dublin Transport Office (D.T.O.) have finally come up with a transport plan which would save Dublin city from gridlock. The plan requires some £4 billion to be invested in public transport schemes over the next five years. However, there is an ominous silence from the Department of Public Enterprise on their ability to get the money for the new mainline rail, Metro and Luas line. Cllr. Ryan said that the Green Party plan made sound economic sense and that the Government should review its capital expenditure schemes to prioritise public transport now.”
Cllr. Ciaran Cuffe, the party’s planning spokesperson said, “The brief of the current National Spatial Strategy should be amended to include a National Transport Strategy which would incorporate an independent analysis of which transport projects should get priority in the next five years of the current National Development Plan. Most development in recent years has been on the edges of our villages and towns where access is expected to be by car. Our planning strategy has to reverse this policy and shorten both urban and rural commuting times so that people have more time for family, community and friends.”
TEN POINT PLAN
1 Prioritise Public Transport
Most economic commentators agree that we need to continue to invest in Capital projects despite the worsening revenue returns to the Irish exchequer. The Greens further believe that our future economic health will depend on getting the thousands of workers out of the daily commuter logjam rather than shaving minutes off long distance inter urban-journey times. The National Roads Needs study 1998 showed no immediate demand for the increase in the capacity of the national road network which is now being planned. By comparison, the provision of an adequate public transport system would bring immediate economic, social and environmental benefits.
2 Transport and Planning
The brief of the current National Spatial Strategy should be amended to include a National Transport Strategy which would incorporate an independent analysis of which transport projects should get priority in the next five years of the current National Development Plan. Most development in recent years has been on the edges of our villages and towns where access
is expected to be by car. Our planning strategy has to reverse this policy and shorten both urban and rural commuting times so that people have more time for family, community and friends.
3 There is a plan which we support
The Dublin Transport Office has a radical plan to save Dublin from gridlock which was approved by the Government earlier this year. It requires £4 billion to be spent on Public Transport over the next five years - £1.5 billion on the Dart and other suburban rail lines, £1 billion on a Metro system, £1 billion on Luas and half a billion pounds on Bus systems.
Computer models of the cities traffic pattern show that a road option does not work and a
'do-nothing' option brings traffic down to a walking pace.
4 The Greater Dublin Transport and Planning Authority
The Government has acknowledged the need for this new authority but there has been a crucial delay in its implementation. The new authority would at long last make CIE accountable for the quality of the service that it provides and it would make the NRA consider the general transport equation rather than its own fixation on building new roads.
5 The Road to God knows where
In 1998 the NRA presented the Cabinet sub-committee on Infrastructural Development with a report on a National Roads Needs Study which cost £2 million to produce and which called for some £6.5billion to be spent up to 2016 upgrading the existing Primary Road network. The committee, comprising the Taoiseach, the Tanaiste, Charlie McCreevy, Mary O'Rourke, Noel
Dempsey and the Attorney General, decided instead that we should build five new motorway routes within six years from Dublin to Waterford, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Belfast. The Green Party believes that these roads are unnecessary and will cause huge destruction to our physical and social rural environment. We now call for a return to the original NRA proposals and the concentration on the construction of suitable bypasses at the main bottlenecks on the road network.
6 Save Irish Jobs
If the Government insists in progressing with its divisive new road plans we would at the very least ask that they would concentrate on one of the routes first rather than trying to build all five motorways in the next five years. The very scale of the project has lead to significant price inflation as the NRA has turned to international expertise to complete the job. By working
on a phased basis Irish contractors would be able to complete most of the work and this would protect our economy and local jobs at a time when the construction sector is about to go into a severe recession.
7 Life outside Dublin
Too much of the national transport debate has concentrated on the plight of Dublin commuters. A key demand for the Greens in Government would be the construction of a new Western rail service going from Cork to Derry which would coincide with a new commuter rail service for each of the cities en route and which would give Shannon airport an economic lifeline. We would also introduce a new rural bus network by setting up public service contracts for small local bus operators to provide key public transport connections for isolated rural communities.
8 Where will the money come from
The Green Party agrees in principal on the need for tolls on the National Primary roads. Rather than putting the tolls at various points around the country we would use the tolls as a traffic management measure and locate them on the approach roads to the M50 which would discourage long distance commuting into the capital and free up this road space for other traffic. The Green Party believes that the bus and rail service could be improved with the introduction of competition in the form of the allocation of public service contracts for the provision of such services. However we are wary of the widespread use of the public private partnership process for the construction of new physical infrastructure which in the past has provided supernormal profits for the private sector and a very poor service for the public.
9 Road safety
The NRA argues that the new motorways will be safer. However the Green Party argues that while accident levels on the new motorways may be lower, there will still be a higher incidence of accidents on the older primary roads which, because would have less volumes which would allow greater speeds. The most recent NRA Annual report shows that 75% of articulated vehicles are constantly exceeding the speed limit on our two lane national primary roads. Our Road Safety plan has failed and the Garda must now urgently introduce the necessary technology to allow the driver penalty points system to be started. A pedestrian hit by a car travelling at 40mph has a 20% of surviving while the same person hit by a car travelling at 20mph has a 80% chance of survival. The Green Party would introduce a 20mph for selected urban areas. To which the Department for the Environment has ruled out to date.
10 Save Rail Freight
The Luas tram was launched in the same week that CIE pulled out of the bulk rail freight business. The average freight train took 18 forty foot trucks off the roads and we would reverse the continued emphasis on a HGV solution to our economic development. We would fastrack a rail based system to take container traffic out of Dublin Port and we would bring back the rail lines to Foynes, New Ross and the other freight lines which are now being mothballed.
INFORMATION
TREVOR SARGENT T.D. 618 3465 / 087 254 7836
CLLR. MARY WHITE 087 230 7189
CLLR. EAMON RYAN 086 829 4429
CLLR. CIARAN CUFFE 087 265 2075
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