The National Roads Authority told a meeting of Limerick County Council this week that the N21 project would not go ahead because there was no funding for it.

The decision means that a freeze can now be lifted on the development of lands that were under consideration as possible routes for the dual carriageway.

PlanBetter – a joint initiative of four environmental organisations, An Taisce, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Irish Environment and Feasta – welcomed the roads authority’s decision.

Spokesman for the group James Nix said recent cuts in local road maintenance works were due to excessive motorway construction.

He expressed a hope that the move would “herald a change in policy to an emphasis on the maintenance, connectivity and accessibility to public transport”.

Separately, design plans for an additional junction on the proposed M20 motorway linking Cork and Limerick have been completed. Following a successful appeal by residents in July 2010, Buttevant, Co Cork, will now be served by a direct junction with the 80km stretch of motorway.

In previous plans, Buttevant was the only bypassed town on the route not to be served by a junction connection.

The new proposed layouts will be displayed in coming weeks in the M20 scheme design office in Gooldshill in Mallow, Co Cork.

PlanBetter has today (3 March) published a policy briefing for the incoming government (link here).

Highlights include:

Full independent cost/benefit analysis

Up to now assessing the costs and benefits of transport projects has been left to State agencies promoting a particular transport project. Fine Gael and Labour’s manifestos contain commitments to reform this, and so proposed motorways, Metro North, Dart Underground, and the 2009 sustainable transport programme are to be re-assessed by a party other than their promoters.

Based on Australian practice, PlanBetter is recommending that an assessment panel be formed drawing together expertise already in the pay of the State but independent of individual projects, which can be supplemented as required. Organisations such as the Chartered Institute for Logistics and Transport, the Economic and Social Research Institute and the National Treasury Management agency would second personnel to the assessment panel, which could call on additional expertise as required.

Ongoing expenditure on projects such as Metro North, further motorways – and consultation exercises which assume various projects will proceed, such as National Transport Authority’s “Vision 2030” – are premature pending independent cost/benefit assessment of projects as proposed by the new government.

Plans for an additional 800km of new motorway (e.g. 28km from Oilgate to Rosslare, 45km from Abbeyfeale to Adare, etc) are a misplaced legacy of Celtic Tiger thinking. Far more lives will be saved by removing accident blackspots on two-lane roads right across Ireland, as is clearly indicated by cost-benefit studies, and also clear from Ireland’s own Low Cost Safety Improvement programme, which is now cash-starved.

At a wider level, it is vital to accept international best practice and count health impacts when assessing transport investment in order to reverse the national trend towards obesity.

Walking and Cycling – low cost, high benefit investment

Investment in walking and cycling have health benefits which are not yet valued and included in cost/benefit assessment. Moreover, the active modes of travel are critical to youth development.

Investment in cycling and walking deliver nineteen (19) times as many benefits compared to costs which contrasts very favourably to motorways, and indeed large-scale public transport schemes.

PlanBetter outlines plans to extend the bike sharing scheme within Dublin and to all major population centres as well as recommending simple real-world practical steps to boost cycling – such as changes to the Rules of the Road showing motorists how to overtake cyclists at slower speeds and allowing sufficient passing distances.

Urban public transport – further savings

Advanced Quality Bus Corridor must be considered, according to PlanBetter. Advanced Quality Bus Corridor involves six key improvements on traditional QBC:

-           buses running at frequencies of 3 to 5 minutes during the working day,

-           priority at junctions,

-           off-board ticketing to reduce waiting times,

-           flush-floor boarding at stations,

-           comprehensive shelters, and

-           ‘real time’ passenger information displayed inside vehicles as well as at shelters/stations.

Depending on the outcome of cost/benefit assessment, Advanced QBC could replace proposals for Metro and Luas with significant capital investment savings for the economy, while providing a fast, efficient, and reliable public transport network.

Advanced QBC costs €7.5 million per kilometre, one quarter the cost of Luas and around one 50th of the cost of Metro North. As noted above, the government needs to save money by suspending work on Metro North and Metro West until such time as these projects are subject to independent cost assessment, and by a panel that is also cognisant of the wider fiscal picture facing Ireland, and with knowledge of the impact high interest rates have on projects entailing multi-billion euro borrowing.

Rural public transport by rural communities

Rather than slashing rural bus services, PlanBetter has called for the use of smaller buses, which it says would consume less fuel and thereby cut operational costs. (To take one example, the Castletownbere to Kenmare service is operated with a 58-seater bus which is inappropriate given the patronage on the route and the condition of the road.)

More widely, the government needs to look at empowering local volunteers to deliver rural transport. West Cork Rural Transport makes a mini-coach available to approved licenced volunteers for use outside of office hours, with the vehicle is fuelled, taxed and insured at no charge to volunteer organisations (see http://ruraltransport.ie/vi/WebsitePages.pdf).

With fuel costs set to continue rising, Government has to find a formula for rural transport than can be adopted across the country.

Further options, such as part-purchasing buses operated by volunteers, as well as the integration of postal deliveries and HSE bus services with rural transport, must be scrutinised.

Roads / toll evasion

Adopting European standards for road design would make motorway unnecessary on roads where inexplicably low Irish traffic flow standards currently deem four-lane roads a necessity.

A prime example here is Oilgate to Rosslare, where 28km of motorway is proposed even though traffic does not exceed 7,000 vehicles a day. Across the EU traffic volumes must be more than double this level before four-lane road is even considered.

Critically, this would allow scarce funding to be diverted to where it’s most needed – to remove accident blackspots. Removing accident blackspots saves the most lives per euro spent.

PlanBetter is calling for all tolls currently in place on Irish roads to be scrapped, replacing them with multi-point tolling with 10 to 40 cents charged for travelling given sections of newly-improved main routes. Electronic tolling, which is already in operation at selected toll locations, would be used throughout Ireland (perhaps with the technology mounted at overbridges).

Multi-point tolling involves charging a smaller tariff at a greater number of locations and would dramatically reduce toll evasion across the network. Today, toll evasion is particularly acute at Drogheda, Fermoy, Limerick, Urlingford, Waterford, as well as along the M7, and is compromising the very purpose new roads were built in the first place. To take an example, if an average of 20 cents was electronically collected at 80 motorway bridges between Cork and Dublin the total fare by road would be €16.

This reform in road charging will also help level preserve road capacity for strategic use.

Rail – simple steps to reform

The options are to close rail lines, increase subsidies or make the network more efficient. While there are proposals for more than 800km of additional motorway, there is no national rail investment programme, and in some instances journey times on Irish railways are worse than they were in the 1960s, not long after steam trains were replaced by diesel engines.

Irish Rail needs to be asked how it would invest under three different scenarios, namely enhancement options involving €100m, €125m and €150m. The published plans under each scenario can then be subject to appraisal.

There are many small simple steps that can be undertaken to boost patronage and total revenue on a day-to-day basis. These include making it possible to view a daily list of trains in order of price as well as by departure time on Irish Rail’s website.

Savings for motorists

PlanBetter outlines important measures to save fuel. Fuel savings of up to 10% are available for motorists who phase out rapid acceleration and sudden braking. The results are even more dramatic for commercial vehicles with Collins Coaches achieving fuel savings of 27% by targeting practices on fuel usage, vehicle idling and driving practices. Correcting a small shortfall in tyre pressure (0.5 bar) can yield a 2 – 3% fuel saving.

Ending private electric car subsidies

Electric cars carry a heavy environmental burden. They are not a cure-all and do not warrant subsidies outside of a context where they are made available for use by all citizens – i.e. as public transport.

PlanBetter sees the current scheme to subsidise electric cars to the tune of €5,000 per buyer as an unwarranted wealth transfer, where poorer homes are reducing the travel costs of those much richer.

It advocates replacement with a car-share scheme using electric vehicles operated along the lines of Dublin Bikes.

Ends

Further information –

Miles Deas – 086  2007998

James Nix – 086 8394129

Download: Future Transport Policies in Ireland Final – PDF

Preface

With the economic downturn and need to meet emissions targets, policies have a renewed emphasis on affordability and environmental sustainability.

The idea of building a way out of the transport problem is obsolete. There are more economic, workable solutions that better maintain our health and environment.

Better alternatives to car travel are needed to help encourage a greater shift away from private car trips to more sustainable modes.  A general change of focus towards investment in public mass transport modes such as bus, coach and rail, but also cycle and pedestrian travel is necessary.

We have seen significant investment on approximately a dozen motorways over the last decade. While limited and localised road enhancements are required across Ireland, there no justification for more long-distance motorways. Sound policy can retain the benefits of the new roads build in the Celtic Tiger period for many years to come.

Higher oil prices are inevitable. There is already sustained upward pressure on oil prices with a barrel of brent crude trading at $80 – $120 over the last few months.

We are on a course that will see the oil price levels of 2008 exceeded. While all of society will be affected, the poorest will lose the most mobility as the price of travel rises. Research in the US indicates that road traffic will drop 41 per cent by 2030 as transport fuel consumes an ever rising share of disposal income. (For more information see www.peakoiltaskforce.net and www.postcarbon.org).

We now have a choice: to base future transport policy on what happened yesterday, or on what is expected occur in the future. Will we align investment in transport and hedge against oil price rise?

Major infrastructural projects have an extremely limited role to play. Whether road or rail, mega-projects involving large-scale construction will be useless unless they provide a solution that is low-cost, readily applicable and easy to replicate.

The emphasis on the period to 2020 has shifted to maintenance, connectivity and accessibility to public transport – although many in policy-making have yet to acknowledge this.

While millions is being cut from local road maintenance budgets, millions are being wasted designing unviable motorways. Existing roads will become compromised by potholes unless the planning process to build further motorways is formally cancelled.

The €36m cut in funding to maintain local and regional roads is the other side of the coin of excessive motorway construction over the last ten years, according to PlanBetter, a joint initiative of environmental organisations An Taisce, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Irish Environment and Feasta.

Ireland now has 2.5 times more motorway per person than Britain; yet plans by the National Roads Authority to build another 800km of motorway have still not been officially shelved.

While the cut of €36m will leave potholes on our local roads, the Government must still pay out some €105m this year to service borrowings for long sections of motorway which have proven unnecessary. Traffic is 20 to 30 per cent below the level projected by the National Roads Authority on some new motorways, including the M3 via Tara.

On top of loan repayments, taxpayers are also paying penalty fees to make up for less-than-expected revenue at the M3 toll booths. As the most recent motorways have turned into subsidised toll roads, a new approach is long overdue.

Falling traffic and figures withheld

Over the next three years more than €275m will have to be found to make further motorway repayments – even as traffic on them falls, and this burden will result in further cuts in budgets to fill potholes and re-surface local roads.

Just as the Minister for Transport is refusing to reveal how much money each council will have for local and regional road maintenance in 2011, his department declines to say whether or not motorway repayments have been included in the Four Year Plan presented by the Government in late 2010.

Yet the Government continues to allocate millions for new motorways including proposals for a new 28km four-lane road in Wexford between Oilgate to Rosslare, much of it to replace a recent bypass, and even though traffic on the route is 75 per cent short of the volume required to justify building what’s proposed.

The outgoing Government used the Four Year Plan to falsely claim that every Transport 21 project was still viable. The incoming Government needs to be honest, and openly acknowledge that long sections of motorway are as unnecessary as they are unaffordable.

Traffic has fallen more than 7 per cent from its peak, and as oil prices continue to rise, the number of journeys will decline further. New toll motorways will become ghost roads if projected increases in diesel and petrol and diesel materialise.

Dedicated bypasses with selected enhancements along existing routes are what’s required. Proper transport planning must begin after the new government takes office.

Disgracefully, the recent announcement for local and regional roads maintained a 14 per cent cut in the Low Cost Safety Improvement Programme. This programme – which is used to remove accident blackspots on dangerous roads all around the country – stands at a paltry €6m a year.

Removing accident blackspots saves far more lives than motorway building per euro invested – something the Department of Transport and the NRA are perfectly well aware of, but seem engaged in a strange form of delusion while the wrongful allocation of taxpayer funds persists.

Increasingly it is acknowledged that we are in the sunset era of private motoring with fossil fuel while the alternatives, such as electric cars, are neither sufficiently advanced nor affordable to maintain private car use at the rate to which we became accustomed over the Celtic Tiger years.

Continuing to build and plan motorways, while at the same time cutting funding to tackle high-accident locations and maintain existing roads roads, compromises road safety and long-standing investments, according to PlanBetter.

As Fred Barry, CEO of the National Road Authority, recently told the Joint Oireachtas Committe on Transport, many of Ireland’s existing roads do “not come close to meeting current design and construction standards” while others “were never properly designed in the first place”.

The main challenge for the new government will be to maintain existing transport links and public transport services, and PlanBetter would welcome a shift in focus under an incoming government where our existing transport links are maintained and enhanced.

In a policy briefing for the incoming government to be published later this month PlanBetter will propose innovative measures, including:

1.         A partial rebate on fuel duty for all public transport operators, including private bus operators which hold route licences, with the level of rebate linked to the efficiency of the vehicle and the number of passengers carried.

This will ensure a far greater provision of public transport, enabling a wider shift from single-person car commuting, helping families now struggling with higher fuel bills.

2.         A concrete commitment to progressively extend the School Travel Programme to all schools across the State over time.

This programme, which currently involves 650 schools, is achieving a far more radical change than initial estimates suggested. Pilot studies indicated that around 15 per cent of pupils would switch to walking, cycling and public transport from car, but results from 2010 are almost double that, with 27 per cent changing to healthier and more environmentally-friendly modes. No other measure is achieving comparable results for the investment involved (€2m a year).

3.         Mobility management plans for workplaces, starting with all organisations with more than 500 staff.

Through mobility management plans, commuters will be helped explore alternatives to single-person car commuting. A range of measures would be included, including cycle training for those who would like to become more comfortable in traffic, advice on combining public transport with the active modes of walking and cycling, as well as incentives to dedicate space in large-scale surface car-parks to alternative uses over time.

ENDS

PlanBetter is a joint initiative of environmental organisations An Taisce, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Irish Environment and Feasta.

Attribution – spokesperson for PlanBetter

Contact:

Miles Deas – 086 200 7998 – mile...@gmail.com

James Nix – 086 8394129

Additional information

-           There is no point in ever more motorway that’s used less and less, especially when investment in dedicated road safety measures, such as tackling accident blackspots, save the most lives per euro spent, according to international data.

Examples where the Government continues to allocate millions for the National Roads Authority to plan new motorways include proposals for a new 28km four-lane road in Wexford between Oilgate to Rosslare, much of it to replace a recent bypass – and even though traffic on the route is 75 per cent short of the volume required to justify building a four-lane road.

Other examples where the Government is still allocating millions for new motorways at the expense of re-mediating existing routes include Clontibret to Aughnacloy (N2), Blarney to Patrickswell (N20) and Adare to Abbeyfeale (N21).

Removing dangerous bends and realigning hazardous junctions save far more lives per euro invested than building four-lane roads. (The research here is clear, as shown by international texts such as “The Handbook of Road Safety Measures” by Elvik et al, and confirmed by road safety experts, e.g. Fred Wegman; see further below.)

- Half of Ireland’s road network obtains the lowest possible safety rating under European standards.

- PlanBetter urges the Government to focus on eliminating high-risk locations along our roads: safety must come before building more and more motorway.

-           Half of Ireland’s road network obtains the lowest possible safety rating under European standards. That’s according to the European Road Assessment Programme, or EuroRAP, the EU agency responsible for monitoring road safety. (see http://www.eurorap.org/library/pdfs/20080519_IRLAND_RESULTS.pdf )

Ireland’s national secondary network fares particularly poorly. Examples of roads with the lowest safety rating include Mallow to Killarney, Birr to Thurles, and Dundalk to Castleblayney. Parts of the N87 in Cavan; the N14 in Donegal; the N69 between Limerick and Kerry; the N81 from Carlow to Dublin via Wicklow and Kildare; the N30 in Wexford; the N29 in Kilkenny and the N58 in Mayo are also poor in safety terms.

While close to 50 per cent of Ireland’s road network has the lowest safety rating in European terms, only 5 per cent of Northern Ireland’s network achieves the lowest grade, while just 2 per cent of roads in Britain have the lowest rating.

Motorway construction must no longer be put ahead of cutting road mortality. There is ample work for Ireland’s road engineers and contractors in eliminating high-risk locations along our existing network.

Already more than €1.7m has been misspent planning 28km of new four-lane road between Oilgate and Rosslare for example – and such misspending continues. In the case of Oilgate – Rosslare, motorway is not warranted before 2040, and depending on future price of oil, motorway may never be justified. More than 20 accident blackspots across the country could have been eliminated with this money. This waste of taxpayers’ money has to stop.

Plan Cut to regional roads fund criticised

FRANK McDONALD, Environment Editor

THE €36 million cut in funding to maintain local and regional roads announced last week has been condemned by PlanBetter, which described it as “the other side of the coin of excessive motorway construction”…

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0207/1224289182717.html

The NRA is trying to force future governments into building motorways by buying up land – even though it knows there’s no money to build these roads, environmental organisations have revealed.

Planbetter, a joint initiative on behalf of An Taisce, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Irish Environment and FEASTA, estimate that some 22,000 acres will be bought over the next four years for roads there is no money to build.

The outgoing government agreed with the EU and IMF that no major road scheme will start in 2012 or 2013, a commitment contained in the Four Year Plan issued in late November.

However, while no new schemes will start in 2012 or 2013, the NRA has been allocated plenty of money to fund a land-buying spree, with some €600m allocated for new roads in 2012, and another €260m allocated for new roads in the following year. (See: http://www.transport.ie/pressRelease.aspx?Id=258)

The NRA seems to think it can embarrass future governments into motorway projects by pumping as much money into land purchase as soon as possible.

With every kilometre of motorway removing 25 to 30 acres of land from agriculture, the road building authority gambles that a future government can be browbeaten into building around 800km of motorway after it has bought some 22,000 acres of land.

Not alone has the NRA become so powerful it is now effectively unregulated, it seems that the NRA has just secured a complete reversal of Government policy.

With oil getting dearer, and set to become unaffordable for many, Government decided in late 2009 to invest twice as much in public transport than roads, and announced this 2 to 1 ratio in its Renewed Programme for Government.

Since then, the NRA has secured a complete U-turn. In 2011 two-and-half times more will go roads than on public transport, with approx €1bn to be spent on roads and just €400m in public transport next year.

The latest move in the NRA’s land grab is evident in Wexford where steps to purchase land have just been taken in the case of the New Ross – Enniscorthy motorway/dual carriageway project.

And more than half a dozen other schemes are also being moved towards land purchase – even though on all of these scheme the Government has confirmed there will be no money for construction. These schemes include:

Rosslare – Oilgate,

Blarney – Patrickswell,

Adare – Abbeyfeale

Monaghan – Aughnacloy

Castlebar – Westport

Galway – Rossaveal

Ballina – Bohola

ENDS

Attribution: Spokesperson for PlanBetter. Contact: James Nix 086 8394129

Note: A grab land for ghost motorways is a misuse of taxpayer funds

Traffic has fallen by 7 per cent over the two years to July 2010, something which makes redundant a great many of the NRA’s plans for new motorway.

Already, taxpayers’ are on the hook for €100m after the NRA got its traffic growth projections badly wrong on two toll road projects, the M3 through Tara and the Limerick tunnel.

The NRA proposes motorways even where traffic is less than one-third of the internationally accepted threshold level for motorway of 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles a day. From Rosslare to Oilgate, for example, daily traffic flow is around 6,000 vehicles a day; yet the NRA envisage a greenfield motorway supplementing an existing two-lane road.

Even if larger roads were someday needed – something which is highly unlikely given the growing scarcity of oil – all that’s needed is a ban on development that might interfere. It’s an appalling misuse of taxpayers’ resources to grab land for ghost motorways.

In terms of road safety, the removal of accident blackspots saves far more lives than building new motorways: the research here is clear, and the NRA is well aware of it.

Public transport

The simplest public transport measures are information screens showing customers the time of the next service, proper shelters for passengers and integrated ticketing. But there is no information over how much will be invested in these basic measures in either the Four Year Plan or the most recent budget.

People have flocked to public transport over the last month, and many will want to continue using it. But with policy now seemingly dictated by a road-building authority, we’ve seen a U-turn on public transport investment in favour of buying up land for ghost motorways.

See: www.planbetter.ie

Click the link below to read the analysis by economist Matt Harley, formerly of the OECD.”

Metro North: An Analysis

NRA get toll figures wrong by 20 to 30% – but it’s taxpayers that will pay

-           On the M3 traffic is 22% below the penalty payments level

-           Traffic is 26% below the penalty payments level on the Limerick Tunnel

-           Taxpayers face a €100m bill over the life of PPP contracts based on a scenario favourable to the NRA (i.e. traffic growth assumed from 2011)

-           Arrogance and naivety of the NRA shown in toll road contracts

-           NRA continues to use discredited projections in attempting to justify further motorway

The NRA’s expectation that traffic would grow rapidly has proved hopelessly inaccurate. Figures obtained by PlanBetter, a joint initiative of four environmental organisations – An Taisce, Friends of the Earth, Friends of the Irish Environment and Feasta, show that traffic levels on the newly opened M3 and Limerick Tunnel are 20 – 30 per cent below the level at which the NRA must pay penalties to the private companies operating these roads.

Actual traffic on the M3 is 22 per cent – almost 5,000 vehicles a day – below the level at which penalty payments must be made. Traffic would have to reach 26,250 vehicles a day to avoid penalty payments; the current daily traffic is in or around 21,500.

Traffic using the Limerick tunnel is 26 per cent (3,500 vehicles) below the penalty fee level. To avoid penalty payments 17,000 need to pass through the tunnel a day; the actual traffic level is around 13,500 vehicles a day.

According to the environmental organisations, the bill to taxpayers will be at least €100m over the lifetime of the contracts but will be far higher in the event traffic levels remain static or continue to fall in coming years.

While taxpayers will have to bail out the NRA for its use of widely over-optimistic traffic growth projections, the NRA continues to use these same projections in attempting to justify motorway between Oilgate and Rosslare (N11/N25),* for example. Other sections of motorway/dual carriageway the NRA is attempting to justify based on inaccurate data include: Blarney to Patrickswell (N20), Clontribret to Moybridge (N2), the Ballyvourney motorway (N22), Abbeyfeale to Clonshire (N21), Kilmeaden to Midleton (N25), Ashbourne to Ardee (N2), and Tuam to Letterkenny (N17).

The NRA’s reputation has been holed below the waterline with these revelations. There has been a 7 per cent fall in traffic over the last two years that the NRA continues to try and ignore. Instead it uses an August 2003 growth multiplier that assumes traffic grows by more than 2 per cent every year. In failing to come clean on traffic levels, the NRA is causing itself further damage. To continue to use such forecasts, which are known to be wrong, could constitute professional misconduct. Contrast the NRA’s projections of never-ending growth with the UK, where transport planners allow for traffic decline in conducting sensitivity analyses.

Arrogance and naivety led to dreadful contracts

The NRA’s contracts display an arrogance mixed with naivety. The contracts are naive in that there is no amendment or reset clause. Because the assumed levels have been missed in the opening year, taxpayers are almost certain to be caught for penalty payments in every year. With no way to redress breaches in the year of opening, it doesn’t matter even if traffic growth resumes at the assumed level because the leap required to close the initial gap is just too large.

Failure of Government to regulate

The PPP (public private partnership) contracts highlight another failure by Government to regulate. This time a public organisation got wrapped up in the myth of high, endless levels of growth, with the same result as the banks: the public will pay.

The M3 and Limerick Tunnel contracts are proof, if proof was needed, that penalty clauses based on never-ending growth hang taxpayers out to dry. The public organisations that sign such badly-configured clauses never seem to incur any penalty; all the pain is shouldered by those already hard-pressed.

It has become increasingly clear that further large-scale road-building at a time of falling traffic is foolhardy. As oil prices rise government needs to prioritise bus investment and help people to make the transition to public transport. A sustainable vision is set out further in the policy note below.

Attribution (for above and below): Spokesperson for PlanBetter, the joint initiative of An Taisce, Friends of the Earth, Friend of the Irish Environment and Feasta.

Contact details: Miles Deas – 086 2007998. *Miles is campaigning for the enhancement of the existing N11 between Oilgate and Rosslare rather than adding an entirely separate new motorway. James Nix – 086 8394129

Policy note: Prioritising cost-effective public transport

Today, with humans causing climate change, economic growth with its ever-greater use of materials and higher traffic levels, involves plundering tomorrow’s resources in an attempt to preserve a way of life that won’t in any event be available to the generations of tomorrow. In short, our economic growth and greater use of resources steals from tomorrow in an attempt to preserve yesterday’s way of life. This is particularly evident in attempts to build more and more motorway.

Government needs to produce revised proposals for cost-effective public transport without delay. The focus must be on Advanced Bus Corridors, enhancing bus routes in Irish cities to the standard enjoyed in France, where Nantes and Rouen have shown the service improvements that can be delivered with thrifty investment.

Billions can no longer be borrowed for mega-projects, the cost-benefit studies for which were completed based on borrowing at 3 to 4 per cent whereas Ireland now faces interest rates in or around 7 per cent. Moreover, rail tunnelling projects create far fewer jobs compared to bus investment because money is sent abroad to buy tunnel-building equipment and expertise instead of being circulated and re-circulated in local economies.

The recent move to merge the RPA and NRA is welcome. It must be made explicit that Advanced Bus Corridors are within the remit of the new authority, and that the new entity will proritise their delivery across our cities. In Dublin, as a matter of urgency, a bus corridor needs to be constructed along the north wall to the mouth of the Dublin Port Tunnel in the docklands, with a corresponding corridor at from the northern side of the tunnel to Dublin Airport.