E&Y: Free public transport would reduce car travel by only 1%

Concrete said:
I disagree strongly with this particular statement.
It's not buses, bikes or pedestrians that are blocking up our public roads (and paths) morning, noon and night.
It's our cars when we choose to use them instead of other options (and in the cities there often are other good options for a lot of people). We need to put suitable incentives/disincentives in place to change this usage.
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As long as cars remain the primary source of transport, then they get to use the majority of the roads - its that simple, really.

The Government has failed, miserably, with regards to roll out of significant additional public transport. Funding is not an acceptable reason for failure, given the various options avaliable. We should be looking at extensions being added to the existing light rail and tram lines, along with at least a half dozen new light rail or tram lines being developed in the greater Dubin area, alone. A similar number should also be in progress, shared between Cork, Limerick and Galway, with more traditional train services and bus services increased, across the majority of other national routes.

Bicycles are only a very small part of the overall solution, and as things stand, it looks to me like we are spending a small fortune (both directly on infrastructure, and indirectly, in terms of loss of productivity through liberty commute times), in the hope that large numbers of additional cycle journeys will occur, in the future.
 
MrEarl said:
Bicycles are only a very small part of the overall solution, and as things stand, it looks to me like we are spending a small fortune (both directly on infrastructure, and indirectly, in terms of loss of productivity through liberty commute times), in the hope that large numbers of additional cycle journeys will occur, in the future.
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Sorry - I don't understand your point here at all - could you explain a bit more? (e.g. what's "liberty commute times"?)
 
wondering said:
I also think they should get mini-buses for routes that don't have high-volume, and run them more regularly as well, rather than the current situation of using the full size buses going only once every hour or so.
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Great point. We were in Zakopane in Poland during the mid 2000s and there was a network of local shuttle bus services there that operated exclusively via minibuses. Basically if you wanted to go somewhere, you went to a bus stop and more often than not there was a minibus waiting for you, otherwise one would arrive shortly. And they would move minibuses from low to high demand routes at very short notice. It was ingenious.
 
John Locke said:
Cars are not the primary source of transport, at least in Dublin city centre. cite: https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Canal-Cordon-Report-2019-V3.pdf
More people travel by bus alone than by private car during morning rush hour (7-10 am).
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Nice report you linked!
I think it's easy to assume that because the roads are full of cars that's how the majority are travelling but they've often only got 1 or 2 people in them compared to 90 or so in a full double-decker. If each of those 90 people were instead in an individual car, that'd take up close to half a kilometer of road...
It also shows that (in 2019, morning rush-hour, Dublin city) there were ⅔ as many people walking/cycling as travelling by private car, so a really significant percentage.
Or, more simply...
 
Concrete said:
Sorry - I don't understand your point here at all - could you explain a bit more? (e.g. what's "liberty commute times"?)
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Whoops.

Sorry, afraid autocorrect seems to have gone a bit nuts, when I was posting that on my phone, earlier - it should refer to loss on commute times (ie workers, deliveries all stuck in traffic for longer periods, so productivity drops and that costs the overall economy).
 
John Locke said:
Cars are not the primary source of transport, at least in Dublin city centre. cite: https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Canal-Cordon-Report-2019-V3.pdf
More people travel by bus alone than by private car during morning rush hour (7-10 am).
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I think we need to be talking about all of Ireland here, not just Dublin.

I live in Dublin, so take your point, to a degree, but you'll no doubt appreciate that Dubin is light years ahead of the rest of the country, despite not being where it should be with regards to public transport etc.
 
Smart traffic lights. Instead of just working on a timer they have cameras to determine queue lengths and to adjust green light times accordingly. Do they exist. ? Indeed at quiet times they could monitor and if they see no cars waiting just leave the lane with traffic moving . How many times have you had to stop at a red light when there’s nothing to come through on the other side ? That’s bad for time and environment efficiencies , i.e stop starting a car is very inefficient. Cars use a lot of energy to get moving. Keep them moving.

As for minibuses , didn’t we have them ?, slightly bigger perhaps. Called city imps. Why weren’t they a success ?
 
The City Imps were very uncomfortable for taller people. Fine, if you wanted to shuttle a bunch of ten years around, though!

Good suggestion about the traffic lights, btw!
 
MrEarl said:
I think we need to be talking about all of Ireland here, not just Dublin.
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There's a location down the country I used to travel to by bus regularly because buses went a few times a week. Low demand - only about a dozen regulars I'd say - meant they cut the service to only once a week.

I thought it very short-sighted, as if fallen demand at a particular time meant there would never be demand again.
One thing that guarantees low demand anyway is lack of availability, so that anyone from that area now has lifts organised or 2nd car purchased, or taxi ordered.

Again, a minibus here would have been perfect instead of cutting the service.
 
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