Walking is cheap, but the Dublin bikes system is a far more effective means of getting around the city centre and hopefully soon not just the centre. A bike-rental scheme would probably work even better in Cork, Galway and Limerick given how much smaller these cities are. This conversation is also entirely moot as it is making national headlines that they have found 36 million euro down the back of the sofa to pay for redundancies.
The point I was trying to make is that we are past the era of mega-projects and given Irish Rail's record of spending vast amounts of money and ending up with little or nothing in service improvements to show for it, it is time to think of smaller projects that achieve a good proportion of the same objectives.
In my opinion, it is a waste of money to be investing in building further motorways, but it is not much less wasteful to be investing billions in a tunnel to nowhere (particularly when a similar tunnel AND a tram line largely achieve the same purpose already) and/or billions more in a single rail-line that makes the tunnel somewhat useful.
The public transport system in Dublin is a shambles and is getting worse. My personal experience of Dublin Bus recently has been limited to around City West and while the Luas offers a frequent but slow service if you are within walking distance of the line, the bus-service is a disaster and has gotten drastically worse over the last couple of years.
The same is repeated all around the city. If you are to make public transport a viable option for the vast majority of Dublin's population, what money there is needs to be spent on improving the bus network and possible on some tram lines. Blowing the whole lot on a single line to one area of the city is simply not fair and this is what I was alluding to when I made the comment about taxes and their distribution.
Sure it would be nice and shiny to have a rail tunnel under the city and we could all have some fun on the underground but in terms of practical benefits, it would achieve a lot more to spend the money in a way that helps the population of the entire city.
|