David McWilliams: Is it any wonder that Ireland’s public transport is among the worst in Europe?

15 comments

1. I hear the buses on Svalbard are pretty shit.

2. Mc Williams and pay wall, ooooo I’d put salt in your tea and serve it with semi skimmed milk.

3. Except they actually aren’t.

4. Yeah but it’s not as bad as Uganda’s so it’s actually brilliant, or something…

5. Was in Holland and Belgium recently, big and small towns and the public transport systems are so good.

   Like it’s not a joke how bad so many things are in this country, for all the wealth we supposedly possess, NOTHING is done for the public good

6. Am I 40 now? I now recognise a journalists name?

   If I am 40 I’ll happily go under, unlike wickerman

   But maybe you all should fuck off back to the boards ?

7. Shut up dave

8. There was a point when we could seriously argue that we were “catching up” on our public infrastructure, but that point isn’t now. Not only are we lagging behind many European western states, bombed to oblivion in the 40s, but we are falling behind countries like Serbia, who are either building a metro faster with an economy less than half the size of our own, or Spain, who are just generally building much faster than we are alongside many other poorer countries 

   This is not to mention all the post soviet hellscapes, who have better public transport at an economic output per capita that we attained in the early 90’s. 

   We could easily have among the best public transport on the planet, but we refuse to simply because it involves an ounce of strategic planning and prioritisation of national projects over fixing the road in your local constituency or other local issues.

   Parochial electioneering has had such a stranglehold over the countries infrastructure that, for example,  the second largest railway company in Ireland in 1911 had both more railways and rolling stock than the entire network has today. This is also around the same year the first proposals for the Dublin metro appeared, mind you. 

   I don’t see this or any other major statistic improving without genuine political reform, so that we view infrastructure projects as part of the public good, and planned as such, not as minor nuisances we can start building in 30 years. 

9. People should look at the all island strategic rail review, it’s genuinely a fantastic plan and if implemented Ireland would have a railway system on par with the rest of Europe

10. Look at Grange Road in Rathfarnham, about 3 years later and how many millions and its no better, a fee speckled meters of bike lanes and buses and cars are still as slow. Our transport planning overall is brutal

11. Why oh why do people take anything this muppet says with any credibility? He’s a failed economist, a failed agent provocateur and now a clickbait gobshite for the last few years.

    He’s at the level of a reporter for the S*n spouting utter bollox that riles up the morons.

12. Because no one will invest in a decent rail network

13. The only problem is it costs in a country like Ireland where the population is so spread out .

14. You can’t expect the state to invest in things that benefit you the tax payer. How would your hard earned cash make into their friends pockets if they did that.

15. Ireland can’t do transport and it is going to be the countries downfall in the long term.

    Bus connects: a joke
    Road network: was going good until roads because the bold child of the family for the blessing heart brigade
    Trains: yeah good one.
    Subway: not in anyone’s lifetime.