The mad fucker, look at him trying to do what he was elected to do.
Surely there will also be a investment into a more reliable and wider available public transport system as well, right?
Eamon?
RIGHT?
A good start would be implementing a public transport system that makes it easy to get around without having to drive
Yeah makes sense.
I mean by 2030 there’ll be regular trains linking towns across the country.
Cork to Galway direct line.
Carlow to Portlaoise direct train.
Oh wait. They still count commuter towns as intercity journeys and it costs huge money to travel by the train.
Bus services are a joke.
People won’t give up cars until there are viable alternatives.
Public transportation in the country is third world country standards. My connecting bus didn’t show and I was waiting 4 hours in the snow for the next one.
Drive your cars, warm the environment. I don’t care. The government needs to step up.
Oh great. There will be cycle lanes and proper public transport in all gridlocked cities, not just dublin. Right?
“We are going to take cars off poor people”
“I believe that God above is in control of the weather” ~ Danny Healy-Rae on Climate Change
If his solution is anything like the usual “tax motorists into oblivion” then he can absolutely go fuck himself.
To be fair to him, I would love more cars to be off the road but the public transport in this country is nowhere near ready for that
[deleted]
There are exactly zero public transport options available to me. I’d have to walk a mile on a dangerous B road with no lighting or footpaths to get a bus. Rural dwellers just get the costs loaded on to fossil fuels without any of the transport options.
Is he leaving up to someone else to solve the “how” part of it ?
With the amount of immigration we have, there will be more cars in the road by 2030 if they don’t fix public transport
Public transport is a joke in this country. Fuck Eamon Ryan.
From the man and Department whose other achievements include:
>**Ireland is one of just two nations that have failed to apply** for a key European Commission funding initiative aimed at ensuring continuity of energy supply in the wake of the Russia/Ukraine war.
>The biomethane section of REPowerEU has a budget of €35bn alone. **Ireland’s potential funding from that budget is estimated at €800m in capital funding and a further €1.3bn in future supports**.
>Ireland’s Department of the Environment **waited three weeks into a four-week submission period before consulting its own competent authority** regarding a €35bn EU renewable energy fund
He is nowhere good enough for the urgent & serious role he is in.
So bad at it, that I think he has besmirched the Irish people’s idea of how green policies can be done.
I don’t think he knows the difference between ‘the carrot’ and ‘the stick’, nevermind the judicious use of either.
I wish that leadership challenge kicked him out those 3 years ago.
He’d want to attack the people as much as he can in the next two years, because there’s a fair chance there will never be a Green Party TD elected again outside Dublin.
I really hope we can, Dublin is one of the most congested cities in the entire EU and we’re decades and decades deep in car-dependent architecture and all of the new developments “for first time buyers” are completely car-dependent with no public transport options. Sure it’s only 20 minutes by car, if you leave the house at 5am and there’s no traffic is not acceptable.
We can’t expect to increase our population by millions and ignore the inefficient use of space roads, cars and traffic are. The only way to make cars work in city centres is to bulldoze the entire city, fill the canals with cement and build American style nightmare cities. Public transport is the only answer.
Subjecting new families to 2hr+ commutes each way, but sure it’s grand because it’s a new house in the back-arse of Kildare isn’t an answer. It’s enforced social isolation and its destructive, separating parents from their children for 11 hours 5 days a week, revoking independence from children and being handcuffed to their parents to get anywhere or do anything.
What parent is going to take their child to a hobby or sport after spending 2hrs in a car commuting home?
We need to build and act radically different to how we have been for the last numerous decades, and I doubt we’ll be able to do it, but I hope we can because it’s probably the single biggest issue facing Ireland today. Solving the housing crisis means solving the infrastructure crisis. Public transport and walkable communities is the only option.
More trains plz
In the middle of towns and cities, absolutely.
Can’t wait till my car is gone and travel 240 kms a day on public transport which would involve me walking 42KM to the closest bus stop, take the Luas from the Red Cow to city center and another hour on Dublin Bus. So much better than driving the knob head.
Two things Eamon Ryan et al always seem to forget about private cars:
1. People like being able to leave their homes and get to a place on their own timetable. If your public transport timetable is broadly similar, it would be compelling but what you’re asking for is akin to asking those with their own horse and cart 150 years ago to sell it and put their trust in a nascent network of coaches and railways. Sure it might have been *possible* but no-one in their right mind would have done so because they had their own transport, from where they were to where they wanted to go. Compromising on this is a step backwards for many, if not most.
2. Any country with excellent public transport or active travel facilities that are well-used i.e. walking and cycling always has an excellent road network that’s also well-used. Take a look at this [Eurostat map](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/10321599/Motorway+density%2C+2018/914a0627-d61f-5e57-1bc6-7899b39acee2?t=1590594662121) of motorway density around Europe; the Netherlands – home of the world’s most extensive cycle network – is distinctly darker than it’s neighbours because they also have an excellent motorway system that arguably allows the space for things like bike networks around the country.
3. Any country with excellent public transport also has plenty of private cars. Ireland has 535 cars per 1,000 people, Denmark is pretty much the same (540) despite superior public transport throughout the country and the Netherlands, who are even better at public transport, has 588. Even Switzerland, known for its extensive train network, has 604 cars per 1,000 people.
The number and frequency of buses and trains won’t make a blind bit of difference to people’s car ownership habits, nor will telling people they have to give up their cars. Put in the infrastructure, make public transport better and people will patronise it if it makes sense for them. But they will still, as we’ve seen across Europe, want to keep the freedom of a private car. Eamon Ryan might focus on preventing second cars in densely urban areas but beyond that, I think he’s quite misguided.
If he’s worried about vehicle emissions, then drop VRT on EVs like he should have 3 years ago, make ICE cars prohibitively expensive and then set about decarbonising the electricity powering these EVs. People will compromise to drive electric but they won’t give up their cars, that’s just fantasy.
Fantastic news, give that road space over to bikes with segregated infrastructure. Next let’s target on street parking, absolute joke.
Give everyone a free bike. It would be great. I think it would save lives and have tremendous health benefits to everyone. Obviously we need emergency vehicles and the like. But I think it would really incentivise people to take the bike instead of driving if everyone did it.
Fuck off Eamon
Maybe more trains first and reliable buses. There’s not even a train to go to the airport.
One word, railways.
A proper public transport system and safe cycle lanes and I would have no need for a car.
I rarely use public transport. Went into town with my wife the other day. Bus was to arrive at a certain time. Walked to the stop, 2 minutes from my house.
It was freezing, but I’m okay with that because the bus was scheduled to come in 5 mins. 25 mins pass and the bus is a no-show.
Had to get an Uber.
Public transport is shite. I think it’s a big inconvenience. I’ll take my car into town and happily pay a tenner for parking until there’s a major improvement.
Hah, it’s like the goal is to just make life worse for people, absolutely no new infrastructure anywhere but let’s make things awkward and shit for everyone until they give up and just stay at home…
Eamon Ryan should experience reaching the bus stop and seeing that his bus has been cancelled. Then see the next one go by full 15 minutes later. In the rain.
I use my car very little, but I enjoy owning it as an enthusiast.
I don’t really disagree with all of the comments around moving to more cycling, walking etc, largely o agree with many of them.
What I don’t get is why none of the other “bad” things in life are slated in the same way as the car. Tourism, meat industry, pets, buying so much crap we don’t all need – all of this has a similar, sometimes greater impact on climate and wellbeing than driving a car, yet there’s no rules limiting usage or consumption as there is for the car. I never understand why, especially as without the things society would basically collapse in on itself.
Can we start by cutting the fleet of government cars. Let them take public transport for a change.
Fuck Eamon Ryan
Build out the train and light rail network.
Cork and Galway in particular would benefit massively from a Luas style setup but they just won’t make the commitment.
They’re messing around with bus routes to see if the demand is there in Cork atm but light rail and bus routes are utterly different when it comes to reliability so it seems its just a piss poor means test from what I can make out.
Blackpool through to carrigaline (via pairs ui caoimhe and Douglas)
City center to the airport (spur off the other line maybe)
Little Island to ballincollig close to Glanmire, train station, college(s) and hospital.
Parking lots at all ends. Keep traffic out of the city.
Well good luck with that. The amount of people that have been forced away from the city due to high cost of living and lack of affordable accommodation, it’ll be difficult to take cars off the roads.
Started cycling when I moved to Ireland and it has been life changing. I am way more healthy and save tons of money on petrol. I still have 1 car for when I really need to drive somewhere, but always go with the bicycle whenever I can.
I’ve also given up the vast majority of my beef intake and that has also been great for my health.
Many of the things we can do to help climate also help individual health. Too many people are bringing their 1900s mindsets into discussions when its 2022 and almost 2023.
Our capital city falls behind the rest of Europe with all methods of transport. It is far too large to not have a deeply ingrained light rail network, i.e. metro.
We suck at trains, needs no qualifications.
Country-wide, we look at buses as the only viable alternative to cars.
We have a public resistant to spending on biking infrastructure, and a media more than happy to rile them up over nonsense.
There is a good 15 years work to be done, and I’ve watched them ignore that for over 20 years.
A new government that is unattached to FF/FG is the only thing I will believe on changes to policies and infrastructure that will actually benefit a majority of people.
Build some train lines then you thick
The green party have some good ideas but no plans for those ideas. If you want more cars off the road then improve the public transport.
39 comments
The mad fucker, look at him trying to do what he was elected to do.
Surely there will also be a investment into a more reliable and wider available public transport system as well, right?
Eamon?
RIGHT?
A good start would be implementing a public transport system that makes it easy to get around without having to drive
Yeah makes sense.
I mean by 2030 there’ll be regular trains linking towns across the country.
Cork to Galway direct line.
Carlow to Portlaoise direct train.
Oh wait. They still count commuter towns as intercity journeys and it costs huge money to travel by the train.
Bus services are a joke.
People won’t give up cars until there are viable alternatives.
Public transportation in the country is third world country standards. My connecting bus didn’t show and I was waiting 4 hours in the snow for the next one.
Drive your cars, warm the environment. I don’t care. The government needs to step up.
Oh great. There will be cycle lanes and proper public transport in all gridlocked cities, not just dublin. Right?
“We are going to take cars off poor people”
“I believe that God above is in control of the weather” ~ Danny Healy-Rae on Climate Change
If his solution is anything like the usual “tax motorists into oblivion” then he can absolutely go fuck himself.
To be fair to him, I would love more cars to be off the road but the public transport in this country is nowhere near ready for that
[deleted]
There are exactly zero public transport options available to me. I’d have to walk a mile on a dangerous B road with no lighting or footpaths to get a bus. Rural dwellers just get the costs loaded on to fossil fuels without any of the transport options.
Is he leaving up to someone else to solve the “how” part of it ?
With the amount of immigration we have, there will be more cars in the road by 2030 if they don’t fix public transport
Public transport is a joke in this country. Fuck Eamon Ryan.
From the man and Department whose other achievements include:
>**Ireland is one of just two nations that have failed to apply** for a key European Commission funding initiative aimed at ensuring continuity of energy supply in the wake of the Russia/Ukraine war.
>The biomethane section of REPowerEU has a budget of €35bn alone. **Ireland’s potential funding from that budget is estimated at €800m in capital funding and a further €1.3bn in future supports**.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40961645.html
>Ireland’s Department of the Environment **waited three weeks into a four-week submission period before consulting its own competent authority** regarding a €35bn EU renewable energy fund
https://www.bioenergy-news.com/news/irish-government-fails-to-apply-for-repowereu-funding/
He is nowhere good enough for the urgent & serious role he is in.
So bad at it, that I think he has besmirched the Irish people’s idea of how green policies can be done.
I don’t think he knows the difference between ‘the carrot’ and ‘the stick’, nevermind the judicious use of either.
I wish that leadership challenge kicked him out those 3 years ago.
He’d want to attack the people as much as he can in the next two years, because there’s a fair chance there will never be a Green Party TD elected again outside Dublin.
I really hope we can, Dublin is one of the most congested cities in the entire EU and we’re decades and decades deep in car-dependent architecture and all of the new developments “for first time buyers” are completely car-dependent with no public transport options. Sure it’s only 20 minutes by car, if you leave the house at 5am and there’s no traffic is not acceptable.
We can’t expect to increase our population by millions and ignore the inefficient use of space roads, cars and traffic are. The only way to make cars work in city centres is to bulldoze the entire city, fill the canals with cement and build American style nightmare cities. Public transport is the only answer.
Subjecting new families to 2hr+ commutes each way, but sure it’s grand because it’s a new house in the back-arse of Kildare isn’t an answer. It’s enforced social isolation and its destructive, separating parents from their children for 11 hours 5 days a week, revoking independence from children and being handcuffed to their parents to get anywhere or do anything.
What parent is going to take their child to a hobby or sport after spending 2hrs in a car commuting home?
We need to build and act radically different to how we have been for the last numerous decades, and I doubt we’ll be able to do it, but I hope we can because it’s probably the single biggest issue facing Ireland today. Solving the housing crisis means solving the infrastructure crisis. Public transport and walkable communities is the only option.
More trains plz
In the middle of towns and cities, absolutely.
Can’t wait till my car is gone and travel 240 kms a day on public transport which would involve me walking 42KM to the closest bus stop, take the Luas from the Red Cow to city center and another hour on Dublin Bus. So much better than driving the knob head.
Two things Eamon Ryan et al always seem to forget about private cars:
1. People like being able to leave their homes and get to a place on their own timetable. If your public transport timetable is broadly similar, it would be compelling but what you’re asking for is akin to asking those with their own horse and cart 150 years ago to sell it and put their trust in a nascent network of coaches and railways. Sure it might have been *possible* but no-one in their right mind would have done so because they had their own transport, from where they were to where they wanted to go. Compromising on this is a step backwards for many, if not most.
2. Any country with excellent public transport or active travel facilities that are well-used i.e. walking and cycling always has an excellent road network that’s also well-used. Take a look at this [Eurostat map](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/10321599/Motorway+density%2C+2018/914a0627-d61f-5e57-1bc6-7899b39acee2?t=1590594662121) of motorway density around Europe; the Netherlands – home of the world’s most extensive cycle network – is distinctly darker than it’s neighbours because they also have an excellent motorway system that arguably allows the space for things like bike networks around the country.
3. Any country with excellent public transport also has plenty of private cars. Ireland has 535 cars per 1,000 people, Denmark is pretty much the same (540) despite superior public transport throughout the country and the Netherlands, who are even better at public transport, has 588. Even Switzerland, known for its extensive train network, has 604 cars per 1,000 people.
The number and frequency of buses and trains won’t make a blind bit of difference to people’s car ownership habits, nor will telling people they have to give up their cars. Put in the infrastructure, make public transport better and people will patronise it if it makes sense for them. But they will still, as we’ve seen across Europe, want to keep the freedom of a private car. Eamon Ryan might focus on preventing second cars in densely urban areas but beyond that, I think he’s quite misguided.
If he’s worried about vehicle emissions, then drop VRT on EVs like he should have 3 years ago, make ICE cars prohibitively expensive and then set about decarbonising the electricity powering these EVs. People will compromise to drive electric but they won’t give up their cars, that’s just fantasy.
Fantastic news, give that road space over to bikes with segregated infrastructure. Next let’s target on street parking, absolute joke.
Give everyone a free bike. It would be great. I think it would save lives and have tremendous health benefits to everyone. Obviously we need emergency vehicles and the like. But I think it would really incentivise people to take the bike instead of driving if everyone did it.
Fuck off Eamon
Maybe more trains first and reliable buses. There’s not even a train to go to the airport.
One word, railways.
A proper public transport system and safe cycle lanes and I would have no need for a car.
I rarely use public transport. Went into town with my wife the other day. Bus was to arrive at a certain time. Walked to the stop, 2 minutes from my house.
It was freezing, but I’m okay with that because the bus was scheduled to come in 5 mins. 25 mins pass and the bus is a no-show.
Had to get an Uber.
Public transport is shite. I think it’s a big inconvenience. I’ll take my car into town and happily pay a tenner for parking until there’s a major improvement.
Hah, it’s like the goal is to just make life worse for people, absolutely no new infrastructure anywhere but let’s make things awkward and shit for everyone until they give up and just stay at home…
Eamon Ryan should experience reaching the bus stop and seeing that his bus has been cancelled. Then see the next one go by full 15 minutes later. In the rain.
I use my car very little, but I enjoy owning it as an enthusiast.
I don’t really disagree with all of the comments around moving to more cycling, walking etc, largely o agree with many of them.
What I don’t get is why none of the other “bad” things in life are slated in the same way as the car. Tourism, meat industry, pets, buying so much crap we don’t all need – all of this has a similar, sometimes greater impact on climate and wellbeing than driving a car, yet there’s no rules limiting usage or consumption as there is for the car. I never understand why, especially as without the things society would basically collapse in on itself.
Can we start by cutting the fleet of government cars. Let them take public transport for a change.
Fuck Eamon Ryan
Build out the train and light rail network.
Cork and Galway in particular would benefit massively from a Luas style setup but they just won’t make the commitment.
They’re messing around with bus routes to see if the demand is there in Cork atm but light rail and bus routes are utterly different when it comes to reliability so it seems its just a piss poor means test from what I can make out.
Blackpool through to carrigaline (via pairs ui caoimhe and Douglas)
City center to the airport (spur off the other line maybe)
Little Island to ballincollig close to Glanmire, train station, college(s) and hospital.
Parking lots at all ends. Keep traffic out of the city.
Well good luck with that. The amount of people that have been forced away from the city due to high cost of living and lack of affordable accommodation, it’ll be difficult to take cars off the roads.
Started cycling when I moved to Ireland and it has been life changing. I am way more healthy and save tons of money on petrol. I still have 1 car for when I really need to drive somewhere, but always go with the bicycle whenever I can.
I’ve also given up the vast majority of my beef intake and that has also been great for my health.
Many of the things we can do to help climate also help individual health. Too many people are bringing their 1900s mindsets into discussions when its 2022 and almost 2023.
Our capital city falls behind the rest of Europe with all methods of transport. It is far too large to not have a deeply ingrained light rail network, i.e. metro.
We suck at trains, needs no qualifications.
Country-wide, we look at buses as the only viable alternative to cars.
We have a public resistant to spending on biking infrastructure, and a media more than happy to rile them up over nonsense.
There is a good 15 years work to be done, and I’ve watched them ignore that for over 20 years.
A new government that is unattached to FF/FG is the only thing I will believe on changes to policies and infrastructure that will actually benefit a majority of people.
Build some train lines then you thick
The green party have some good ideas but no plans for those ideas. If you want more cars off the road then improve the public transport.