It would work if they built tunnels for cars and delivery trucks.
Has any consideration been given to construction?.
It’s all great banning cars and all but how are we going to build anything if we can’t get delivery vans/trucks to sites? How are workers supposed to commute to workplaces with vans full of tools and equipment if half the city is for bicycles and busses only?
This is absolute madness. They need to get it into their heads that nobody is driving through Dublin City Centre for shits and giggles, especially during rush hour.
If they do want to make the city centre more pedestrianised etc, there are a few simple steps they need to take beforehand
1. Plan the city to support high density and mass transit (and solves the property crisis, pension crisis, homeless crisis and energy crisis as well!)
2. Build mass transit – a city with the population of Dublin should have at least 3 underground lines and half a dozen tram lines
3. Ban buses from the city centre. Buses are for low density connections, cross-suburb and low-used routes.
Only now can you look to restrict cars. But guess what – you won’t need to! At this stage most people will be living/working/shopping/socialising or going to school on a fast and reliable public transport route or live within a few minute walk/cycle of their destination.
But no, let’s skip the required steps and go straight to “making life harder for cars” while tacking on more and more low-density developments in the country side and calling them “commuter towns” or “commercial parks” because that strategy has being working so well for the last 30 years. You almost wish they went back to the white-water rafting and let that keep them distracted from dreaming up this bullshit.
I drive up to Dublin and around the city every few weeks for work and have done for about 25 years plus.
Traffic is way lighter now than when I first started driving around the city (30 years ago) and way way lighter after covid in pretty much every place I drive (bar M50 when slow). I honestly can’t figure out what on earth the obsession with more restrictions is about bar an ideology. I’ve also driven overseas (Italy, US, Germany and a few more) and seriously, bar a few occasions, Dublin traffic is fine and more than manageable.
I deeply suspect that the more restrictive the city becomes for living and working, the more commuters and workers will quit the city and take jobs elsewhere to reverse commute. Companies are already moving out anyway to second sites post covid to get talent and that drift will only accelerate especially as public and civil servants can’t afford to live or work in the city (if have families) so have to commute by car from more far away smaller urban or rural locations in order to afford a family home. Similar for financial services which tend to have high numbers of lower and mid level employees (e
.g. BoI, AIB, ifsc support operations moved from Dublin in recent years to smaller cities/towns). Dublin office occupancy rates are the alarm that’s being ignored.
Non urban public transport services have improved, but they are not designed or can be designed around high levels of disparate comuters trying to align with offices and jobs spread across the city. Jobs and work in most activities are quite decentralised and spread out as it’s a low rise city with limitations on commercial or industrial development. And it’s what elected officials and city planners have designed so it’s on them.
We have designed the national road network (Dublin based NRA/TII) to centralise in Dublin (ignoring natural hinterlands or positioning connecting infrastructure outside the M50) e.g. Limerick/Galway/Cork to Drogheda is via M50. Sligo to South East is via M50). Not everyone feels comfortable and safe on the M50 so use town as the former main routes. On a plus, It’s driving traffic volumes at regional airports so a good thing for them.
I used to often go into town for shopping when up, never bother now as it’s a pain and know no one who does that lives in the city either. I never see people carrying the three or five bigs bags in town anymore either. It’s small discrete purchases you can bring on the bus or train. That’s got to hurt retail.
Dublin City is declining in national population and economic importance anyway (bar registered offices for financial reporting on which many economic stats are based) so they can go ahead, squeeze the city more and watch the decline accelerate.
Ultimately you get what you vote for.
Good news
But need buses and more luas’s
These are brilliant plans, I’m glad Dublin is turning into a city for people and not for cars. Will be great for buses also not to be stuck in the long traffic.
We’ll look back at this similar to Grafton/henry Street being pedestrianised , why wasn’t it done sooner.
The majority of Dubliners use public transport, walk or cycle in Dublin city. Downvote away anyone who thinks cars are more important than people living in a city.
If you want an example of an EU capital that went carless, Ljubljana. 20 years later, one of the nicest cities to visit.
Isn’t traffic through city center already a torture?
Do they think we drive for fun?
Great news but why can’t they just completely pedestrianise college green
Great. Now I will have to send my business elsewhere.
Sounds like a great idea. I’d love to see more people being forced out of cars in the city centre – greater footfall might help to curb some of the anti social behaviour and make the city more pleasant overall.
Another day another opportunity for r/Ireland to bash car owners.
I honestly don’t think we have a good enough public transport network for this stuff, but maybe these bans are what they need to make them realise that.
Bus connects, dart plus, metro all should have finished, plus more Luas lines.
This isn’t really anything to do with making the city nicer or having civic plazas is it? It’s purely to do with our emissions targets by 2030. This campaign has been well underway for years with all the plastic wands and bollards placed everywhere, useless hatch markings used to narrow 2 lanes into 1 and traffic light sequencing that creates traffic jams on relatively empty roads.
By blocking up what limited road space we already have we are just pushing that traffic onto roads less suited to contain it.
They appear to be trying to sneak in a mass 30kph speed limit too. Back in 2019 didn’t DCC push massively for this ‘Love 30’ campaign to change speed limits. As soon as they invited public consultation on the plan they were put in their place and it never came to pass in most areas.
13 comments
It would work if they built tunnels for cars and delivery trucks.
Has any consideration been given to construction?.
It’s all great banning cars and all but how are we going to build anything if we can’t get delivery vans/trucks to sites? How are workers supposed to commute to workplaces with vans full of tools and equipment if half the city is for bicycles and busses only?
This is absolute madness. They need to get it into their heads that nobody is driving through Dublin City Centre for shits and giggles, especially during rush hour.
If they do want to make the city centre more pedestrianised etc, there are a few simple steps they need to take beforehand
1. Plan the city to support high density and mass transit (and solves the property crisis, pension crisis, homeless crisis and energy crisis as well!)
2. Build mass transit – a city with the population of Dublin should have at least 3 underground lines and half a dozen tram lines
3. Ban buses from the city centre. Buses are for low density connections, cross-suburb and low-used routes.
Only now can you look to restrict cars. But guess what – you won’t need to! At this stage most people will be living/working/shopping/socialising or going to school on a fast and reliable public transport route or live within a few minute walk/cycle of their destination.
But no, let’s skip the required steps and go straight to “making life harder for cars” while tacking on more and more low-density developments in the country side and calling them “commuter towns” or “commercial parks” because that strategy has being working so well for the last 30 years. You almost wish they went back to the white-water rafting and let that keep them distracted from dreaming up this bullshit.
I drive up to Dublin and around the city every few weeks for work and have done for about 25 years plus.
Traffic is way lighter now than when I first started driving around the city (30 years ago) and way way lighter after covid in pretty much every place I drive (bar M50 when slow). I honestly can’t figure out what on earth the obsession with more restrictions is about bar an ideology. I’ve also driven overseas (Italy, US, Germany and a few more) and seriously, bar a few occasions, Dublin traffic is fine and more than manageable.
I deeply suspect that the more restrictive the city becomes for living and working, the more commuters and workers will quit the city and take jobs elsewhere to reverse commute. Companies are already moving out anyway to second sites post covid to get talent and that drift will only accelerate especially as public and civil servants can’t afford to live or work in the city (if have families) so have to commute by car from more far away smaller urban or rural locations in order to afford a family home. Similar for financial services which tend to have high numbers of lower and mid level employees (e
.g. BoI, AIB, ifsc support operations moved from Dublin in recent years to smaller cities/towns). Dublin office occupancy rates are the alarm that’s being ignored.
Non urban public transport services have improved, but they are not designed or can be designed around high levels of disparate comuters trying to align with offices and jobs spread across the city. Jobs and work in most activities are quite decentralised and spread out as it’s a low rise city with limitations on commercial or industrial development. And it’s what elected officials and city planners have designed so it’s on them.
We have designed the national road network (Dublin based NRA/TII) to centralise in Dublin (ignoring natural hinterlands or positioning connecting infrastructure outside the M50) e.g. Limerick/Galway/Cork to Drogheda is via M50. Sligo to South East is via M50). Not everyone feels comfortable and safe on the M50 so use town as the former main routes. On a plus, It’s driving traffic volumes at regional airports so a good thing for them.
I used to often go into town for shopping when up, never bother now as it’s a pain and know no one who does that lives in the city either. I never see people carrying the three or five bigs bags in town anymore either. It’s small discrete purchases you can bring on the bus or train. That’s got to hurt retail.
Dublin City is declining in national population and economic importance anyway (bar registered offices for financial reporting on which many economic stats are based) so they can go ahead, squeeze the city more and watch the decline accelerate.
Ultimately you get what you vote for.
Good news
But need buses and more luas’s
These are brilliant plans, I’m glad Dublin is turning into a city for people and not for cars. Will be great for buses also not to be stuck in the long traffic.
We’ll look back at this similar to Grafton/henry Street being pedestrianised , why wasn’t it done sooner.
The majority of Dubliners use public transport, walk or cycle in Dublin city. Downvote away anyone who thinks cars are more important than people living in a city.
If you want an example of an EU capital that went carless, Ljubljana. 20 years later, one of the nicest cities to visit.
Isn’t traffic through city center already a torture?
Do they think we drive for fun?
Great news but why can’t they just completely pedestrianise college green
Great. Now I will have to send my business elsewhere.
Sounds like a great idea. I’d love to see more people being forced out of cars in the city centre – greater footfall might help to curb some of the anti social behaviour and make the city more pleasant overall.
Another day another opportunity for r/Ireland to bash car owners.
I honestly don’t think we have a good enough public transport network for this stuff, but maybe these bans are what they need to make them realise that.
Bus connects, dart plus, metro all should have finished, plus more Luas lines.
This isn’t really anything to do with making the city nicer or having civic plazas is it? It’s purely to do with our emissions targets by 2030. This campaign has been well underway for years with all the plastic wands and bollards placed everywhere, useless hatch markings used to narrow 2 lanes into 1 and traffic light sequencing that creates traffic jams on relatively empty roads.
By blocking up what limited road space we already have we are just pushing that traffic onto roads less suited to contain it.
They appear to be trying to sneak in a mass 30kph speed limit too. Back in 2019 didn’t DCC push massively for this ‘Love 30’ campaign to change speed limits. As soon as they invited public consultation on the plan they were put in their place and it never came to pass in most areas.