A better development policy: Adding fuel to commuter nightmare

The failure of Madrid’s UN climate talks to reach a consensus showed how national interests prevailed though the need for collective, transformative change grows more pressing by the day.

This urgency is driven by relentless human population growth — most other species are in decline because of it — and the demands that imposes on our planet. That growth manifests itself in many ways. Few are attractive.

One is how commuters face ever-lengthening journeys in time and distance between home and work. It is not uncommon to spend several hours a day — maybe a full working day each week — in the purgatory commonly known as rush hour traffic or maybe a commuter train where a seat is as rare as an affordable house near a busy city centre.

This is hardly a victory for civilisation and it may well be that we do not yet appreciate the long-term toll this imposes on physical or mental health.

This tightening noose has informed a Department of Transport report on traffic deadlock. Its conclusions mean that congestion charges, parking bans and charges to use toll-free roads will be considered as antidotes. Analysis in Dublin, Cork, and Galway shows that many commuter roads rate category five or six on a congestion scale where one is the best and six the worst.

The department estimates traffic congestion will cost the greater Dublin area around €2bn a year before the end of the next decade so radical reform is inevitable.

One obvious response is to encourage no-commute working or study. As technology makes many workers’ physical presence in an office superfluous that will reduce commuter congestion but that needs a significant cultural shift, reliable broadband, and better psychological preparation for the isolation home working might bring.

Another response, one that should come irrespective of urban congestion, is a more nuanced promotion if industrial development. IDA figures show that almost half of all site visits made in Ireland by multinationals in the first nine months of 2019 concentrated on the greater Dublin area — the very area where the commuting garrotte tightens by the month and houses are beyond the reach of anyone on a modest income.

It seems, despite the obvious and attractive synergies, unwise to throw more fuel on that fire, to put even more pressure on the transport and housing infrastructure struggling to serve the capital, its population too.

That ratio may echo the proportion of country’s population living in that area but that is surely the problem. A policy that would encourage greater development away from the east coast concentration would have myriad benefits, so much so that tiered tax incentives may be justified.

That argument is strengthened by comparing the impact a new industry might have in one of the scores of towns struggling against the odds to remain vibrant. Imagine the uplift a 500-job project would have in, say, Mitchelstown, Rathdowney or Listowel.

It would dwarf the impact yet another Pale project might have. Indeed, rather than provoke a need for new housing or school places it might rejuvenate facilities already in existence.