Kevin Cannon: Why the future of public transport is brighter than you think
Buses now have wifi and USB charging points on buses, 24-hour routes, real-time displays, and integrated ticketing. Picture: Larry Cummins
I used to spend three hours a day, five days a week, taking the bus from Tallaght to Dublin City University. This was in the time before smartphones, and doing this trip every day for years gives you lots of time to think about how things could be better.
I never would have dreamed back then that we’d have wifi and USB charging points on buses, 24-hour routes, real-time displays, integrated ticketing and maybe, just maybe, the emergence of something resembling a good countrywide public transport service.
We often look at our European neighbours with envy at their trams, metros and integrated transport services. We love to complain that we have the only capital city in Europe without a rail connection to the airport, or that we had a more extensive rail network in 1920, but beyond those notable issues it is also interesting to look at where we’re actually getting better, and why the future of public transport in Ireland is brighter than you might think.
The headlines often miss many of the slow, boring, systemic changes that are happening, and I’d like to highlight a few of them.
In 1986, Córas Iompair Éireann (CIE), the State body for transport, was broken up into Dublin Bus, Iarnród Éireann, and Bus Éireann. This created a balkanised public transport system, where fares weren’t integrated, planning wasn’t centralised, and bus and rail networks competed with each other, rather than working together towards a common goal. This was the era of privatisation, and the expectation was that those companies might one day be sold off.
This single decision set us back decades.
In 2009 the National Transport Authority (NTA) was established, and subsequently expanded over the following years. For the first time in a long time, we now have a relatively centralised body, which is planning, advising and implementing transport in Ireland.
The NTA was specifically set up to think longer term, beyond any one government term, in order to avoid the trap of short-termism that dominated transport planning in the past.
The Leap Card started as a very modest Dublin Bus cash alternative and has slowly and quietly expanded to different cities and services. This reveals a shocking secret that we do, in fact, have an integrated technology connecting many transport services.
Future improvements will see debit and credit cards accepted as payment, better fares and increased availability of these technologies on even more services. As a bonus, this technology enables faster on/off boarding, which speeds up journey times.
Modern new trains and electric buses will be delivered over the next few years. In a first for Irish Rail, new Dart carriages will have level boarding, giving wheelchair users more independence.
Currently, there are many different companies, websites, apps and brands to deal with when getting around the country. This is all being consolidated under the Transport for Ireland (TFI) brand and follows best practices that you see in countries like Denmark and Sweden.
The transport networks in Ireland in the past have a few critical flaws. One is that everything is Dublin-centric and unless your route is to/from Dublin, your options are limited or non-existent.
The other is that routes meandered around to suit whichever constituency lobbied hardest to run a route past their front door. This resulted in zombie routes that ended up serving everyone, but pleasing no one.
Both of these issues are being slowly remedied. In Dublin, the BusConnects network redesign, which is now rolling out, radically rethought the Dublin bus network from the ground up, connecting schools, workplaces, and new housing areas.
The network redesign has been one of the largest consultations the State has ever done, and three rounds of public consultation resulted in significant amendments arising from the concerns and feedback received from members of the public.
A similar process is now happening with the Cork bus network, and the entire rural bus network under the Connecting Ireland plan, followed by other cities and towns.
While I am aiming to highlight the many good things that are happening, it is worth taking a moment too, to show where challenges are.
The biggest is with infrastructure. Big, expensive projects like MetroLink, Dart Underground, Cork Luas as well as various other rail upgrades tend to get the long finger.
Additionally, walking and cycling, which act as feeders into public transport, are overlooked in many parts of the country. To get people to switch to public transport, we need to make sure people's entire end-to-end journey works.
Also, it is critical that we shift to a transport-orientated development, so that homes, offices and amenities are built beside transport hubs. So many train stations in this country are in isolated locations with single-storey houses beside them, which isn’t sustainable and wastes investment in infrastructure.
Ultimately, all of these individual changes may seem trivial by themselves, but when viewed together, a clear integrated strategy comes into view. Make no mistake, a modern, integrated public transport system is being built in Ireland, and in a few years, we’re all going to wake up and be surprised by where it came from.
- Kevin Cannon is a campaigner for better public transport and active travel and works closely with groups like the Dublin, Cork and Galway Commuter Coalitions
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