Dublin has been ranked almost bottom of the pile in a European-wide study of the availability of zero-emissions and shared transport in cities.
The Clean Cities Campaign, a European coalition of more than 80 civil society organisations campaigning for zero-emission urban mobility, has ranked 42 cities on their progress towards facilitating sustainable transport choices, and has placed Dublin in 41st place.
The research focused on four initiatives: the availability of shared bikes or scooters; the use of zero-emissions buses; shared electric vehicle (EV) schemes; and the availability of EV charging points.
Overall Copenhagen came out top, followed by Oslo, Paris, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Bottom of the rankings, when all four indicators were combined, was Manchester, followed by Dublin, then Granada, Birmingham and Edinburgh.
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However, the researchers said Manchester is expected to move up the rankings later this year having purchased a new fleet of electric buses, which have not yet come into service.
Dublin’s combined score was based on having 3.4 shared bikes/scooters per 1,000 of population, while Helsinki, the best performer, had 31 per 1,000. Dublin had 150 EV charging stations, equivalent to 7.8kW of publicly available charging infrastructure per 1,000 of population, whereas Amsterdam 147kW or more than 6,500 stations.
A total of 11 electric cars were available through sharing schemes/car clubs or .02 per 1,000 people, the top scorer was Copenhagen with 1.76 shared EVs per 1,000 of populatio. Dublin had no zero emissions buses, while 66 per cent of the bus fleet in Oslo is electric.
Where Dublin really fell down was in the provision of electric buses, with researchers noting it was one of only three cities along with Liège and Ljubljana that “did not have a single zero-emission bus in their fleet”.
The National Transport Authority (NTA) last year announced there would be 100 electric buses operating in the Dublin bus fleet by next year, about 10 per cent of the fleet, resulting in a 30 per cent reduction in emissions.
The campaign group is calling on city leaders and governments to “acknowledge and use the full potential of shared and zero-emission solutions as a shortcut to futureproof urban transport”.
