The Dublin Transportation Office is considering a £150 million-plus "short-term" action plan to tackle growing traffic congestion in the capital over the next few years, before the first phase of Luas becomes operative.
Proposals in the document include increasing the capacity of DART by 33 per cent, providing Dublin Bus with an additional 150 buses, increasing the number of cross-city bus routes and reducing the availability of off-street car-parking in the centre.
Prof Simon Perry, chairman of the DTO Consultative Panel, said yesterday the "interim document" under discussion had yet to be sanctioned by its steering committee and also needed Government approval before it could be officially released.
Members of the consultative panel, which represents a wide range of interests, all had copies in front of them at yesterday's meeting. And although the meeting was open to the press, they were all under strict instructions to treat the document as highly confidential.
Prof Perry described it as a distillation of a much longer document which had been criticised for being "rather sombre and negative" in tone. There was also a feeling among panel members that it should be reduced "because Ministers don't read long documents".
The action plan is designed to deal with what the DTO describes as a transportation deficit caused by a rapid growth in the demand for travel in the greater Dublin area and by the corresponding failure to upgrade public transport as an alternative to cars.
Mr John Henry, the DTO's director, conceded that there had been significant slippage in the investment programme proposed by the Dublin Transportation Initiative in 1994.
Most of the £320 million spent so far on DTI-related projects had gone on roads, he said.
The DTO's action plan was designed to address this slippage by promoting better public transport, traffic management and cycling facilities.
Buses needed "good, strong corridors" to give them priority, linked to feeder services such as those on the DART line.
He said the DTO was also pressing for the introduction of integrated ticketing, so that passengers could transfer from one public transport service to another at no extra charge. But Dublin Bus, which currently receives no subsidy, was concerned about losing revenue.
Mr Henry stressed that the action plan was not aimed at reducing car ownership in Dublin, now rising towards the EU level of 450 cars per 1,000 people, but at reducing the use of cars at peak periods by changing attitudes and breaking habits.
This would involve switching some 49,000 car trips, 15,000 of them attributed to the postponement of Luas and the rest generated by unprecedented economic growth, to other transport modes, notably rail, bus and bicycle, with the aim of reducing congestion.
The plan recommends allocating £15.5 million for quality bus corridors as well as sub-contracting 60 school bus runs to the private sector to free more buses for commuters and acquiring an extra 150 buses to increase the carrying capacity of Dublin Bus by 21,600.
In addition to the 27 diesel railcars and 12 DART cars already ordered to augment suburban rail services, the DTO is proposing that a further 20 diesel cars and eight more DART sets be purchased and that station platforms be extended to cater for longer trains.
It also wants to complete a cycle-route network of 100 kilometres, costing £15 million, to eliminate safety fears which deter commuters from using bicycles.
Referring to the estimated 20,000 off-street parking places in the city centre, Mr Henry said the owners of office blocks might be offered tax incentives to encourage them to convert some of the space occupied by cars to other uses, such as office or retail.
