AN INDEPENDENT review of Transport 21 has called for priority to be given to the Dart Underground project in Dublin, rather than Metro North – the opposite of what the Government announced in its four-year budgetary plan.
“Uncertainty now arises over the scale and speed of completion of the remaining public transport investment under Transport 21. The great danger is that these will be delayed, leaving Ireland less prepared for a sustainable future when economic recovery does come.”
Commissioned by the Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics, it says Dart Underground offers better value than Metro North “because it caters for existing problems and transport demands and its effects will be widespread across Dublin and beyond”.
The review, carried out by Prof Austin Smyth of the University of Westminster and transport consultants Edward Humphreys and Stephen Wood, also highlights the danger of mainline rail services becoming uncompetitive with new motorways.
Following completion of the major inter-urban motorways, it says the “marked improvement in road travel times will tend to reduce patronage on intercity rail services . . . and this challenge to public transport will require attention from Government”.
“If there is no substantial investment to achieve significantly faster average speeds, rail will become increasingly uncompetitive [compared] with the private car”, it warns. As a result, “rail services will need increasing subsidy and will become harder to sustain”.
“Re-visioning of the role of the intercity railway . . . would require a fundamental step change in speeds with, for instance, journey time targets in the longer term of around 1hr 45mins between Dublin and Cork and 1hr 15mins between Dublin and Belfast.”
The authors accept that the timescale for realising such improvements would be post-Transport 21 (after 2015) because it was unlikely that the estimated €500 million needed to fund intercity rail upgrades would be made available in the short term.
But they argue that “a significantly more attractive rail network could limit ‘mode switching’ to private transport” as well as reduce the need for “very large per capita subsidies” for internal air services, which should be reviewed on a route-by-route basis.
“Approximately half-way through the Transport 21 period, Ireland is now in a very different situation: Government simply cannot afford to spend at the rate envisaged – an average of €3 billion per annum” – three-quarters of which has been spent on roads.
The review advocates raising fuel tax, rather than road tolls, as a “much simpler and potentially effective means of raising revenue from motorists to contribute towards investment” in public transport. This could be offset by reducing vehicle ownership taxation. “Development of the rail system to create a rail/air hub at Dublin airport could deliver environmental sustainability, while promoting regional balance in development and promote a coherent all-island transport policy”, according to the authors.
They say the airport could be served initially by a Dart spur from the Dublin-Belfast line, but later potentially by intercity rail services. “This would be similar to the concept employed at several major airports in continental Europe and some in the UK.” The review endorses Transport 21’s emphasis on public transport in Dublin.
However, it says: “In circumstances where fiscal and financial constraints require difficult choices, one option to reduce financial pressure would be to reprioritise schemes in favour of the Dart Underground and Luas cross-city [linking existing lines] over the Metro North scheme.”
