The revised national planning framework is expected to be discussed in Cabinet today. It updates housing targets and doubles down on what we need to get right in the planning of our country. Every analysis keeps coming back to the same three essential truths: we need more compact, low-carbon and better-balanced regional development.
Getting transport investment right will be the key to meeting those three criteria. Firstly we need what is called ‘transport-orientated development’ where new housing is centred on good-quality public transport services and safe cycling and walking facilities. If the Government is serious about the planning framework then the review of capital spending, due this July, must continue the spending ratios set by the last government, where new public transport gets twice what is spent on new roads and 10 per cent of the capital budget goes on walking and cycling.
Those ratios are essential because the alternative sprawled development model will add an average €115,000 to the price of every new home, due to the cost of providing ever more dispersed electricity, water and other public infrastructure. That price does not include the inevitable costs from congestion, road accidents, town centre dereliction, ill-health and local pollution that continuing reliance on a car-dependent system will bring.
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The potential climate cost is also only now coming into view. Even if we meet our electric vehicles target, which I think we will, we know there has to be at least a 20 per cent reduction in the overall volume of kilometres driven to meet our 2030 climate goal. Transport is the hardest sector to change because we have designed our systems around car use. Change is not easy, but we have to do it because relying on a system where everyone has to drive does not work for anyone, with the gridlock and other downsides it brings.
We know that in Dublin, because we have reached the limit of roads-based development. The only rational investment is now in public transport because the M50 and the motorways approaching the city can take no more. It has to be rail, bus and bike solutions or bust.
In our other cities, which have to grow much faster for the sake of the whole country, everything is still up for grabs. Galway will either sprawl around a new outer orbital motorway or else develop alongside new light rail lines, metropolitan rail services and quality bus corridors. You can’t do both because investing in one undermines the viability of the other. I know which one I would prefer to live in – a City of the Tribes rather than one of roundabouts and out-of-town retail stores.
In Cork it is the same. Transport Infrastructure Ireland has not given due regard to the national planning framework or climate ambition. It insists on a new motorway being built right up to Blackpool on the north side of the city, which would work only if a new northern orbital motorway was also built, to cope with the induced traffic. Again that would completely undermine the alternative investment ready to be made in a metropolitan and light rail system for the city.
It is the same story in Limerick and Waterford, which are ripe for new housing development along existing rail lines, which connect each city to its neighbouring urban centres. These solutions use existing underutilised lines so the planning process would be much easier and the cost would be a fraction of what it would be for building new roads.
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The transport budget got a uniquely good deal in the revision of the National Development Plan in 2021 because it was the only department to get a committed budget up to 2030. The allocated €35 billion would now be just about enough to build what is already in planning for Dublin, however. Hardly any of the big public transport projects in Cork, Limerick, Galway or Waterford are similarly funded, not to mention the reopening of the western rail corridor, a rail line to Navan or the extension of the Dart to Wicklow town.
In the last Dáil many in the opposition and some within government played culture wars with this issue but now is the time for an honest appraisal. We will need to spend a lot on new roads, especially on bypasses for the likes of Tipperary town, Virginia, Carrick-on-Shannon, Abbeyfeale, Castlemartyr and so on. The list of towns needing such investment is a long and growing one.
We will also have to spend a lot more on public transport, however, especially in our regional cities and on rail lines serving new commuter belts. We either spend there or else the national planning framework becomes a meaningless document, leaving us with more expensive housing, gridlocked traffic and climate bills we will have to pay in the end.
Eamon Ryan is a former Green Party leader who served as minister for the environment, climate and communications and as minister for transport
