Sir, – The encouragement of people to use public transport in the future and the conversion of the national fleet from fossil fuel to electric over the next 10 years has led me to analyse my car journeys and those of my family, friends and neighbours.
The people I know live mostly in one-off houses in the countryside. A trip to the shops or getting the children to their extracurricular activities involves driving to the nearest town, in my case Wexford, and a round trip of nearly 30km. My wife’s mileage on such trips amounts to almost 20,000km annually.
The fact that many families are committed to so much travel is largely because of historical planning decisions that allowed people to build one-off houses in the countryside.
What is especially disappointing is that while the Government is encouraging us to use more and more public transport, our planners continue to permit rural houses that commit families to the extensive use of private cars. A trip through the Wexford countryside, for instance, will demonstrate many new-builds whose occupants will have a lifetime of long commuting as there will be no realistic public transport service available to them.
Wouldn’t it be a good idea if the Department of Transport and the Depart of Local Government got together to ban these one-off houses?
– Yours, etc,
FINBAR KEARNS,
Piercestown,
Co Wexford.