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Chapter 1: What are the current traffic conditions on the M50?
I obviously never have reason to be on the M50 on a weekday, but as it happens, last weekend I was between Junctions 9... and 11, both on Saturday and Sunday, around about the 3 o'clock mark. And I just couldn't get over just how much traffic was going in both directions at that time of day. We have a congested M50.
I think the highest ever reported, I think this week we had, sorry, this day last year, we had about 187,000 vehicles travelled on the stretches between Junction 6 and Junction 5. We have Aidan Farrelly of the Social Democrats, the spokesperson on transport, Kildare North TD with us. We also have Professor Brian Caulfield, Professor in Transportation at Trinity College Dublin.
Brian, we have spoken to you about the M50 congestion before. You have been doing research into it and what sort of findings are you getting now as to what sort of solutions people are putting forward?
So, yeah, we did a study or a survey on the M50 and we did 2,000 users of the M50 respond. The solutions that people are putting forward are mainly centering around public transport. The majority of people, the option that had the highest preference was that we invest more in public transport to try and alleviate the congestion.
The second highest preference option was that we introduced bus-based park and ride at sites around the M50. Those were the two biggest solutions. Then when you go a little bit further from that, the third option was better motorway management to reduce the impacts of collisions that may happen.
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Chapter 2: What solutions are being proposed to alleviate M50 congestion?
And then it kind of goes further down. The fourth option was more adjacent roads to, I suppose, alleviate the congestion. And then the options that weren't very popular. One of the options was introducing new tolls on the M50 wasn't very popular.
The majority of respondents said they had enough information on the real time traffic conditions, because I suppose, as you were just saying there, it's always bad. More information is not going to help them.
The various suggestions, though, presumably there would be different timelines on each of them, you know, particularly putting in more public transport trains as if that takes a lot of time. But things like park and ride and buses leaving park and ride stations, how easy would that be to implement? How long would it take?
Well, I suppose it depends on how serious government and policymakers see this as a crisis that's happening on our busiest road. We're able to move mountains during COVID. So if we take it from that perspective, you know, finding and identifying sites for park and ride has been done several times by policy planners and transport planners in the city. So that wouldn't be that difficult to do.
And then we have, you know, It's then putting the extra buses that we have that could then alleviate the congestion, get people from those park and ride sites, get them to skip the M50 and get those buses into the city centre.
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Chapter 3: How effective is public transport in reducing M50 traffic?
Not saying that they would traverse the M50, but they would go directly into the city centre using the bus network, the bus corridor network.
Okay, Aidan Farley, I want to go to you because you're, as I said, TD for Kildare North. How do you get in and out of the Dáil?
Well, it depends. If I know we're going to be in quite late and the last bus will have gone home, I'm driving because we just don't have that adequate bus transport. But I do use it when I know I'll be able to make it.
And how long does a bus take to get in from Kildare to Dublin City Centre?
A big time, you're probably talking about an hour and twenty, an hour and thirty. Is that a good use of your time do you think? No but the alternative is to spend two to two and a half hours in a journey that without congestion would probably take an hour and twenty in the car.
So what we're seeing is so many people are forced to do that and the nine to five is probably becoming a six to seven thirty with the time you leave early to beat the congestion and then if you can't get out early enough then you're staying behind in work. to wait for that congestion to die down. It has a real ripple effect. And I just thought Professor Caulfield's research was so important.
I hope government sits up and reads it because it is that collective approach that's really, really important.
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Chapter 4: What role does park and ride play in traffic management?
It won't be solved by one issue in itself, i.e. more roads or more capacity on the M50. We're going to need a real hybrid approach. But that park and ride, for example, Matt,
We have a situation now where the NTA have told us in the Public Accounts Committee this week that there is a bus park and ride in Fasserow and Wicklow that is substantially complete and lying idle because the state hasn't backed the public service duty contract for the bus provider to run the route and that's the 199 in Wicklow.
So to be fair, there is some investment and that's just one site where we have it, but it's empty.
Could you just explain how that would actually work? How many cars could actually park at that site? And then where would the buses go to from there? Would it just be a bus into Dublin city centre or would it go to various points maybe around the suburbs of Dublin?
Yeah, so that's the thing. It's all about a feeder network. And that's what Bus Connect as an overall system has tried to do, to link up where possible service routes, because Professor Caulfield's research that you've seen, over 50% of respondents didn't have a viable alternative but to use the M50 to get from A to B.
So the intention behind those park and ride sites, and we should see them coming right across the M50 network, is to link up communities.
So that 199 would then bring you to the next location and then you can maybe access, because I don't have the details exactly with regards to the spaces in the Fassaro site, but the idea that they're being built, that infrastructure is actually being developed, but that we don't see the state supporting the bus route in and of itself is the issue.
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Chapter 5: How long would it take to implement proposed traffic solutions?
Brian, if you were to have these bus park and ride sites, how many would you actually need on the M50? Would you need one or two almost per junction?
Again, it would depend upon the size. So to give some example, say, for example, Metro, when that's constructed, that will have a 3,000 space park and ride at Estuary, just north of the airport. So that's, I suppose, the volume for that.
Sorry, would that be big enough?
For Metro, you would hope so, that that will be big enough. And the planning has been done and the modelling has been done to indicate that. But it's a legitimate concern. If you look at the Lewis park and ride sites, they're constantly full equally with the Dart.
But I suppose one of the things that those transport planners don't want to do is have more and more people driving to one location and then getting on public transport. And coming from further distances, I suppose they want people on public transport from A to B. But 3,000 spaces, I suppose that is a very significant investment for that. In terms of the M50, yeah, it could be 200, 300 spaces.
Again, analysis needs to be done on it. But as the Deputy said, there are park and ride sites that have been planned as part of the Bus Connects network.
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges of building new transport infrastructure?
And those are the ones that should be expedited.
And then how frustrating is it to hear about the example just given to us there by Aidan about Farnsworth Row and Wicklow? It's ready and yet the order hasn't been given to actually allow for a private bus route to operate out of it.
there's planning permission for the two dart lines that go out to the west of the city. They're sitting there waiting to be started. There's planning permission for Finglas Lewis. There's planning permission for Metro. Some of those are in further stages of procurement, but the dart lines to the west of the city There's no procurement happening on those that I've seen yet.
And those are things that can make a real difference because it's that side of the region that are coming in using the M50. And if those were initiated, and as you said at the start, they're going to take a long time for them to be initiated and could have a real change. And recently enough, TIA, I said, There are no more engineering solutions that they can put out to the M50. And they're right.
They've done everything.
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Chapter 7: What are the long-term strategies for managing M50 traffic?
They've stretched that as much as they can. And that is cold comfort for anybody that's sitting on the M50 right now.
Okay. Listener says fast and raw park and ride needs a link up to the Lewis. Okay. There's a few people still texting in, Aidan, about the idea of a new outer ring road about 10 to 15 kilometres outside the M50 to fix the true traffic on the M50. Now, I know it's well down the list of suggestions from Brian Caulfield's survey, but what do you think about the potential for that?
Because that would run through a significant part of your Kildare North constituency.
It would. And when I was... Preparing for this today, I went looking at a National Roads Authority feasibility study for a Leinster orbital route that was published back in 2009, which essentially would be that. It starts in Drogheda, it brings you to Nacer, Newbridge via Slane, Navan. That would work, but I think...
when we look at the pace of delivery for significant capital infrastructure projects in this country, that wouldn't work for a generation of people working in the city centre or trying to commute in the next 10 to 15 years. If we have government, you know, developing policy as per government terms only, it's very short term.
I think what transport needs is a slaunter care approach, a vision that would last and have a legacy longer than.
I hope it will be introduced faster than
But the policy keeps us focused. Whatever the implementation, at least we have a common consensus of what it requires because the evidence is there. It's not working right now.
As long as we're building unaffordable housing in Dublin city centre, what you're going to do is bring people even more and more out to these commuter belt areas, but then they cannot access in any sort of efficient or affordable way, meaningful employment.
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