Mr. Brendan O'Brien:

We have and I can elaborate on that. We have a number of surveys in the city centre looking specifically at all the people moving there. Along with public transport companies, we classify how many people are on board buses on particular approaches, how many cars are passing, how many passengers are in those cars, how many people are on public transport, including buses, the Luas and the DART, as well as how many people cycle and walk into the city. Within the city centre we do what we call screen line counts across all the bridges in the city centre as well in order to identify how people are moving in the city centre. We also rely on census data, which is a key indicator, and from that we get information on how people travel from home to work. What can be difficult and has not been done on the street for a long time is the stopping of every car to see where they are going and the purpose of the journey. It causes massive disruption.

The information in the census data is a key element used for planning. It allows us to determine in the square kilometre of the city centre the fact that only approximately 9% of people travel by car, with the rest using public transport and walking. As we move further out, we can determine the mode used by people. We have both daily counts from systems of the number of vehicles and cyclists. In combination with public transport companies we do a survey year on year that allows us track the way public transport or car traffic moves, or how cycling has grown. That is the main element going into the mix for how we determine how many people are moving around the city and the mode they use.