John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for his generosity and I welcome the representatives from TII and the NTA to the House. They play a very significant role and are key players in the context of the future of transport in Dublin city and the greater Dublin region. Clearly we need a directly elected mayor for Dublin to pull all of the forces and objectives together. That is in our hands.

The M50 must be one of the few motorways in Europe that does not have dedicated public transport channels. I invite the witnesses to respond to that point. Buses can carry between 70 and 80 people but most of the cars on the M50 are only carrying one person. We need radical solutions here. Project Ireland 2040 is too far away. Some of the measures that the witnesses referred to are imminent but the plans and ambitions for BusConnects, for example, are going to get tied up in court over compulsory purchase orders for front gardens and so on. However, there are small changes that we can make in the meantime to advance matters. I ask the witnesses for feedback on public transport use of the M50. Has that been considered? Are there international comparisons that can be made?

On the role of local authorities, we have double yellow lined drivers out of existence. People in residential areas seem to think they own the public roads. I have argued for double yellow lines in parts of my constituency over the years but we need to do a radical review. If a person cannot access a bus for the entire journey into the city, there is nothing wrong with him or her driving some of the way, parking and then accessing a bus but we penalise such people out of existence. There is, for example, a road that divides Milltown golf course in two. When the Luas green line was opened first, 30 to 40 cars used to be parked along that road. After six or seven months, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council came along, cleaned up the road and painted double yellow lines along it. Where did those 30 or 40 drivers go? Did they just decide that they had no option but to drive all the way into the city? We need to be radical about this. We need to encourage the local authorities to develop localised park and ride facilities. I live three quarters of a mile away from the nearest bus stop. That may not seem like much. Indeed, many of my rural colleagues would say that three quarters of a mile is nothing and that they are two miles away from the nearest bus stop but in Dublin, it is a lot. Localised park and ride facilities are needed. I remember we suggested this to residents in Kilnamanagh and Kingswood in Tallaght because of issues with the Luas red line. Some roads are getting blocked up by drivers parking and accessing the Luas but rather than double yellow line them out of existence, we need to consider parking bays that facilitate people who do not live close to bus or Luas routes.

As the witnesses know, traffic will ease considerably from 1 June until the end of August because schools will be closed. It cannot be beyond the capacity of planners, especially given all of the technology companies located in this city and county, to look at that issue and come up with solutions. School related congestion is not all caused by mums and dads driving their kids to school. Many of the cars are being driven by school staff. Once the schools reopen in September, the city almost comes to a standstill. If it rains on top of that, the situation worsens considerably. The role of politicians is to devise policy. Should we consider dedicated school buses? In my own area during term time the number 15 bus is completely clogged with school children - who are entitled to use the public bus service - but after eight or nine stops they are gone and the bus is empty. If we had a dedicated public school bus service, as they have in many other cities, that might help.

We have never told the public that public transport is the way forward but that message would be positively received by people if they realised that there are no roads solutions left. Even if there was a roads based solution to congestion and even if we had the money to build more roads, it would be another decade before any cars travelled on them.

I welcome demand management for which I have been calling for many years. When the witnesses addressed the Oireachtas Budgetary Oversight Committee they said that demand management could give us four or five years of additional capacity on the M50, which I welcome. I ask that the process be accelerated, if possible. There were approximately 1,750 incidents on the M50 last year so demand management through signage can help in that regard. One hears lots of complaints about the M50 exit ramps and drivers weaving into the traffic. The use of bollards at the exit ramps prevents this and I would like to see greater use of them.

They create greater discipline on the road.

The NTA and TII need to forget multipoint tolling and accept the M50 is now not what it was intended to be, which was a great ring road carrying traffic around Dublin. If we impose multipoint tolling on the M50 it will have catastrophic consequences for residential traffic. The witnesses should just drop it and stop bringing it up. There is no appetite for it. There is no political appetite for it and it would have devastating consequences for residential areas. My view on it is very strong.

I welcome the news on how Luas cross city developed in the end. There seems to have been political pressure to open it too quickly. It is clear if it had been given another six months, the outcome would have been better. Luas cross city is moving fast, smoothly and efficiently but the rest of the city, however, has come to a standstill. This is a big problem the witnesses are not addressing. The passenger carrying capacity of Luas cross city is to be hugely welcomed but the witnesses should go to the quays any day. Seven trams have been moved from the red line to the green line to facilitate capacity issues on the green line. I am getting complaints from passengers on the red line that the red line trams are not as frequent at peak time as they were, and I would like the witnesses to address this. There is no late night Luas. Has this been looked at? Has the Luas starting earlier in the morning been looked at? We have a huge amount of shift workers in the city who are never considered by any public transport, with the exception of taxis. On a Friday or Saturday night in the city one cannot get a Luas and is utterly dependent on taxis.

Lately, I have become concerned about a particular mentality. The witnesses stated they are grateful to An Garda Síochána, which supports the smooth functioning of the Luas cross city junction at O'Connell Bridge and acknowledged the continual improvements Dublin City Council makes. No mention was made of Dublin Bus. The NTA and TII have eviscerated Dublin Bus in this city. It had to shift 30% of its routes to facilitate Luas cross city, and 27 bus routes have been changed by Dublin Bus because it is a flexible transport system. The witnesses made no mention of the contribution it was pushed into making to facilitate Luas cross city. A number of the bus routes redirected prior to the construction of Luas cross city have not been redirected back, for example the 15 route from Knocklyon. The closest I can get to Leinster House is the Bleeding Horse on Camden Street, but it used to come to Stephen's Green. I have a couple of other comments to make about Dublin Bus later.

The witnesses did not address the communications and signage issues with regard to the Luas. There were failures in the electronic signage.

I would like to hear the witnesses' justification for the southern part of the MetroLink going to where we already have a Luas, a DART and the most effective and efficient quality bus corridor in the country. All of the areas between the green line and the DART, where there is no alternative to the bus, have been abandoned, as has the west of the city, and areas such as Lucan and Blanchardstown, and €3 billion will be invested on a metro line and upgrading the existing Luas green line through the constituencies of the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe, Eoghan Murphy, Ross and Madigan. I would like justification for the southern end of this.

Cycling continues to be the poor relation. For eight years as a councillor I fought for the extension of the city bike scheme and what have we ended up with? We have ended up with four separate local authority bike schemes in the county. It is a complete joke. I am not blaming the witnesses for it because nobody is pulling them together and co-ordinating this, but it is a complete joke. Cyclists are still very much still the poor relations, never mind pedestrians, who have not been mentioned. There is very poor space for pedestrians in this city. We need to look at democratising the public space available in this city. It is still dominated by the private car but there are also pedestrians, cyclists and people who use public transport. The real workhorse of public transport in the city, Dublin Bus, gets very little mention.

With regard to the Dublin Bus brand, and while we have the NTA before the committee, this may not seem like a big deal but to me the Dublin Bus brand will morph into the anaemic Transport for Ireland brand where every bus will look the same. We will lose the Dublin Bus colours, the Dublin Bus icons, and the vibrant yellow in which Dublin Bus invested quite a significant amount of money, particularly on researching with disability groups and visually impaired groups. Dublin Bus is a part of this city. The new livery that is proposed speaks nothing to Dubliners and speaks nothing of Dublin. It borrows slavishly from Transport for London and replaces an iconic Dublin service and image with a Transport for Ireland blancmange of a symbol. The red bus in London was an iconic service and bus before it ever got privatised so that made sense, but Dublin Bus will be erased from the transport map of Dublin and replaced with Transport for Ireland. There is no buy-in from the public for this. This is an issue I will come back to again and again, because I am concerned that the NTA's attitude to Dublin Bus is to push it around. It is the most flexible form of public transport we have and it is micromanaged. I cannot organise a meeting with Dublin Bus officials in my constituency without Dublin Bus okaying it with the NTA. I say hands off Dublin Bus. It is an independent semi-State company and is a hugely valuable contributor to public transport in the city. Its revenue over the past six years has increased exponentially and its PSO contribution from the State has been decreasing exponentially. It is a fine company and a fine example of how a semi-State company should operate.