Mr. Michael Nolan:

Deputy Munster asked about options we may have looked at to lower car usage on the M50. We would love to lower car usage. A broad range of public transport initiatives could be brought to bear. Mr. Creegan also mentioned investment in park and ride. We could take monetary measures to lower car usage. Cities in Europe and far and wide were mentioned. They have taxed cars out of using the networks. Singapore has done that and made a major reduction. The use of public transport there is now up to 50%. It was made highly undesirable to bring cars into the city by taxing cars out of existence. That is not a decision for us - it would be a poisonous decision.

I refer also to mulitpoint tolling. It is not on the agenda but it is one way of lowering car usage. The M50 is 44 km or 42 km long and there are 14 or 15 junctions. That is one every 2.5 km. Those are feeder channels for the M50 and are a legacy of pre-TII and pre-NRA days. The M25 in London is 190 km long. It has 30 junctions. I looked at that at 8 a.m. After it was opened, a third, fourth and then a fifth lane had to be added. This morning - like the M50 - it was still mostly all red on Google maps. London built its way out of it and still its equivalent of our M50 is all red. The committee will agree that London has a good public transport system. Even during the downturn, massive investment was made and it is improving every year.

How do we lower car usage then? We could close off some of the junctions but there are so many ways of lowering car usage not in our remit. We have one junction every 2.5 km, while the M25 in London has one junction every 6 km. London has almost 10 million people inside that M25 box; Dublin has about 1 million people inside the M50 box. I do not have the exact number. We have three lanes in each direction. If we did not have the lag in public transport investment over the last ten years, perhaps we would be having a different conversation today. I agree with Deputy Eamon Ryan that public transport in the greater Dublin area is a solution as we cannot just keep building out on the M50.

On guaranteeing that seven trams are sufficient now that the Luas green and red lines are operating satisfactorily, it important to say that we do not just have seven trams coming into operation in a few weeks. We have also issued an order for the upgrade of 26 of the shorter trams to bring them to the same length as our new trams. We will have 26 of those elongated trams on the network between the end of 2019 and the start of 2021. We also have an order for eight new long trams as well. It is not that we think that seven trams are sufficient. A big investment has been approved by the Government to progress that. As ridership will be built up over a number of years, we will be bringing in measures to deal with capacity issues that will keep growing.

I will add that if we look internationally, many light rail systems suffer from underuse. We have the opposite in Dublin. What we predict is delivered. We had a step change increase in December when the Luas cross city opened and two lines connected. That should have been done years ago. However, we can see where the uptick on that connected system came into being. We do not suffer from a lack of Irish usage. It is a well used system. From the end of 2019 to the middle of 2021, we will have more new and modified trams coming in. As for how we will pay for metro north and whether it will be passed over to a concessionary or private operator, I will hand that question over to Mr. Creegan.