Professor Aisling Reynolds-Feighan:

There are a lot of questions. I will go through some of the points quickly. On the overall level of investment in transport infrastructure and transport provision, the Department has set out a detailed analysis of the spend on transport over the last decade. What we see is that the level of investment is low by European standards in both infrastructure and transport service provision. We had a very significant investment programme but it tended to be cyclical so our investment peaked in the 2004-08 period but we have had capital spending cuts and transport service subvention cuts since then. Existing budget allocations are insufficient to maintain our infrastructure never mind to try to develop it further. This has very important implications for our competitiveness. If we look at the data in the most recent World Economic Forum global competitiveness report, we see that our rank on infrastructure competitiveness increased dramatically after 2011 when investments in the road network and light rail network came on stream. The rankings for the quality of our roads were in the mid-20s from 2012 onwards compared to a ranking of 70 in 2008-09. If we look at the ratings for the road network in the most recent period 2014-15 and 2015-16, we see that our ranking has declined, which is quite worrying. Economic activity has picked up. Macroeconomic indicators show there is positive growth. We have seen a pick-up in traffic. I looked at traffic counts across the national primary network for all classes of vehicles and there was a 4% pick-up in annual average daily traffic between 2014 and 2015 and a 7.5% increase between 2015 and 2016. Congestion and delays have also picked up. This points to a need on the part of Government to commit to upping the investment in infrastructure to maintain what we have and also expand the infrastructure and service provision.

Public service obligations and competitive tendering are efficient processes in providing service as well as trying to contain costs. The PSO mechanisms allow for service reviews, quality performance benchmarks, safety requirements, service innovations and enhancements. We can improve the quality, cost and responsiveness of service supply using this mechanism. Public transport use can be increased if it is attractive to users in terms of cost, speed, reliability and if it presents a realistic alternative to private car use by connecting the origin-destination pairs of users. The problem in the past is that there was a sluggish responsiveness of public transport to the growing needs of users. Competitive tendering can help to inject cost-effectiveness and cost-competitiveness into the provision of these services. PSO provision is not necessarily privatisation. It is a way of trying to contain costs and also be more flexible and responsive in terms of identifying service needs and filling those needs in a cost-effective way.

On the question about shares, as I mentioned in my preamble, Irish transport is very much road dependent. That is a function of our demographics and geographic situation. We have lower than European average rail shares and much higher than average bus shares. That is a reflection of the fact that we have a dispersed and low density population. In terms of the densities for rail, Senator O'Mahony asked about population densities. It is worth comparing Irish cities with US cities because they are quite spread out compared to European cities in terms of population densities. A number of recent studies, which I mention in the longer paper I submitted, look at density of population and employment per unit area. Looking at the research that has come out of US analysis, the suggestion is that densities of 3,400 persons per square kilometre are the minimum necessary for light rail systems to be cost-effective. For heavy rail systems the estimated minimum number of residents and jobs per square kilometre is around 7,000 persons per square kilometre in order for the systems to be commercially viable. In Ireland, only Dublin and Cork come close to these population density measures. Residential density alone is insufficient. We have to take into account employment density because rail users need to have a reason to travel. What we see is that there is limited scope for heavy rail in this country because of the generally low densities. Bus rapid transit offers an opportunity in the short to medium term to provide high capacity corridors, which over time, if we can build up densities, will allow for light rail electrification of these systems over time and investment in more appropriate light rail systems. The strategic planning framework has a very important role here in terms of developing high density corridors.

In terms of rural transport and the challenge for counties that have low population densities, one thing we need to take into account is the fact that public transport is inherently multi-modal because users have to travel to access the public transport system. In urban areas we can walk or cycle and that helps to bridge the gap but we have a real problem in rural areas. It is a real challenge to try to bridge that gap between where people live and accessing public transport systems. The development of hub-and-spoke networks to try to optimise ridership and passengers on the public service routes requires initiatives like the rural transport scheme. It is very important in trying to bridge the gap to make public transport more widely accessible to small communities and regions with very low population densities.