Seanad debates

Wednesday, 3 November 2021

10:30 am

Photo of Róisín GarveyRóisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is great to see Fine Gael bringing this motion forward. I was involved in the programme for Government negotiations and I know that the Green Party fought hard for a major investment in public transport. For the first time in history, more money is going to be spent on public transport than ever before. I will claim that partly for the Green Party. We have been raising the issue of rural transport for many years, so it is great to see Fine Gael coming to the table with this motion.

Public transport means so much more than just getting a bus to town. For me, when I consider where I live in rural Ireland, it means that young people will be able to move around independently of their parents and that people with disabilities or who cannot afford cars will have some ability to get to places they want to go.

The Connecting Ireland Rural Mobility Plan is important. We have to be very careful to listen to users because I know that so far the NTA has engaged with most of the local authorities. I am aware that most of the people it has engaged with in the local authorities drive everywhere. They are not going to be the people who will have the brilliant knowledge we need. We need to talk to people who do not drive everywhere. I hate slating engineers because some of them are brilliant. In the context of our road engineers, however, as they say, if you design for cars, you get cars and if you design for people, you get people. There is a significant missing piece in this regard. I speak passionately about this matter because I worked on modal shift and getting people out of cars for 15 years full-time all over Clare, Limerick and Galway.

The missing piece has always been that the local authorities do not have the money or the staff. Every local authority has now been given the funding and the staff and we need to use that in a way that works. In the context of the public transport we have at present, the websites are really annoying. I refer to the websites of Irish Rail and Bus Éireann in this regard. I have been advocating for the use of public transport for years but doing so it not easy because public transport providers' websites are appalling. We have a Green Party Minister for Transport, which is brilliant, and he is throwing a great deal of money at this, but we have to ensure that the NTA and TII are involved. For some reason, the Road Safety Authority, RSA, is involved. The RSA is not a Government agency. It is always talking about speed limits and is obsessed with car use and covering everybody else on the road with high-visibility gear from head to toe, as if that is going to solve the problems that exist. I have a number of significant issues with some agencies now being given a great deal of money. If these agencies do not listen to the people who need to use public transport, we are going to fail and waste money. The motion is good and is quite comprehensive but, ultimately, we do not want to waste money. In that context, the public transport system has to work for the people who need it most.

When I come to Dublin, I can use a Leap card on the Luas and on the bus. I can even use it along with my Dublinbikes card. In Clare, I cannot do that at all. Why can we not use such cards on Local Link services? What are we waiting for in that regard? I costed it at approximately €100 plus VAT to put in place a card reader on each Local Link bus. Let us treat everybody equally, regardless of whether they live one in the middle of nowhere or in Dublin. I would like to see many of the services that I can avail of in Dublin available in rural areas, and these need to be linked up.

I mentioned to the NTA the other day about having bike storage facilities on buses. I was pretty much told that that would not be fair to people with disabilities because we need low buses in order for people with disabilities to get on to them. It was almost as if the NTA was pitting one against the other. I could not come back to say that there are well-designed buses all over the world on which it is possible to accommodate bikes and people with disabilities. This is not directed at the Minister of State, but we do need to look at people whose views on car use are set in stone around and who believe that this represents the best way forward. I genuinely believe that public transport has a significant part to play in how we change how we move around. It is worth the money because it is more sociable and better for people physically.

Another matter to which I wish to refer is the idea of hail stops. At present, if a person in a rural area wants to use public transport, he or she has to catch the bus in the closest town or village. People used to be able to flag down buses. The latter is done all over rural Germany, France and Holland, so I am not inventing something crazy. I spent weeks mapping every potential safe hail stop in my county. When I submitted the information to the NTA, I was told that hail stops are not going to be part of the solution. This means that I have to travel 5 km to the closest village or 10 km to the closest town in order to get the bus. If we are serious about public transport, we have to bring services to the end of all secondary and tertiary roads. We are familiar with most of those roads and we can walk and cycle on them safely. What do you do when you get to the end of the road and the bus passes you by? If we are serious about public transport, then we need to talk about proper bus stops.

I am sick of talking about three-year-old timetables. When I look at a bus stop in rural Clare, I see people with disabilities or older individuals standing in the rain and looking at a bus timetable that is three years out of date.

Before we begin to increase everything significantly, we have much work to do to bring the current system up to standard. I did not want this motion to proceed without that being acknowledged. It is funny because I am advocating for public transport but I am half hiding behind it because sometimes it is very difficult to promote the thing that I want people to use because it is not being done well.

We have all of the technology that is required but we need to make it easier for people to look at Local Link services. The information relating to some of these services is brilliant. With others, however, it could take you an hour to figure out where the bus is going to or coming from. Some people have taken this on board and printed off timetables which are then sold in local shops because that is the only way that one will find out where the relevant bus is going to or coming from.

A good deal of work needs to be done to inform people. We have quite good public bus and train services, but trying to access them, figure out what is happening and get tickets is something of a nightmare.

Pricing is also an issue. We subsidise public transport, which is perfectly acceptable and which is done all over the world, but we need to look at pricing. It is brilliant that we brought in half-price fares for 19- to 23-year-olds but there is more work to be done. I book train tickets and I know that I can get to Dublin for €15 if I book a week in advance. However, it will cost me €50 if I have to make the trip at the last minute. Not everybody has their life planned out in advance, so there is also some work to be done in this regard.

I want people back on trains and buses. Public transport has to be affordable and accessible. We need people to be able to take their bikes on buses because that is how you connect when you get to your destination. You cannot walk everywhere in rural Ireland but you can cycle to the nearest stop, take your bike with you on the bus to town and then onto the train. That is what we need. We need proper connectivity to do this well but I welcome the motion.

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