John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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469. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport his plans to introduce an incentive for persons to use public transport in order to ease traffic congestion in cities; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43516/17]

Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent)
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I have secured increased funding for both public transport services and infrastructure in Budget 2018 which will allow us to address congestion and emerging capacity constraints on our public transport system across our cities.

This includes an 8% increase in funding for PSO services across the bus and rail networks in 2018 to support the delivery of these socially necessary but financially unviable public transport services.

Budget 2018 provided a four-year capital envelope for public transport of over €2.7 billion to 2021 including an investment of over €400 million next year. This substantial multi-annual envelope will allow investment in a number of key programmes to ease congestion in our cities and increase capacity on our public transport network.

Over €770 million will be invested in the BusConnects programme to fundamentally transform Dublin’s bus system, so that journeys for bus passengers will be fast, reliable, punctual, convenient and affordable.

Funding of over €110 million will be invested in new urban cycling and walking routes which will provide additional sustainable travel options to complement increased capacity and faster, higher quality public transport in our main cities. In addition, there will be investment in the region of €130 million over the next four years for traffic management, bus priority and other smarter travel projects in our cities.

Over €685 million capital investment will also be provided for additional rail infrastructure between now and 2021 to improve the rail network.

Finally, funding continues to be allocated to the National Transport Authority to promote public transport use and to improve customer experiences through the use of smart technologies. Successful initiatives that have been introduced include the Leap Card, real time passenger information and journey planning apps.