No more motorways - what ya reckon?

Packrat

magicbastarder wrote: »

according to wikipedia, we currently have 916km of motorway in ireland; which means we've actually more km of motorway per capita than germany.

Which is appropriate given how dispersed our population is by comparison with Germany.

That's about as relevant as how littlw/much of our CO2 emissions come from car manufacturing...

Smee_Again

Once you get past the headline this statement isn’t all that controversial and money spent on new motorways would be better spent on improving public transport.

But, until the planners and councillors start approving higher density housing it’s moot.

Thelonious Monk

Eamon on the money again. Rural Ireland wont be happy till the whole country is tarmac however.

bigar

magicbastarder wrote: »

BREAKING NEWS - no dublin bus routes use motorways, completed or yet to be built*

*citation required

The 142 uses the M1 from Holywell, through the Port Tunnel all the way to the Docklands. A glorious 10 km on the motorway at 60 km/h.

Midnight_EG

magicbastarder wrote: »

BREAKING NEWS - no dublin bus routes use motorways, completed or yet to be built*

*citation required

The 142 uses the M1, the 145/155/46a/39a all use the N11, the 84x uses the M11

FoFo1254122

eamon ryan lives in dundrum in dublin
and he has four children and before entering politics he used to run a travel company.
what resources of the planet has he used up? whats his carbon footprint?
he is also on record for using the n word - how does that even happen? whats going through your head to come out with that.
And remember he fell asleep in the dail when they were debating a motion on workers rights. poor matty mcgrath did the same and was destroyed by the media for it- but not our man eamon. he justs a better person then matty mcgrath. there is no hypocrisy to eamon ryan just ask the people from Shell to Sea.
and to top it off he is a career politician who believes rural ireland should foot ALL the cost to transition to this new green utopia his party promises.

how anyone in rural ireland votes for a green candidate is beyond me - they will fill our landscape with turbines and solar panels, they will make us poorer by not giving us the infrastructure we need to grow economically, they will destroy the agricultural sector.
all the government do is invest mainly in the big cities and large towns and obviously the jobs follow.
then rural people travel to and from rural areas to work in those places but if the road infrastructure is poor, fuel is expensive, there is no reliable rail/bus option, there is a sincere lack of housing in their rural area which makes even renting a very expensive option, then those people move permanently to where the jobs are.
and remote working is not going to fix that problem because the only homes being built in rural ireland are one offs where planning is very restricted and social housing estates. which is nice.

ineedeuro

We don’t need motorways, we need huge investment in a rail system. Every other country in the world has a decent rail system yet in ireland we have an awful one….

People should stop demanding a road to get them faster to the traffic jam and demanding a rail system to glide past it in comfort

Thelonious Monk

FoFo1254122 wrote: »

how anyone in rural ireland votes for a green candidate is beyond me - they will fill our landscape with turbines and solar panels, they will make us poorer by not giving us the infrastructure we need to grow economically, they will destroy the agricultural sector.

They don't vote for the Greens in rural Ireland! Only us pampered city folk.
Also we need to look beyond growing economically being the be all and end all of everything, the world is finite.
I am looking forward to the next Government as the Greens will be gone, just to see who people will blame for carbon taxes and climate policy then. It was FG who signed up to the Paris Agreement and brought in carbon taxes but Eamon and the Greens get the blame for all this.
Who will rural Ireland blame for all their woes when the Greens are gone? Climate change policies aren't going to go away just because the Greens are no longer in Gov.

ineedeuro

Packrat wrote: »

Which is appropriate given how dispersed our population is by comparison with Germany.

That's about as relevant as how littlw/much of our CO2 emissions come from car manufacturing...

Our population is not dispersed

ineedeuro

FoFo1254122 wrote: »

eamon ryan lives in dundrum in dublin
and he has four children and before entering politics he used to run a travel company.
what resources of the planet has he used up? whats his carbon footprint?
he is also on record for using the n word - how does that even happen? whats going through your head to come out with that.
And remember he fell asleep in the dail when they were debating a motion on workers rights. poor matty mcgrath did the same and was destroyed by the media for it- but not our man eamon. he justs a better person then matty mcgrath. there is no hypocrisy to eamon ryan just ask the people from Shell to Sea.
and to top it off he is a career politician who believes rural ireland should foot ALL the cost to transition to this new green utopia his party promises.

how anyone in rural ireland votes for a green candidate is beyond me - they will fill our landscape with turbines and solar panels, they will make us poorer by not giving us the infrastructure we need to grow economically, they will destroy the agricultural sector.
all the government do is invest mainly in the big cities and large towns and obviously the jobs follow.
then rural people travel to and from rural areas to work in those places but if the road infrastructure is poor, fuel is expensive, there is no reliable rail/bus option, there is a sincere lack of housing in their rural area which makes even renting a very expensive option, then those people move permanently to where the jobs are.
and remote working is not going to fix that problem because the only homes being built in rural ireland are one offs where planning is very restricted and social housing estates. which is nice.

All the solar panels, wind farms etc was given planning when the greens where not in government. The Paris agreement was signed when the Greens where not in government

Maybe you need to look at someone else to blame

NIMAN

They never started building them in this part of the country.

Mad_maxx

ineedeuro wrote: »

We don’t need motorways, we need huge investment in a rail system. Every other country in the world has a decent rail system yet in ireland we have an awful one….

People should stop demanding a road to get them faster to the traffic jam and demanding a rail system to glide past it in comfort

im a big fan of rail but not in this country as we do not police public transport properly and anti social behaviour is more or less ignored

RandomViewer

Arealred wrote: »

This will hopefully be the last time we see the Greens, at best they are idiots at worse they are psychopaths.

For the economy to function motorways are needed between Cork and Limerick, Limerick and Waterford/ Rosslare, Dublin and Donegal.

These clowns are deluded leaving wolves roam in rural Ireland, carsharing in rural areas and lettuce on windowsills.

Large percentage of the Green party are the same kind of people who called the shots in the Church, those people still exist and t he Green party is their current vehicle of influence

Wibbs

Eamon Ryan while he seems to be a nice enough chap is a thundering fool on a few levels. The wolves in Ireland one was a highpoint of uninformed idiocy. He and his party are supported by a tiny number of suburban, mostly Dublin based, right on sweaters knitted from organic muesli, authentic peruvian hatted, vegetarian when it suits types. AKA gobsh1tes. The Greens are a party of the suburban gobsh1tes and the staggeringly naive and their idiotic pronouncements are best ignored.

Thelonious Monk

Wibbs wrote: »

Eamon Ryan while he seems to be a nice enough chap is a thundering fool on a few levels. The wolves in Ireland one was a highpoint of uninformed idiocy. He and his party are supported by a tiny number of suburban, mostly Dublin based, right on sweaters knitted from organic muesli, authentic peruvian hatted, vegetarian when it suits types. AKA gobsh1tes. The Greens are a party of the suburban gobsh1tes and the staggeringly naive and their idiotic pronouncements are best ignored.

How can this pronouncement be ignored when it was agreed by Government? The Climate Bill isn't going to go away when the Greens are voted out.

Eamon's quotes on wolves were completely taken out of context.
What he actually said was

the re-introduction of wolves will not be the priority of the next government but should be possible in 40 or 50 years.

When asked if he would like to see wolves reintroduced to Ireland in his lifetime, Mr Ryan said: ‘Yeah, but first things first, we have to restore our peatlands. We have to build up a native and natural forest.

‘Currently we have a forestry model which is plantations, which is short of wildlife. It is going to take 40 to 50 years, forestry takes time. It is that sort of time frame not in the political time frame that it might happen in’, Eamon Ryan added.

So if we were to restore our forests, which we wont because farming is all that matters in Ireland, then in 50 years it might not be unreasonable to reintroduce wolves, and why not? They are part of a healthy ecosystem.

Charles Babbage

People are not going to vote to go back to the 19th century when everyone lived in tenements and cycled or took trams and trains. There were many railways then which closed down for lack of business.
However, as noted above, only a few more roads actually require a motorway now, although many require upgrading. The M20 is needed, perhaps a M4 to Longford and after that 2+2 type improvements will suffice.

FoFo1254122

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

They don't vote for the Greens in rural Ireland! Only us pampered city folk.
Also we need to look beyond growing economically being the be all and end all of everything, the world is finite.
I am looking forward to the next Government as the Greens will be gone, just to see who people will blame for carbon taxes and climate policy then. It was FG who signed up to the Paris Agreement and brought in carbon taxes but Eamon and the Greens get the blame for all this.
Who will rural Ireland blame for all their woes when the Greens are gone? Climate change policies aren't going to go away just because the Greens are no longer in Gov.

there is plenty of people in rural Ireland who vote green, what a bizarre comment to make. either uneducated or elitist, maybe both.

if eamon ryan was serious about the environment, tomorrow he could make a fair deal that will ensure ireland meets its carbon cuts deadlines and then some.
fairly subsidy the farmers and land owners to plant woodland that will not be harvested. and thats irelands carbon cut agreements sown up for decades.
but that cant be allowed
they would rather break farmers financially and then farmers have no choice but to allow subsidised turbines and solar panels on their land.
that way the billions of subsidies goes to private companies who can ensure long term energy needs of the big urban areas.
its so opaque whats going on, yet people act like dum dums when it comes to this topic.

MissShihTzu

Spoken like a man who's never been beyond The Pale...

It's better to keep your mouth closed and have people think you're a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt!

Thelonious Monk

FoFo1254122 wrote: »

there is plenty of people in rural Ireland who vote green, what a bizarre comment to make. either uneducated or elitist, maybe both.

I am constantly told here that the only people that vote for them live in South County Dublin.

Mad_maxx

China build a Cork to Limerick motorway every other week , it makes zero difference to anything if this is constructed

improve rail though , Navan to Dublin is a must , Meath is far behind the other two commuter counties in terms of rail connections to the capital , I would not have bothered building the M3 , the road from Dublin to Navan and on to Kells and even Cavan was ok if you just bypassed Dunshaughlin and Navan and kells and also Virginia , it opened at the time of the crash if i recall ?

motorways are not unconditional goods either but the trouble is the Green party view them as evils

The J Stands for Jay

FoFo1254122 wrote: »

how anyone in rural ireland votes for a green candidate is beyond me - they will fill our landscape with turbines and solar panels, they will make us poorer by not giving us the infrastructure we need to grow economically, they will destroy the agricultural sector.
all the government do is invest mainly in the big cities and large towns and obviously the jobs follow.
then rural people travel to and from rural areas to work in those places but if the road infrastructure is poor, fuel is expensive, there is no reliable rail/bus option, there is a sincere lack of housing in their rural area which makes even renting a very expensive option, then those people move permanently to where the jobs are.
and remote working is not going to fix that problem because the only homes being built in rural ireland are one offs where planning is very restricted and social housing estates. which is nice.

That's a lot of contradictions for one paragraph.

nc6000

Strumms wrote: »

Stockholm has about 300,000 less people then Dublin, yet has a functioning Metro since 1950... 7 lines 100 stations.

Yes. I'd guess almost every European city the size of Dublin has some sort of metro.

The Luas has been the only significant addition to public transport in the last 40 years.

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

They don't vote for the Greens in rural Ireland! Only us pampered city folk.
Also we need to look beyond growing economically being the be all and end all of everything, the world is finite.
I am looking forward to the next Government as the Greens will be gone, just to see who people will blame for carbon taxes and climate policy then. It was FG who signed up to the Paris Agreement and brought in carbon taxes but Eamon and the Greens get the blame for all this.
Who will rural Ireland blame for all their woes when the Greens are gone? Climate change policies aren't going to go away just because the Greens are no longer in Gov.

Opposing economic growth is the ultimate I’m alright Jack position. and would mean curtailing not just travel but immigration.

FoFo1254122

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

I am constantly told here that the only people that vote for them live in South County Dublin.

there is plenty of people in rural ireland who vote for green candidates.
its mostly young college educated people, you know the type who have to be right on with the latest PC bullsh1t.
people who say martin luther king, nelson mandela and gretta thunberg are their 'heroes'
we all know the type

Thelonious Monk

fvp4 wrote: »

Opposing economic growth is the ultimate I’m alright Jack position. and would mean curtailing not just travel but immigration.

Things need to change sooner or later regardless of who is alright Jack

Thelonious Monk

FoFo1254122 wrote: »

there is plenty of people in rural ireland who vote for green candidates.
its mostly young college educated people, you know the type who have to be right on with the latest PC bullsh1t.
people who say martin luther king, nelson mandela and gretta thunberg are their 'heroes'
we all know the type

lol, bloody educated young people, what would they know

nc6000

nc6000 wrote: »

Yes. I'd guess almost every European city the size of Dublin has some sort of metro.

The Luas has been the only significant addition to public transport in the last 40 years.

Yes. The opposition there does come from the car lobby. I’m pro public transport in Dublin. Often of course the same places who vote greens vote to not have their roads dug up or trees misaligned.

FoFo1254122

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

lol, bloody educated young people, what would they know

your right they know nothing about nothing.
they are young and because they are young they are stupid.
vast majority will as they get older become more rounded individuals with real responsibilities, and they will eventually understand how successful they are in life will be defined by what they are willing to take from others.

Strumms

suicide_circus wrote: »

Hasnt this pandemic shown us that global interest rates allow us to borrow vast sums indefinately with no ill effect? Build the motorways, a train station in every village.

Building a shît load of roads means government after government can throw millions and indeed billions over decades at and into the industry populated by their mates... builders and their contractors.

There has been minimum investment in rail... the rolling stock was literally falling asunder before new trains were ordered... Dublin still waiting for a one line of a metro 16 years later after first talking about it...it’s now scheduled to open in 2027... proposed in 2005, finished (maybe) in ‘27 .... both my parents were still working when it was given the go ahead, wheather they’ll live to see the benefit of the one line of the metro having been built..hmmm...22 years, from saying ok, we’ll do it, to having it, maybe.

According to google, if I decide to take the train to Kilkenny from where I live in Dublin, north east, driving I’ll get the two minutes faster.... Rail service is third world..

Atlantic Dawn

The LUAS red line has been allowed fall in to scangerification and is unsafe for travel, the DART is beginning to fall in to this on the northside, what's the point in spending billions on infrastructure to allow it to be hijacked by scumbags, we need a transport police.

FishOnABike

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I think the m20 is needed. Maybe something to Sligo.

Then that’s it. There is no need for a M24. A better road, yes, a motorway no.

N24 and N25 need to be upgraded to dual carriageway at a minimum and towns + villages along the routes bypassed.

It's absolutely crazy that traffic can be held up for miles in a tailback into a small town or village or behind a tractor or bicycle on a single lane road that is a national primary route between two of the country's cities.

FoFo1254122

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

The LUAS red line has been allowed fall in to scangerification and is unsafe for travel, the DART is beginning to fall in to this on the northside, what's the point in spending billions on infrastructure to allow it to be hijacked by scumbags, we need a transport police.

why will the state not invest in rail network across the whole country.
because they know rail means more then writing capital investment cheques.
the state will have to provide funding regards subsidising fares and repairs and maintenance , they will have to police the network, and worse the state will be answerable when it all goes wrong.
but also by reducing car ownership, the loss of VRT and VAT to the exchequer would be substantial.

its a nonsense to even entertain the idea, i have always said we should be closing intercity rail and replacing with private bus companies.
i would sell dublin bus and bus eireann, shut irish rail as you couldn't even give that away.
the savings would be huge and the quality of service the same.

Galwayguy35

They should just leave this clown sleeping on the job because when he is awake he's only talking a load of bollix.

The J Stands for Jay

FoFo1254122 wrote: »

its a nonsense to even entertain the idea, i have always said we should be closing intercity rail and replacing with private bus companies.
i would sell dublin bus and bus eireann, shut irish rail as you couldn't even give that away.
the savings would be huge and the quality of service the same.

That sounds like a strategy to cut off rural areas from the rest of the country.

FishOnABike

ineedeuro wrote: »

We don’t need motorways, we need huge investment in a rail system. Every other country in the world has a decent rail system yet in ireland we have an awful one….

People should stop demanding a road to get them faster to the traffic jam and demanding a rail system to glide past it in comfort

When they can get five people plus luggage from Ballyferriter in Dingle or Dungloe in Donegal to Dublin and back for a similar cost to the round car journey and similar convenience in terms of frequency and journey time to make it some way practicable then rail might be in the running.

Unless it's prepared to run at a significant loaa and be significantly overprovisioned it isn't even on the pitch in terms of competiveness or convenience.

Trying to get from one remote rural area to another in a different part of the country and you'd be lucky if you could make the journey in a day, let alone the return journey.

For point to point between one urban centre and another (if one happens to be Dublin) and any intermediate stops en route rail might be able to contend if it was five or six times cheaper than present.

AndrewJRenko

FishOnABike wrote: »

When they can get five people plus luggage from Ballyferriter in Dingle or Dungloe in Donegal to Dublin and back for a similar cost to the round car journey and similar convenience in terms of frequency and journey time to make it some way practicable then rail might be in the running.

Most people underestimate the actual cost of the round car journey by not allocating the fixed costs - tax, insurance, car payments - appropriately.

Society also subsidises general motoring costs, so the actual costs paid do not reflect the overall costs.

ineedeuro

Mad_maxx wrote: »

im a big fan of rail but not in this country as we do not police public transport properly and anti social behaviour is more or less ignored

It would cost a lot less to hire a few transport police for the trains than the fines we will get from teh Paris agreement

I'd like to see more money pumped into cycling infrastructure in our towns and cities.

Thelonious Monk

ineedeuro wrote: »

It would cost a lot less to hire a few transport police for the trains than the fines we will get from teh Paris agreement

Surely the next government without the Greens will remove us from this anti rural agreement?

prunudo

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I'd like to see more money pumped into cycling infrastructure in our towns and cities.

We need proper cycling infrastructure though. Not token spending of attaching a strip of tarmac to a footpath and calling it a cycling lane. Which since the pandenic have become full of buggy pushing families, dog walkers and runners all trying to socially distance from each other while being a safety hazard to themselves and the intended users, cyclists.

magicbastarder

Packrat wrote: »

Which is appropriate given how dispersed our population is by comparison with Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn

the german population is a hell of a lot more dispersed going by that motorway network, in that it's more evenly spread across the country.
i'm not sure if you mean the irish population is more rural - which it is, but this has no bearing on whether we should build motorways. motorways should connect population centres.

Wildly Boaring

Ok I've skipped a couple pages so maybe this point is made.

From 2022 EU money will be much more expensive for non ESG qualifying infrastructure.

Basically you can get very cheap money for qualifying train tracks and relatively expensive money for roads.

"EU Taxonomy"

Maybe if all our cars are EV and our grid tending towards zero green house gases we'll be back to motorways.

But the latest guidance for EU loans is fairly stark for those awaiting motorways.

Yellow_Fern

Strumms wrote: »

Building a shît load of roads means government after government can throw millions and indeed billions over decades at and into the industry populated by their mates... builders and their contractors.

There has been minimum investment in rail... the rolling stock was literally falling asunder before new trains were ordered... Dublin still waiting for a one line of a metro 16 years later after first talking about it...it’s now scheduled to open in 2027... proposed in 2005, finished (maybe) in ‘27 .... both my parents were still working when it was given the go ahead, wheather they’ll live to see the benefit of the one line of the metro having been built..hmmm...22 years, from saying ok, we’ll do it, to having it, maybe.

According to google, if I decide to take the train to Kilkenny from where I live in Dublin, north east, driving I’ll get the two minutes faster.... Rail service is third world..

That isnt the case at all . The Celtic Tiger motorways were built by a highly efficient agency called the national roads authority and they did a fantastic job. The integration of ecological and heritage concerns with road construction was incredibly successful and totally rewritten what we know of the history of this island.
I love trains but the reason so little was spent on trains is that we would never have the passenger numbers to justify brand newlines according to reports by the European Commission.

Charles Babbage

The thing about the Greens is that they are more than willing to say to people that they should move from where they want to live and where their families live to some congested place near a tram or train. But, for some reason, they are not willing to say to people in Raheny (say), we are going to take your garden and make this railway line 4 tracks to provide a proper service.

Thelonious Monk

Charles Babbage wrote: »

The thing about the Greens is that they are more than willing to say to people that they should move from where they want to live and where their families live to some congested place near a tram or train. But, for some reason, they are not willing to say to people in Raheny (say), we are going to take your garden and make this railway line 4 tracks to provide a proper service.

But it's not up to the Greens to make these decisions. Bus Connects will require taking parts of people's gardens, is it the Greens doing this? It's fascinating how much power people think the Greens have, and that they are responsible for so many things in this country even though they've been in power 5 minutes and wont be around for long.

ineedeuro

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Surely the next government without the Greens will remove us from this anti rural agreement?

The Greens didn’t sign up to it and as far as I know it’s not really something you suddenly decide to get out of

Plus it’s not “anti rural”

RandomViewer

FoFo1254122 wrote: »

there is plenty of people in rural ireland who vote for green candidates.
its mostly young college educated people, you know the type who have to be right on with the latest PC bullsh1t.
people who say martin luther king, nelson mandela and gretta thunberg are their 'heroes'
we all know the type

Putting Great in the same sentence as King and Mandela, what did she actually do? skip school and whine like every other teenager

ineedeuro

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I'd like to see more money pumped into cycling infrastructure in our towns and cities.

100% but when they have done this recently in Dublin and other towns you have loads of people complaining.
We need to change the mentality of the population

RandomViewer

I think it'll be a Green scandal that brings down this government,

Thelonious Monk

ineedeuro wrote: »

The Greens didn’t sign up to it and as far as I know it’s not really something you suddenly decide to get out of

Plus it’s not “anti rural”

It was in jest because the Greens get the blame for us being part of that agreement and carbon taxes even though it was the work of FG.