Cities around the world that are reducing car access

I think you are over estimating the cost of running a car. There's lots of people who need a car, and then struggle to keep something on the road. But it's not going to cost 10k a year. My own costs are nowhere near that.

Not everyone is a new driver though. I'm not sure why you think they are.

Because there wouldn't be a lot of very experiencd drivers who are on minimum wage. So not everyone is a new driver, but the vast majority of minimum wage employees would be new drivers.

Once you start dealing with work locations outside of the city centre, there are far more reasons that people may need a car to get to/from work.

The main one being, still, the fact that for many of them there will be no direct bus route, given the paucity of orbital bus routes.

People may take jobs that are close to their parents, children’s schools etc., and any number of other reasons, that might require at least two buses in either direction. And yes, they could be commuting from Clonee and dropping children off at their parents en route to avoid childcare costs.

It is far less black and white than in the case of someone working in the city centre and I think you are being rather simplistic in your assessment of people’s commutes.

Liffey Valley undoubtedly has improved connectivity along the N4 corridor since the launch of the C Spine but even that isn’t finished. There are large parts of the western Lucan that still have no regular bus other than the very limited hourly L51 & L52 and for those in some parts of Shackleton or along Adamstown Boulevard, a regular bus can be a reasonably long walk away.

The lack of orbital bus routes in Dublin is a big problem right now, and implementing changes such as this before they have been fully rolled out and, more importantly, bedded in, which is probably a bit short-sighted. Given that the bus companies cannot resource existing services, I have serious doubts about the speed of rollout of the future ones. Even allowing for that, the planned W4 frequency across the toll bridge of every 15/30 minutes is ridiculously low.

I would also say that the inability of GoAhead to deliver anything close to a reliable service across their network would put me off relying on them to get to/from work, especially when frequency is less than every 15 minutes, and even more so where a change of bus is involved.

There are minimum wage jobs pretty much everywhere these days. I never had a car when I was younger, I don't even have one now, but I'd just try and get a job somewhere that I could get to without a car, if I was in that situation.

I think my point is misunderstood. I never said that all people on min wage are new drivers. I said that the vast majority of staff are local young wans and young fellas. Given their age, likely place of residence, the cost of car insurance etc. The majority are unlikely to be car owners. Yet the Indo article doesn't talk about how the works will improve pt and cycling access for this majority of staff. Instead they pick a moan story from a presumably more senior staff member about a car journey to an un named meath village that will become marginally more expensive.

Going back to Liffey Valley - the issue I have primarily is the timing.

Announcing the implementation of parking charges before the full set of new orbital bus routes are implemented and bedded in is daft.

The G Spine actually reduces the number of buses serving the shopping centre.

Park n ride alone is mostly a failure in attracting users and achieving mode shift. Once you're in your car there's no money or time saving to be had compared to just continuing to drive to city centre, that would only change if there was a congestion charge significantly higher than the public transport fare plus the parking fee.