Who to vote for to massively improve public transport?

sorry folks, but its clearly obvious, established parties such as ffg, are in serious trouble, theyve clearly catastrophically failed to meet critical needs, and now their time of governance is coming to an end, we ve no real clue where this is going, but as it stands, it doesnt look too good, its looking very likely we ll do what many other countries are currently doing, i.e. move towards the extremes, so expect more turmoil....

...what does this mean for public transport.....probably not so good things unfortunately....

...to answer the question, probably the greens, but they to are absolutely terrible in regards the matter...

...we clearly need to rapidly expand our rail network, but this probably wont happen anytime soon, if at all, so expect rising economic and social uncertainty...

...and if you think public transport is bad in dublin, maybe take a look at many rural parts of the country.....

none of the parties are willing to stick their necks out and opt for much larger, much more expensive, even riskier projects such as rail, so the process defaults to much simpler projects such as cycle lanes, we need such infrastructure, but we urgently need the expensive stuff to, but.....

Not the green party anyway. They have achieved nothing in the years they were in government. Well apart from taxing us all more.

...but the reality is, taxes are gonna have to rise anyway, in order for us to try get ourselves out of our current situations, its something we re gonna have to just accept.....

Greens definitely. Metro is on track to actually happen, bus connects routes have got planning permission lately, DART+ is happening, this is a lot of achievement given they've not been long in government and are very much a minority. FFFG ignored public transport for 100 years and people blame the Greens for the mess they inherited. Also much of the country can never be served by public transport due to people living in one off housing and not in towns and villages, and these voters tend to hate the Greens as nothing they stand for is relevant to them. But yes vote Green please!

Green Party

It was #2 on their 2020 election manifesto. Four years on, they are actually following through on it even though they are a minority part

Im going out on a limb here and say that neither of those projects will actually happen. At least not for another quarter century. How long has the metro been going now?

You may be right but they have more of a chance of happening with the Greens in government, in my opinion.

For 'majority' read 'people like me'

I'll be quite happy to vote Greens in the upcoming election, their local candidates are outstanding.

what party, where!

its clearly obvious most advanced economies, including ours, are currently in serious trouble, we have rapidly growing wealth inequality, which is now causing extremely serious social and economic instabilities, this in turn is causing a rapid rise in the support for the extremes, what is the norm, will simply not be very very soon, established parties are toast, for now anyway, ireland must to prepare for this upheaval thats currently occurring. this is clearly going to result in some form of sf government eventually, and then maybe some other form of extremism, so get ready!

Not the greens, they will plant flower pots and fall asleep.

Can't imagine any of the current non government lot being able to fund any large PT initiatives given that they will already be putting the country into debt with their housing proposals.

We have a terrible public transport network in this country. I live in rural wexford and have no need for public transport however when I lived in 2 different major towns in meath there was no reliable PT links. If you live in Blanch and want to get to say Tallaght, there are no links that dont use An Lár and add hours.

What we do need is a proper orbital route outside the M50, add bus lane on the M50 and have park and ride off the m50 with parking at 5-10km intervals so that traffic passing through dublin going cross country can take the orbital route and those going into the city have a park and ride option. Then put a toll on cars driving inside the newly created M50 zone where there is reliable public transport.

We need a much better rail system. We have a worse rail system than we had 100 years ago.

All of the above cost money, how many people would be willing to take a tax increase to pay for it? Almost zero. Which is why current government and main opposition are not championing public transport

The plans to improve transport infrastructure, slowly, are already there. Nothing much is going to change beyond for it the next decade, no matter who is in Government.

If you want ambitious capital commitments, urban rail and what not, then vote FG.

The Greens will be almost totally eliminated after the three upcoming elections.

I can only base my opinions on my observed reality. I'm in Dublin every weekend, I live in Wexford and spent over 10 years living in meath, aswell as my teen + 20's years living in kildare and dublin. Couple that with being a fan of trains in general (#autism_yo) and I reckon I've quite a rounded experience of what our PT network is.

We may have one bus that negates th example that I mentioned but we do not have town to town buses in the GDA. We don't have the coverage that we had 100 years ago. One of the biggest towns in the commuter belt, Navan, where I lived and commuted from for years, has one irregular bus to Blanch that takes 2X the time of a car journey and goes nowhere near the industrial parks, and has no rail network. Ever tried getting a train to Donegal? Or a bus from Enniscorthy to Ferns? Other than wexford bus (a private company who are actually pretty good and miles better than CIE) there are few options.

The bus connects scheme promised a lot and has delivered some, but as you rightly point out there's lots more to do. Joining up the luases was a great development too.

Lets take a couple of real world examples, right. I work in Blanchardstown. One of the industrial parks, well served in the past from the city center but a nightmare from anywhere else. (In reality I work from home 100% but my base is blanch if I ever have to go in for a client meeting or something, rare but it can happen). To drive from where I am to work is about 1.5 hours. More in traffic at peak, so lets say 2 hours. There is no park and ride facility, despite my office being 10 minutes and probably less than 10km from the M50. So I cannot drive somewhere , park up, and take public transport (or indeed take public transport the whole way). It was the same when I lived in Navan, commuting to a different location in Blanch. There was no bus - I could drive 10 mins to a local bus stop and get a bus that took 2 hours for a 45 minute drive, but left me over an hours walk from work. The bus route there was I think the NX but they renamed routes since so Im not sure.

So, in neither of those situations, even if I was living in the local town, there was no suitable public transport, to one of the biggest industrial and FDI areas in the country.

they've helped this suburbanite anyway, great improvements on cycling infra for those of us working in town, and also a 24 hour bus route serving where i am that was never there before so that's great for nights out. obviously "rural ireland" will always hate the greens as the greens don't want transport to revolve around private cars any more, which is a logical stance to take as we can't keep clogging everywhere with cars.

More cyclists use the cycle track at Leeson St bridge than motorists driving over the bridge. If you build and maintain quality cycle facilities, cyclists will use them in droves.

of course they're used outside of city centres, lots of people cycle from suburbs to work in centres every day

It's almost like there isn't a quick fix

I genuinely have no idea to vote for in the next election

Public transport is a big thing, but I bought my house close to a rail line. (Grew up beside a rail line) So I'm kinda mostly covered already. Rail out to Rathfarnham would help slightly if it was here "Now" but it would be for at least another 10 years at which point my kid will be finished school and I won't need it.

The Big problem we have is that people in Dublin think Public Transport and immediately think buses. People who don't live near or use the DART or the Luas Green line, don't understand how vastly superior it is to the likes of buses.

I lived in Rathfarnham for a few years and the Public transport (16 Bus at the time) was beyond CRAP! like absolute F-Tier junk in comparison to the DART.

The DART itself however is under threat, some of the Rolling stock is over 40 years old at this point without replacement and there is also attempts to curtail the service for the sake of not having to invest in big projects like Howth Junction points issue.