alternative party » alternative transport

Wait all Day for a bus and three Streetcars of Desire come at once

Philip Casey — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 21:15:52 +0000

You know the old saying about waiting ages for a bus – and then three Streetcars of Desire come along? Having banged on for the last few years about the benefits of hybrid bus-tram rapid transit, I’ve felt a bit like that since last August when Frank McDonald interviewed Aris Venetikidis in the Irish Times about his public transport map for Dublin, and again this weekend when news broke about a new bus rapid-transit route planned for south Dublin, when Frank McDonald wrote in The Irish Times about a proposed Blue Line running from Sandyford Estate to St Vincent’s Hospital via UCD and RTÉ. It would be built for €33 million, in marked contrast to the estimated €5 billion price tag for Metro North.
While over in the Irish Independent Paul Melia also covered it, adding that each vehicle costs between €250,000 and €1m, depending on the model required, and can carry up to 150 passengers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHJmbe7jmSA

There is much about interconnecting with Luas and the DART, but while it does connect at two points with the Luas, it seems to fall short of connecting with the DART at Sydney Parade. See for yourself.
Click here to download a printable pdf of the proposed BlueLine route

Incidentally it is a south Dublin initiative. If you type in Booterstown, Dublin, Ireland into Google maps you’ll see the old demarcation between Dublin City and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. The promoters, which include Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, are of course aware that a joined-up system is required, and hope that the Rail Procurement Agency would take over the “development of the technology,” which I presume means some sort of integration. Whatever about that, if it hasn’t been suggested already, may I propose the name G-Dart for rapid transit in the Greater Dublin Area.

I think Paul Melia’s contention that bus-tram rapid transit has never been tested here (in Ireland) is possibly incorrect. On February 19, 2007, the then Minister for Transport Martin Cullen said in a speech in Waterford:

We have also heard today that Bus Éireann is currently examining the potential for the introduction in our cities including Waterford, of ‘BRT’ (Bus Rapid Transit), a system of “bus trams” or “streetcars” popular in the US, Canada and in a growing number of European cities. I look forward shortly to viewing the 12-metre streetcar, just parked outside on the quay, which has been manufactured by Wrights in Ballymena, Co Antrim. The attractiveness of Bus Rapid Transit lies in its potential to deliver a very high frequency service at a fraction of the cost of designing, building and maintaining a full-scale tram system. (full speech here)

So what happened? On April 5, 2007, Mr Cullen opted for conventional double and single-decker buses, (Word .doc) instead, without any explanation that I can find.

But to get back to my Streetcars of Desire.

Aris Venetikidis has since 2005 worked in Dublin as an independent Designer/Photographer, a freelancer direct-to-client, and was awarded his MA in Visual Communication at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in June of this year. His thesis project is pretty stunning, and fortunately for us it is available on his website (aris design & photography): Presenting a Vision for Dublin at the NCAD Graduate Exhibition You can see his stunning maps which visualise an integrated transport system for Dublin. Dig a little bit into the thesis and you find the following gem. Not only does he recommend the Wrights Brothers hybrid bus trams I’ve been banging on about for years (nice to know I wasn’t alone) but he has some figures to back it up [edit: alas the link is lost in a re-design of the site].

Metro: estimated cost: €200 million per kilometre
Luas: estimated cost: € 33 million per kilometre
BRT: estimated cost: € 7-10 million per kilometre

So for every one km of metro, you can have twenty km of BRT for the same cost – that is to say, twenty times more bang for the buck, quite apart from the fact that its construction would be much quicker, cleaner, more accessible – and Stephen’s Green could remain a garden of tranquility rather than be destroyed as a transport hub. Matched with Aris Venetikidis’ integrated transport system (which does link Sandyford, UCD, Vincent’s Hospital and the DART at Sydney Parade) Dublin might be a beautiful place to live for a relatively cheap investment.

External Links

BlueLine website
Dave Olsen’s 5-part argument for free transit
Capital idea imagines new way forward, Frank MacDonald interviews Aris Venetikidis
Presenting a Vision for Dublin at the NCAD Graduate Exhibition
Metro North
Next stop: make up our mind time May 31st, 2010 by James Nix at Think or Swim

Transported : Draft of an argument for Free-at-access Public Transport

Philip Casey — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:30:12 +0000

Oil, and therefore petrol, will run dry in the next 15-20 years. Earlier estimates put it at 30 years or more, but didn’t take account of the rise of China and India as first world economies – which in today’s terms, means enormous consumers of oil.

Picture shows Wright’s Streetcar Rapid Transit Vehicle. Source: BusandCoach.com

I believe that when the concept of holistic accounting is considered, the cost of free transport would be considerably cheaper than any conventional figure. Holistic accounting takes in the social, health and environmental enhancements and savings involved in any costing. The health consequences of doing nothing will in themselves put a dent in any conventional budget:
“The report just released on Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy shows that there will be a 180 per cent rise in emissions from cars and trucks over the next 10 years if nothing is done. It shows this will cause huge damage to people’s health. Already EU limits for emissions from cars and trucks are massively exceeded in the Dublin region.” (Vincent Browne, The Irish Times, September 20th, 2000).

NB This is a very rough draft. I originally posted this on the alternative party forum, now defunct, and haven’t had time to update it. Hopefully seeing it on a public space again will prompt me to work on it.

As for the financial benefits, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce estimates that the traffic chaos is costing Ireland €3 billion a year.

But what about private sector transport services? Public funding doesn’t imply taking away people’s livelihoods. They should be funded in the same way, subject to a high standard of service being implemented. According to the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mary Coughlan, [edit: she no longer holds this ministry] along with Bus Átha Cliath, Bus Éireann and Iarnród Éireann, up to 80 private companies already participate in the Free Travel Scheme, so there is a precedent for subsidising private transport companies.

The principle is already there, in other words.

The question that is never asked about subsidising private transport will of course be immediately asked when in comes to the public sphere – where will the money come from?
â€œLast year (2004) 528 people died on the roads of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland; several thousand more were seriously injured. The death toll on Ireland’s roads over the last 30 years is about 20,000, although advances in vehicle and road engineering and changes in the behaviour of road-users mean that the number of people killed each year is now half what it was 30 years ago. Each of those deaths is a family tragedy and many need not have happened. Bad driving is often a cause of road deaths, but in many instances neither the vehicle nor the road have provided road-users with adequate protection. see European Road Assessment Program

The Alberta Medical Association estimated that in 1999 traffic crash costs in Alberta,
Canada total $3.8 billion (1998 Canadian dollars), based on a value of $2.9 million
per fatality, $100,000 per injury, and $8,000 for each property-damage-only
collision.53 This averages about $515 dollars per capita ($335 U.S.), $740 per motor
vehicle ($471), and 3.7¢ per motor vehicle-kilometre (4.0¢ U.S. per vehicle-mile).
NB this link is to a pdf file.

At 528 fatalities in Ireland, that would appear to be a cost of 1.125billion Euro. That’s not counting the cost of injury.

It will in part be a long term investment in savings in public health costs, fines for not meeting our Kyoto Protocol agreements, lives saved, and world wide publicity for Ireland. These are beyond my capacity to estimate, but might make a nice thesis for an student economist. Directly in the short to medium term it would come from a parity of investment principle, and possibly charges similar to those in Ken Livingstone’s scheme for London. And not least, by the savings to the economy through reduced traffic congestion, as highlighted by the Dublin Chamber of Commerce (see link above).

I believe a small towns in Holland and the US provide free transport, but Ireland would be the first country per se to do so. Let’s be the first to do worthwhile things, especially now that we have a smoking ban success, and stop looking to Britain and the US before we do anything.

The advantages immediately apparent are as follows:

* Immediate and significant transfer of wealth to the poor and less well-off.
* Increased access to social and economic activity for the same groups
* Greater parity of investment in public and private transport (important principle)
* Greater speed of bus journeys
* Tax payers would see value for money. The tax payer pays, the tax payer benefits.
* Greater sense of public ownership
* Zero robberies and reduced assaults on bus drivers and staff. Reduced workload for drivers and
inspectors making confrontation with the public unlikely.
* No more wasting of inspector and court time bringing prosecutions
* Coupled with the proper implementation of QBCs, greatly reduced traffic congestion. This has
obvious large savings for businesses etc
* Reduced inflation.
* Reduced stress for the traveling public, therefore greater productivity and health; more free
time for personal and family interests
* Reduced oil imports and dependency. Reduction in car imports.
* Reduced traffic accidents as outlined above
* Improvement in air quality, and consequent improvement in health
* Significant step towards implementation of Kyoto Principles – a national obligation
* Alleviation of rural and suburban isolation – less depression
* The benefit to students and their families would amount to the equivalent of a significant
increase in student grants
* The present cost of pensioner and social welfare free travel would be absorbed into overall cost,
with greater dignity for pensioners and social welfare recipients
* Cut in administration, accounting, printing and security costs
* Redeployment of inspectors to raise standards
* Liberation of management from profit-driven to service-driven mentality
* Tourist relief and delight – a tourist attraction in itself. World kudos for Ireland.

I also advocate the scrapping of the extension of Luas lines, to be replaced by Streetcars – beautiful a bus-tram hybrid manufactured by Wrights of Ballymena. See my Streetcars of Desire entry.

Links

Here you can find a list of cities that currently provides their public transport for free. Part of Free Public Transports

Dave Olsen’s 5-part argument for free transit

Fur Coat and No Knickers

Philip Casey — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:47:06 +0000

In a fine, angry article in The Irish Times, Fintan O’Toole sums up what’s wrong with public transport policy in Ireland. In fact, now that I think of it, it probably sums up much of public policy in general. And none of this wrong-headedness started with the economic crisis. It started with the beginning of the so-called and now very dead Celtic Tiger.

photo credit: echoforsberg: some rights reserved.

We need to get away from the “fur coat and no knickers” mentality that dominates transport policy. Big, glamorous and monumentally expensive projects like Metro North would be fine if they were coming on top of a decent basic public service. In a time of crisis, scrapping the metro would save at least €5 billion.

And he gets to the nub of it here:

This is a public service that you’re paying for twice, through your taxes and your fares. It is, literally, a connection to your city, your society, your country.
And when it doesn’t function, your society is telling you something. It is reminding you that you don’t really matter, that even in the small, apparently banal things of life, you are a person of no importance.

Public transport, in this respect, is a function, not just of an economy, but of a democracy. A decent service is a form of public respect. A bad one is a form of public disregard.
–Fintan O’Toole Bus cuts plan shows contempt for people

“This is a public service that you’re paying for twice, through your taxes and your fares.”

No one seems to ask the question: why are we paying twice? Why not just once, through taxes?
I’ve tried to tease out this question in Transported for some years now, but O’Tooles article has crystalized a few things for me. For instance, the point about respect has been at the back of my mind for a long time. Now it’s at the front.

Contrast urban Dublin, with a population of half a million, with a city like urban Bogotá in Columbia, with a population of almost 7 million, and where income is one-tenth of what it is in New York.
Here are two videos from Streetfilms which illustrate the point. [Streetfilms is the video arm of the Livable Streets Initiative: producing educational, entertaining, and inspiring films for a sustainable urban environment.]

Bus Rapid Transit: Bogotá

Note: I used the Youtube versions of the videos above as I found the FlowPlayer used on the site to be very slow (a pity, it’s a gpl player).
Note 2. I used the Video Embedder plugin for WordPress to embed these video files. It makes life a lot simpler, from a cross-browser point of view. If you’ve problems seeing the videos please let me know.

Free Hybrid Electric Buses at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport

Philip Casey — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:24:10 +0000

Treehugger has a piece about free hybrid electric buses at Tokyo’s Haneda airport.

photo credit: Hugo90

What is there not to like about the new shuttle buses at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport – the hybrid electric buses save energy and have less air pollution. They are more quiet and the ride is smooth as silk. Plus they are free. Hino has supplied one while Mitsubishi Fuso supplied three: these cool vehicles now link Haneda’s first, second and international terminals, covering a distance of about 4.2 kilometers, and in one day, they may each travel up to 300 km.

more with photo at
Free Hybrid Electric Buses at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport

If US can do it in 10, we can do it in 5

Philip Casey — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:11:34 +0000

This is Al Gore’s speech exhorting Americans to change to a carbon-free economy in ten years.
The United States is a very large country. Ireland is a small one. If the United States can do it in ten years, we can do it in five.

Al Gore’s speech
apologies, I’ve had to remove the actual embedded video as it crashed IE browsers

We Can Solve It

Rip out the traffic lights and railings

Philip Casey — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:14:48 +0000

Hmm. It’s counter-intuitive, perhaps, and yet it has been proven to work. Any chance of it being piloted in ireland?

Rip out the traffic lights and railings. Our streets are better without them

Drivers and pedestrians negotiating shared space is shown to cut accidents and traffic, yet flat-earth planners won’t believe it

Simon Jenkins The Guardian

The Reinvention of Urban Dublin…? with possibly a little help from Jaime Lerner?

Philip Casey — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:12:08 +0000

Re the dreary turf war between Luas and Irish Rail over Broadstone, which according to today’s Irish Times Luas and the RPA have won (sub. required), what a pity there isn’t the imagination in Dublin that the Brazilian city of Curtiba was fortunate enough to have in the person of Jaime Lerner.

With maverick flair and a strategist’s disdain for accepted wisdom, Jaime Lerner re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way he managed to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats world-wide conceive what’s possible within the tangled structure of the metropolitan landscape.

With maverick flair and a strategist’s disdain for accepted wisdom, Jaime Lerner re-invented urban space in his native Curitiba, Brazil. Along the way he managed to revolutionize bus transit, awaken green consciousness in a populace accustomed to litter and blight, and change the way city planners and bureaucrats world-wide conceive what’s possible within the tangled structure of the metropolitan landscape.

If we had something like what is shown in this video in Dublin, I would happily say bye bye to my dream of free-at-access transport. as this would cover many of the benefits I had thought of.

Actually, we could do it very quickly, combined with some of the ideas in the video below. An 18 metre streetcar, manufactured by Wrights of Ballymena, is supposed to have been on test for the last year or so, though I haven’t seen any sign of it. See my Streetcars of Desire.

Anyway, Jaime Lerner does my heart good. I hope he does yours too. (Yes, it’s another TED video ;>)

Note: Search for Transported to bring up all my posts on transport

Congestion is costing Dublin Bus €60m a year

Philip Casey — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:54:58 +0000

O'Connell Street Traffic

RTÉreports that congestion is costing Dublin Bus €60m a year out of a total subvention of €80m, according to a submission to the Joint Committee on Transport.

photo credit: Thomas Stromberg Creative Commons license: some rights reserved.

Bill McCamley, SIPTU worker director, said Dublin Bus also paid VAT on its subvention and these factors had to be considered when looking at the subvention.

He told the committee that in relation to private operators SIPTU had a pragmatic attitude but claimed that up to 50% of licences issued to private operators to provide a service on some bus routes in Dublin were not being used.

He claimed the private operators were sitting on their licences and in the meantime Dublin Bus could not develop a service on that route.

The Joint Committe on Transport looks predominantly a conservative lot, so I don’t hold out much hope, but if congestion costs Dublin Bus €60 million a year, and Dublin Chamber Commerce estimated in 2003 that congestion cost its members €3 billion, isn’t it time to think out of the box and create a free-at-access public transport system – if necessary incorporating private companies like Luas and other bus lines? If the figure was so high in 2003, it must be closer to €4 billion now. Anyone got up-to-date figures?

At least then the subvention would be supporting public transport, and not congestion.

If you’d like to read some of the arguments I’ve made so far, click here. Click on the headings to get the full article. And please do add your own ideas in the comments. Criticism welcome but refinement of my idea even more so.

Parity in Transport: bicycles and cars

Philip Casey — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:08:58 +0000

Streetcars of Desire

Philip Casey — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:18:18 +0000

NB this was written after the 2007 local elections. Updated 2008, 2010

During the election, I joined other bloggers in making a wish list to offer the incoming government. This was number one on my modest proposals:

1. Transport: (a) Forget about extending the Luas. Bring the bus network up to Luas standard, ie electronic timetables, shelters, and high frequency. Thereby: saving millions, bypassing massive disruption – benefiting passengers on the entire network, not just a few routes. Almost immediate beneficial effect – no waiting for years on end. See my Mark of the BX
(b) Free public transport. Yes I know it has to be paid for, but no one says that when [edited] a Minister opens yet another motorway.

See my detailed proposal here.

Actually, it was only when Labour counsellor and ex-Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin Aodhá¡n Ó Ríordáin turned up on my doorstep that I thought of it. He wanted to know if there was anything he could help me with and I gave the poor man an earful about how the RPA want to rip up the newly renovated O’Connell St to extend the Luas from Stephen’s Green to O’Connell St. What’s wrong with a bus/tram hybrid, I fumed? No disruption, a tenth of the cost, meaning ten bus/hybrid routes for the price of one Luas route, with all the admitted benefits of a tram, namely real time passenger information, high frequency, accessibility, speed etc.

Well, imagine my surprise when I did a google for bus/tram hybrid and the first link to come up was Bus Éireann! (see link below).

It seems that when ex–Transport Minister Martin Cullen (update: now retired) was touring the country, announcing new routes and buses in Galway and Waterford, and in the process, unveiled an exciting future.

An 18 metre streetcar, manufactured by Wrights of Ballymena, Co Antrim, was unveiled at the event.

Ballymena is in First Minister Ian Paisley’s constituency [update: Dr Paisley has now retired], and sure enough, his photo is on their website (PDF), pictured at the ceremony where the Wright Group honoured for engineering innovation. [edit: unfortunately this picture has been replaced]

Bus and Coach Professional, however, has a very interesting piece on the Streetcar, plus photos.

Am I the last one to hear about this?? The Sunday Business Post reported on the prototype two years ago, and added

Both Bus Eireann and Dublin Bus have already invested in low-floor buses designed and manufactured by Wrightbus buses which ease access for passengers with disabilities, elderly people and customers with buggies. According to Nodder, both companies have ’œexpressed interest’˜ in StreetCar.

Let’s hope that interest hardens into Streetcars of Desire on Irish streets. A start could be made by substituting a Streetcar for Luas between Stephen’s Green and O’Connell St.

Ten upgraded routes to Luas’ one would take a lot of cars off the street. It would be nice to see Irish cities join the 21st century public transport club – at a tenth of the cost.

Of course coupled with my argument for free transport – well, maybe that’s 22nd century.

Bus Rapid Transit – Could ’Bus Trams’ be the Future for Public Transport in Irish Cities? This was a link to the Bus Éireann website, but unfortunately it no longer exists, and can’t be found on Google, so it would seem that the idea is dead as far as CIÉ is concerned.

Bus and Coach Professional on the Streetcar

*Update Oct 2008 from the Ballymena Guardian, now no longer on its website.

This is the latest in a series of significant contracts won by the Wright Group, including the provision of 50 ‘green’ buses to Dublin Bus and an order worth over £125 million with FirstGroup, the world’s leading transport company.
This significant order sets the standard for public transport and is powered by a state-of-the-art hybrid-electric system that is both fuel-efficient and more environmentally-friendly.
The high-tech StreetCar RTV interior also provides passengers with the latest travel information and internet access.
Passenger safety is assured by a panic button and a live video feed which can be relayed back to the bus depot as well as the local police station.