antoin@eire.com

Parkingtag.ie launched a few weeks ago to allow you to pay for your kerbside parking in Dublin City. Basically, what happens is that you have a barcode (the ‘parking tag’) on your windscreen, which contains an account number. When you park, you ring a phone number to tell the system that you want to park for a certain amount of time. Then you’re done. When the warden comes around and checks your car, he’ll scan the barcode and get an immediate confirmation that you are fully paid up.

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Transport is a big problem, at the personal (how will I get to work?), economic (How much is it costing to move all these people around) and environmental levels (What damage is all this movement causing?). A few interesting links:

New suburbanism is a new way of solving the environmental crisis, an alternative to ‘new urbanism’ (which basically means creating more dense urban areas). The problem with the concept is that the underlying principles (which are really assumptions) are mainly wrong. You cannot support a global population of ten billion people on this planet if they are all spread all over the place, have an attachment to their living places, are not subsistence farmers and have to travel to congregate at work or school on a regular basis. (more…)

David McWilliams thinks that the Irish public is being a little unrealistic in its assessment of the Ryanair bid. He is right. The comments give an indication of how unrealistic the public is. But the reality is that Aer Lingus is a minnow in a world of eagles and it has to be bought by somebody if it is to avoid the disastrous fate of Alitalia and many other flag carriers before it.

It is interesting to see the perception people have of Ireland’s biggest airline. There is an assumption that because Ryanair does one particular thing well, or a particular way, that it cannot do anything else.

According to a report in the Tribune, Dublin Bus has 4 percent fewer trips this year compared to last year. This amounts to tens of thousands fewer trips per day, and a great deal of lost revenue. This reduction in numbers is despite the fact that petrol prices have never been higher in the last year, and despite the fact that parking charges in the city centre are growing ever higher.

The most likely explanation is that Dublin Bus is feeling the effect of migrant workers leaving Ireland. The increase in bus passenger numbers in recent years was the result of immigrants, not the result of people leaving their cars behind.

The Department of Transport, which pays a large subsidy to Dublin Bus now has to accept that despite extensive marketing efforts, Dublin Bus management largely failed to entice drivers out of their cars. The problem is that the service DB provides just isn’t suited to the modern city and the modern commuter.

It’s not a capacity problem anymore. There is now overcapacity on Dublin’s Buses. Throwing more vehicles at the problem won’t solve anything. The whole public transport system of Dublin, in particular of the bus service that forms the core, needs to be completely redesigned to meet twenty-first century needs.

So, my solicitors and I spent a day in Court with Swords Express, the public transport company I started to provide decent, fast transport to the people of Ireland’s biggest town last year. You only go to Court when there is something really big at stake, and you only go to Court with the government if you think you are very likely to get a favorable outcome. The costs involved are tremendous. The government has limitless resources and is not afraid to bring them to bear. Even for our one-day event and even though no evidence was heard in Court and the State decided to settle on the day, the costs will be into six figures, money which the taxpayer will end up having to pay.

Read this plan for an intercity coach system based on Motorways, conceived for the UK, but very applicable to Ireland.

This article on the UK Design Museum site tells the story of the British motorway and general road signage system, designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert. It begins:

Determined to illustrate the haphazard state of British road signage at the turn of the 1960s, the graphic designer Herbert Spencer drove from central London to the recently opened Heathrow London Airport and photographed each of the road signs that he came across along the way.

Perhaps it is time for someone to do something similar for the drive from Naas via the M50 ring-road to the Airport. It would certainly be an interesting project to do over a few Sunday mornings.

Come for a spin with me on the Swords Express on Saturday 24 November at 11.30 from Eden Quay. It would be great to see a few people from the blog there. You can come back to town at 1pm or 2pm, as you wish. I will pay for the tickets. Intention here is to show non Swords people what the route is all about although if anybody wants to meet us in Swords they are welcome to as well. Let me know if you are coming so that I have an idea of numbers.

My company has launched Swords Express. We have a blog, in fact, our whole website is a big blog, and our customers can (and do) leave comments. Most of them are positive, but some of them are a bit less so. But we post them all up there nonetheless. I will be on the radio over the weekend talking about some of this.

Berkeley Bike Boulevards from Streetfilms shows some ideas about encouraging bicycle use in Berkeley, California.