REARVIEW:BMW'S M5 TOURING is a thing of beauty. Not only that, you will leave the Porsche 911 in the rear view mirror while your three kids play computer games in the back. Of course, for motorists in need of a lot of space, there are more inexpensive options such as the Volkswagen Passat.
This is a bit like the debate surrounding Metro North. It would be ideal to have an underground link between the city centre and north county Dublin and the airport. How impressive would it be for a tourist to take a ride in zip time and arrive in St Stephen’s Green in style? How many vehicles would it unclog from our streets?
The benefits are obvious. But the reality is we simply cannot afford the billions that will be required to build Metro North. What transport users need now are effective and cost-efficient options to improve our transport network in a timely and sensible fashion. In this respect, the news last week of a plan to build Dublin’s first bus rapid-transit route is to be welcomed.
The service would link the Dart station at Sydney Parade with Sandyford Business Estate while also serving St Vincent’s University Hospital and University College Dublin. The system would carry 1,000 passengers per hour each way, running every six minutes at peak times and would operate 18 hours a day. Its backers say it could be delivered at a cost of €33 million, which is a fraction of its rail-based cousins.
We all might aspire to the BMW M5 equivalent of public transport, but in the current climate this seems like the more practical Passat-like answer to our needs.