MotorsProfile: Michael PhillipsMichael Phillips, Dublin's new Director of Traffic, says he has no difficulty doing what is required to end our traffic chaos, writes David Labanyi
There is a surprising solution to Dublin's chronic congestion, or at least part of it, on the horizon. It is to restrict parking availability and slowly increase parking costs for those who drive to work.
That is the view of Michael Phillips, the city's new director of traffic.
He says restrictions on city centre staff parking are one of the measures needed to reduce commuter dependency on the car and encourage people to switch to public transport.
"Even if buses are marginally better, it is hard to argue against the car, especially if that is what you are used to. But in the future the cost of running a car in the city, of parking, these costs are going to escalate as has happened in all other major cities," he says.
Most motorists probably have not noticed, but this change is already underway. Mr Phillips says the allowable number of staff parking spaces in new commercial building developments in the city is being kept to an absolute minimum.
Every morning rush-hour about 65,000 private cars cross the canals into the city, moving at a teeth-grindingly slow average of 10km/h. However, according to Mr Phillips this average is dropping and the numbers using public transport is on the rise.
Roughly 50 per cent of people commute to work in the city by car, and over the next five years Dublin City Council wants this to fall to about 30 per cent, with the number using public transport rising to 70 per cent.
This timescale is before the proposed Metro and additional Luas lines are due for completion and Mr Phillips says most of the additional capacity will be on quality bus corridors (QBCs).
The council hopes to introduce 14 new routes over the next three years. These routes will be orbital as well as radial routes to the city centre.
"The importance of buses should not be underestimated. Look at London. It has a great underground system that 2.5 million people use every day. But six million use buses."
Where QBCs exist, journey times are substantially quicker than cars, he says, adding that each QBC can carry around 8 million passengers a year. "So what we have to do is get a significant number of them out there to encourage people to use them. These buses will have to be comfortable and must also run peak service frequencies for longer."
Lest anyone think that public transport will forever remain "someone else's journey to work," increasingly, drivers are going to be coaxed out of their cars as the council slowly closes off "rat runs".
"Until now, people living along QBC routes have been able to find alternative routes if the main road is restricted. With the next band of QBCs these alternative routes will be restricted or closed off.
"The congestion for people trying to drive to work along QBCs is going to get much, much worse and motorists will have to make a sharp decision to get out of their cars," he says.
"I think the vast majority of people can and will be persuaded to change. But there comes a time when coercion is required and if that time comes I don't have a problem doing what is required."
A timescale for the introduction of the QBCs is difficult to predict because of the time required for the consultation phase of each project.
Mr Phillips says that while Government ministers are fully supportive of the plan, local politicians have other considerations. In Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, the council is happy for a bus corridor to be built, but is refusing to allow it to open until Dublin Bus is given additional buses for the route.
As QBCs become more common and alternative routes are restricted, the chorus for cars with three or more occupants to be allowed use them will grow.
This is not an option, at least not in the next five to 10 years, according to Mr Phillips.
"I am open-minded, but in the foreseeable future I would not see them using bus lanes. If buses are arriving every two to three minutes, the priority is with the buses."
This said, Mr Phillips accepts that the city will always have to cater for a large number of cars, from staff, to business people and tourists, car access, and parking across the city for these people will remain crucial. At the moment there are around 40,000 parking spaces associated with offices in the capital.
However, frustratingly for the business community, who estimate congestion in the capital costs up to €2 billion a year, the proposed measures will only produce incremental changes over the next five to six years, with more dramatic reductions dependent on the proposed rail projects. Mr Phillips accepts this and that congestion is going to remain a fact of life for car commuters in Dublin.
One measure Mr Phillips hopes will have an immediate impact on the quality of life of people living and working in the city is the implementation of the HGV strategy.
"The Port Tunnel opening is going to have a major impact and it is the first step in the strategy. In another three years, when the M50 upgrade is complete we will be further restricting entry into the city. Then you can start to move to increased pedestrianisation and improved public transport, to a different type of city."
This year Dublin City Council allocated €32 million to traffic projects with €8.5 million spent on parking enforcement and €7.5 million given to a traffic light management system.
One of the key improvements required in Dublin is joined-up management to integrate the needs of the different public transport providers. The expensive, delayed and as yet not available integrated ticketing system is an example of the need for just such an agency.
The blueprint of this agency is contained within an as yet unpublished report on the Minister for Transport's desk. Prof Margaret O'Mahoney, director of the Centre for Transport Research at Trinity College, submitted this report to the proposed Dublin Transport Authority earlier this year. Mr Phillips says he knows nothing of the ideas within the report and is working on those projects in Transport 21 he has been instructed to implement.
"I have no idea where responsibility will lie, and what role the traffic department here will have. I can only await what comes out of the report."