Sir, – Jack Horgan-Jones reports on reforms to be proposed in the Government’s updated climate action plan (“Car parking curbs and cutting mileage by 20 per cent among Coalition plans to reduce emissions”, News, December 21st).
One of the planned initiatives is an improvement in the national infrastructure for electric vehicle charging. This recognises that one of the factors delaying the transition is a nervousness on the part of motorists about the availability of charging points.
But we already have a plan for that. We are more than half-way through a five-year project announced in 2019 to have local authorities install 1,000 on-street public charging points by 2024.
How many have we installed? I don’t know. But Harry McGee tells us (News, June 11th) that to that date a total of 33 charging points had been installed “or are in train”.
Kevin O’Sullivan, reporting from Cop27, quoted a Cop veteran as saying that, “while the delivery is slow and piecemeal, as a policy Ireland’s transport financing is world-leading” (“Success outside negotiation rooms suggests this year’s Cop27 is no flop”, Analysis, November 19th).
I suspect our grandchildren will not find this reassuring. They must surely have a strong preference for a spot of world-leading implementation. Can we please get on with it? – Yours, etc,
PAT O’BRIEN,
Dublin 6.
Sir, – The Government’s latest update of the Climate Action Plan, with its emphasis on penalising all car use, seems to finally acknowledge that there is no such thing as zero emission car travel. Swapping gas guzzling cars for energy guzzling electric cars is not going to be enough.
But are public transport and so -called “active travel” of walking and cycling a viable or fair alternative? It all sounds to me to be a very ableist strategy, designed around the assumption that the stakeholders are all young urban office workers who would be happy to pursue “active travel” as part of their exercise regime. There are very many people for whom “active travel” is not an option. Many people still do hard manual work and for these the prospect of pedalling or walking long distances to work would be a penance. We have a large aged population many of whom may be in poor health.
We need to acknowledge that assisted travel will still be required. Electric bicycles are one solution. While Government is doing much to encourage their use there is one major disincentive, which is bicycle theft. Many people are justifiably reluctant to park these expensive machines in the city. We need to look at designated cycle parking areas with CCTV surveillance. There needs to be a Garda task force to counter the epidemic of bicycle theft. And perhaps there should be a specific offence of bicycle theft.
The other solution which comes to mind is microcars. These are two-seater electric vehicles which lie somewhere between a bicycle and a car. They use a quarter of the power that an electric car does, can be charged from a domestic socket and have a reasonable range. At a cost of circa €12,000 they are cheaper than a car. Given that the majority of car journeys are for one person and for short distances these cars would seem to be ideal. Their use could be encouraged by favourable tax treatment, free parking and exemption from congestion charges. Surely this form of assisted travel would help to make more inclusive the transport element of the climate action plan. – Yours, etc,
JOHN DEATON,
Dundrum,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – The Irish Times is awfully good at reporting in minute detail every ministerial utterance and Government plan.
Why not publish a monthly report card detailing how these goals and aspirations measure up against actual implementation? Start with something simple, like the much-heralded Metro for Dublin, and work your way up to the latest climate plan. – Yours, etc,
MARY BYRNE,
Dublin 8.
Sir, – The Government’s plan to reduce – not eliminate – private car usage in our city and town centres has elicited the usual tired response, that until public transport improves, people must use their cars.
You don’t need to hop on any of the hundreds of buses in Dublin to see the reason why public transport is so unreliable: single occupancy cars, everywhere. Even if drivers obeyed the rules and stayed out of bus lanes and yellow boxes, buses would still struggle to maintain timetables due solely to car congestion.
Dublin already has the foundation of an excellent public transport service, as could be seen during the recent lockdowns. Six or eight buses were congregating at every terminus.
Bus companies were fined because buses arrived too early at their destinations!
Clearly there are sufficient vehicles to provide a regular five or 10-minute service right across the city if allowed the space to move freely.
The Government has lowered fares and greatly increased flexibility, so now is the time to reallocate road space away from inefficient modes of transport (including electric vehicles), introduce congestion charges, bus-lane cameras and enforcement, and increase public transport priority through junctions. – Yours, etc,
PAUL WALDRON,
Dublin 16.