Madam, – Tom Wade’s attempt (April 1st) to justify a metropolitan rail system as “the most efficient way of transporting large numbers of people quickly” to the exclusion of buses only adds confusion.
While he is right in stating “‘we need to lose the notion that we can build a quality public transportation system by painting white lines on the road” his premise that “bus lanes have simply failed” is wrong.
The reason the Dart and the Luas are successful is that they are reasonably frequent and reliable. The reason many bus routes are not so successful is that they are neither. So in addition to “painting white lines on the road” we need to provide a bus service that is frequent and reliable on all bus routes. If that means introducing competition for Dublin Bus and Bus Éireann then so be it. That is, however, much less expensive and can be provided in a very much shorter time than spending years and billions of taxpayers’ (non-existent) money on a very grandiose suburban rail system.
The reason for the lack of success, noted by Mr Wade, in the 10 years since the bus lanes were introduced, as well as the failures to introduce integrated ticketing, electronic displays, park and ride facilities and “smart” card systems, is due to political incompetence on behalf of successive ministers, not to any fault in the concept. – Yours, etc,