Parking levy to be introduced → sbpost.ie/news/ireland/parki … 47268.html
Good. Our urban centres have been wrecked by absurd planning that followed the philosophy of “four wheels good, two legs/wheels bad”. Totally backwards and contra all progressive trends in Europe. Or even the US, look at NYC and the PlaNYC 2030 process for Gods sake.
Wake the fuck up Ireland. Do you really think paying 5000 plus every year for your car to sit in traffic all day is some great expression of liberatrian freedom?
Another good reason not to live or work in a “main urban centre” as they say.
Greens really doing their bit to support their urban voter centre.
Wrotten they are and wrotten more is their hijacking of the positive elements of good environtemalism.
Dublin Corpo is already doing it’s bit to make a mess of thigns. It’s such a mess with both the new 30kmph speed limit, parking costs in the city and reduction in bus services that Dublin is now rapidly on a journey back to two decades ago.
It is not expression of freedom, it is a freedom. I could see where you are coming from, but there is nothing worse then public transport fascism. Objective of using public transport is moving people around, not saving planet - it should be only used when it is more convenient to do so. I’m great supporter of making public transport a better way to move around then car, but making car transport worse is wrong way to proceed. Ireland has already many other ways to make life miserable.
As Frank Halls Show in the 80s said of Richie Ryan, “the minister considers it a good night in bed ,when he wakes up in the morning after dreaming up a new tax” 
While I agree with the sentiment, the point I would make is that if you did the carrot approach and sorted out the mess that is public transport first, the car issue would fix itself. I use the buses from time to time. It’s hellish. The double deckers can be rank smelly and damp in wet weather; I’ve listened to drug deals being made on phones behind me in upstairs. There is little to now interoperability between the ticketing systems between all the different providers.
If the idiots in power - and I use the word idiot advisedly - really want fewer cars in the city centre, then the stick approach is not goign to work. We still pay the horrific parking charges just to go shopping. Why do you think that is? It’s because even so, public transport can be so rank that it’s still better to drive in.
I don’t sit in traffic all day and the fact that you throw this out means you really don’t understand. However, I get a degree of freedom from having my own transport that is completely negated by the fact that public transport doesn’t go every where I want, it’s a hassle to drag sports equipment and anythign larger than a violin by way of musical instruments.
Having a car is freedom. Whether you like it or not.
I’m against the charge per se, in the same way as I’m against the water charges. They let people off the hook for poor planning and maintenance in the past.
We’ve had years to sort out public transport. We really only barely scratched the surface and bus services are being withdrawn.
In my view, this along with the 30kmh speed limit are short sighted. The safety issue could perhaps have been sorted by enforcing the existing 50k limit. That it wasn’t suggests this won’t be either.
It’s freedom when traveling to and from cities and towns, it is simply congestion and pollution for everyone else in urban centres. It is the wrong tool for the job. The right tools for the job in urban centres are feet, bikes, trams and even buses.
On a philosophical level, cities like Copenhagen, Freiburg and Berlin are far more livable and free from er, ‘fascism’ than Dublin will ever be. Which need not have been the case, given that Dublin once had one of the most extensive and modern tramway systems in the world.
So I agree fully that the public transport (and cycle lane) infrastructure is not nearly up to scratch. ** If I were in power, I would certainly get this up to standard first**. But I’m not in the Green Party…
The obsession with cars seems to be as deeply embedded in the Irish psyche as getting on the property ladder…
In the interests of accuracy here, Hitler was a noted supporter of mass private car ownership
On the wider issue, a parking space is a very substantial benefit-in-kind provided by the employer. Only someone with an amazing sense of entitlement would object to a tax that is a fraction of the real tax that would be levied at the marginal rate (which is what it should be taxed at).
In fairness, he was also an advocate of using the railways for mass transit.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/89/Selection_Birkenau_ramp.jpg/250px-Selection_Birkenau_ramp.jpg
But Albert Speer’s plans were followed in the postwar reconstruction of many German cities, don’t forget. These plans emphasized vehicular traffic over all else, which is why many German city centres are shitty and depressing. Interestingly, after the 60’s, the East German Communist authorities seem to have had the same idea.
On an aside, this animated map always cracks me up:
(Wikipedia)
That’s excellent. If you run it backwards it looks like progress.
I know. Tragic isn’t it?
That would be all well and good if we allowed building upwards in the city preventing a sprawl, it would be all well and good if we had a transport system that allowed people to bring on bikes, ran 24hours to cater for shiftworkers etc etc there are reasons why people drive.
cars arent an obsession they are a necessity for anyone who lives outside of Dublin and a necessity for anyone who does anything other than work 9 -5 in the city center. Anything else at all and driving is the only way. I dont like it but dont be calling cars an “obsession”.
Rail is one way forward that chart always get me too 
Unlike housing, the railway boom in Ireland actually left us some useful infrastructure.
Unfortunately as this was loss making by the post-WW2 period, the Irish state chose to follow the British “Beeching Axe” model, to the extreme, with the aim of restoring profitability. Didn’t work, as:
Thanks for digging that out.
I remember reading somewhere that in the 1950s CIE had worked up a debt that was twice the size of the Education budget, all because they had to pretend all those rail lines were serving a purpose.
Its another of those lost chances with which our history is peppered. If we’d closed those unneeded rail services sooner, and put those resources into education instead, it might have actually done something to alleviate the economic collapse in the 1950s.
But, of course, what actually happened was the State poured money into CIE, because they were taking the LTEV of the railways into account.
They only started the closure programme because the country was absolutely broke. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. LTEV is actually a treasured core value of Irish public life, along with short memories.
I was dependent on public transportation for a few years. In cities with good public transportation as well as those with crap systems. Absolute hell, everywhere. A huge waste of my time as well as being a health hazard.
For a start it is incredibly expensive. Your time maybe worth $4 / hour but mine is not. Every journey took two to three times longer than a car. Add up the time wasted by public transportation and if turns out it is cheaper to take a taxi. The trips were uncomfortable, stressful and a health hazard. Every time I had to commute by bus or train it was just a succession of colds, flu and worse. Basically you are ill pretty much the whole time.
And I’m not even factoring in the huge reduction in choices about where one can go, what can one do or where one can work - which is enormous.
I’m now back in my car and it is a huge relief. I am free to come and go as I please. I have my freedom. I have my time back. I no longer have derelicts and junkies coughing all over me so I’m in good health again.
Let me guess. You have a car and are a typical green hypocrite. Or if you dont, you dont have a life.
To those of us who have a life, whose time is valuable and dont like it been wasted by hypocrites and idiots, and who dont like been sick all the time, a car is a basic necessity of life.
Well maybe codependent then. It was an abusive relationship. I paid my fare, got nothing but disappointment and abuse…