Light rail system the way to go, says bus chief

THE chief executive of Dublin Bus, Mr Donal Mangan, has castigated the Chamber of Commerce for its opposition to the proposed £200 million light rail transit system linking Tallaght and Dundrum with the city centre.

In an interview with The Irish Times, he said it was a "red herring" for the chamber to suggest that articulated buses would be preferable to modern trams. "Surely these people travel to other cities. Do they not look at what's going on?

"None of the solutions we're talking about for Dublin are new. You can see them all working elsewhere," Mr Mangan said.

"Mostly, it's quality bus corridors, 10 in all, and these are critical to the overall plan. But the LRT lines are also critical.

"We all know that to do anything significant there is going to be some disruption. But what disruption can match the gridlock we have day after day when we can't run a bus service in this city? Things have just stopped. Why don't they complain about that?"

In the past, when Dublin only had double deck buses, the Chamber of Commerce had suggested single deckers. When they came in, the, cure to all our problems was minibuses. Now that mini buses are in, they want the only other type of bus that's left articulated buses," Mr Mangan said.

"While we're looking at the role for articulated buses, they have a very limited use in an urban area. Traffic is getting worse and the situation is becoming impossible. You can try to solve your problems with buses but you have to do an awful lot to help the buses to move.

"LRT systems will solve the problem, but you have to change the traffic to allow them to operate in the city and give the customers what they want, otherwise we're wasting our money.

"LRT will only work if we can maintain the speed, and that means it must have a reserved right of way. We can't have a situation where, having spent all that money, it gets stuck in a traffic Jam. So it will need extensive priorities, with a lot of public transport only streets.

"Within the canal area, all we're doing is shifting a traffic jam from one area to another, and buses get caught up in that. It can't be solved by small scale remedial works. We have to recognise that there's too much traffic in the city area. It can't work and that's what has to be tackled.

"The city is now grid locked, so we have to invest in quality bus corridors and LRT and give them the right of way. It means using the road space to move people, not vehicles. And in that way, you get the best use of it. Otherwise the city is going to deteriorate," Mr Mangan said.

"There is nothing new about this. We had the same argument back in the early 1970s after the Dublin Transportation Study. But now, 25 years later, we have an agreed strategy, we have funding, we have Government support, we have the launch of a major public consultation programme."

Mr Mangan said he had no doubt that Dublin would be "transformed" by LRT. But the vast majority of public transport trips would still be by bus, and the buses also needed much more extensive priorities on the city's streets even though this would mean that car traffic "has to suffer".

What he wanted to do was to guarantee a service. "We want to be able to say to the people of Dublin that if they come out at any time of the day they'll get a bus every 10 or IS minutes and if we fail to deliver on quality or quantity, we would have a system to compensate people for that."

The company's chief executive admitted that buses had a poor image, but said this was improving all the time. Better buses were being introduced, as well as more attractive fares and timetables. The number of passengers had risen to more than 170 million a year, and this trend was expected to continue.

Apart from traffic, he said the biggest problem on certain routes was security but this, too was being tackled with the introduction of protective screens for drivers and exact fare only ticket machines. "If we can eliminate the violence, the service will be better and our costs will come down."

Mr Mangan is unenthusiastic about the idea of building a central bus station off the north quays. Instead, he favours reverting to more cross city bus routes to eliminate the long walking distances between terminals in the centre. But this, too, depended on the traffic problem being tackled.

The quality bus corridor on the Blanchardstown route had been so successful that Dublin Bus has had to put double deckers on it. "The numbers were so high, even with the limited priorities we have. Just think of what we could do if we had a continuous right of way into the city centre."

He also warned against the number of multi storey car parks being built in the city centre. "That's a problem. We should be very careful because in the run up to Christmas, with the big car parks in the city centre, there were traffic jams back down O'Connell Street. They should be built on the outskirts."

Mr Mangan said the city, had worked very well during President Clinton's visit. "They took out all the key streets in the city centre area, yet the place didn't fall down round our ears. Everyone got in and out who wanted to get in and out. The message we would take is that we need to more of that.

"Why not decide that between now and the end of this century we're going to do something for Dublin by providing a transport system that works? Surely that would be a good present to give the citizens of Dublin for the millennium? Dublin Bus and CIE just want the chance to do it."