OPINION:In five or 10 years, people will be sitting in long lines of cars cursing the fact our political system failed us at this time, writes EAMON RYAN
IS IT too late to save the Metro? Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar seems set to abandon the project, along with the proposed city centre rail interconnector, and instead just build a single new Luas line from St Stephen’s Green to Broombridge.
Even at this stage his Cabinet colleagues should ask him to think again. Such a loss of nerve and retreat from public transport will cost us all in future sprawl and gridlock.
They will be told that we do not have the money for either project. However, the four-year budget plan they are working with did include capital funding for the Metro.
As we get out of our immediate financial crisis, this type of regulated asset is exactly the sort of project we will be able to finance. We need to show some confidence in our future and not just addiction to austerity economics for its own sake.
Neither project is small – but the price in lost time and other economic benefits if they don’t go ahead will make the construction cost look cheap.
Our economic recovery depends in part on our ability to attract global investment into our financial services centre and into our growing digital hub. Increasingly these new international businesses will only come to cities that work and have a decent public transport system.
They may fear the short-term inconvenience of construction work, but that will be nothing compared to the traffic jams that will spread along the M50 when our economy starts to lift.
The €20 billion we spent building our national road network has made the journey times to and from Dublin predictable, but that will change as volumes rise and it takes longer and longer just to get beyond the Red Cow roundabout. In five or 10 years, people will be sitting in long lines of cars cursing the fact that our political system failed us at this time.
The housing oversupply in Dublin is not as large as some think and, sooner rather later, we will have to start building again. If we don’t have the Metro on track, the fields along its route will just house cattle as we continue to build along new roads and become a yet more car-dominated society.
Dublin will outdo Los Angeles as the worst example of unsustainable urban sprawl. Have we learnt nothing? It will not work.
Where is the conscience of the Labour Party in all this?
Even forgetting about the environmental consequences, what about the social impact for the hundreds of thousands of Dubliners with no access to a car? Do they not matter? Do they not deserve access to a proper transport system? What about the 46,000 people in Swords? Are they to live in a disconnected hub, cut off from the rest of us?
Some argue that a better bus service will suffice. No doubt buses will have a critical role to play and Dublin Bus is at last trying to get its route network in order.
However, no amount of quality bus corridors will carry the increasing volumes of traffic as our population continues to grow. Not even the Luas system will be able to do the job properly.
The alternative Dart rail link to the airport that CIÉ has been touting is a nonsense. Its short-sightedness in lobbying against the Metro must now be coming back to haunt it, as it sees the rail interconnector which is critical for the entire rail network being ditched because it makes less sense without the Metro.
This Metro has been unlike any other project in the number of reviews it underwent over the last 10 years. It has had more cost-benefit analysis than the entire road network put together, but over those years, the answer kept coming back that the project makes sense.
For once we had put proper planning in at the very early stages and modelled the transport demand based on solid long-term demographic projections.
The economic crisis may have delayed some of the demand forecasts but the underlying need is still there and will continue to grow.
In my opinion, our legal planning system has failed us abysmally in the time it took to consider and approve the project.
I hope our political system will not show a similar failing now. Progressing these two projects would be a sign that there is a future of sustainable prosperity for our country.
Varadkar may not be a great fan of Government intervention, but this is a project that only the State can initiate. Despite our banking and budget woes, we need a Government that realises our State is still strong and can do this.
Even at this last hour, the two parties should see sense and press the green light for the Metro.
Eamon Ryan is leader of the Green Party and the former minister for energy