With a budget next year of close to €4 billion, the Department of Transport wants to move from planning big initiatives to commencing construction and bringing projects into operation.
However, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan and Minister of State James Lawless are already thinking of other projects that could be funded in the future, perhaps with the help of the Apple tax proceeds.
In the year ahead though, Mr Ryan said building work would get under way on two of the core bus corridors in Dublin under the Bus Connects programme. This aims to increase the capacity of the bus system by improving speed, reliability and punctuality by providing bus lanes and other measures to prioritise public transport.
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There will also be a focus on road safety next year with plans to break up the existing Road Safety Authority (RSA) and give its functions over to two new bodies.
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In the longer term, it is proposed the RSA will become a Driver and Vehicle Services Agency and concentrate on areas such as driver licensing and testing services.
A new, dedicated Road Safety Office is proposed to run road safety awareness, education and promotional campaigns.
Overall €1.36 billion is to be allocated for national and local road networks and road safety measures. This includes an additional €50 million for maintenance of regional and local roads and €40 million for local authorities to support the roll-out of updated speed-limit signs.
With the Apple money coming on stream, Mr Ryan said the next government would face a big political question: “Do you back public transport or don’t you?”
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“We still have hard choices in transport because we cannot afford to build everything. The Apple money is very large but even if we took it all, it would only put a dent in what we need to do on the transport side.”
He said he had transport projects worth €100 billion but only about €35 billion in funding at present.
Mr Ryan said his priority would be to invest future funding in metropolitan rail in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Limerick – using existing, if underused, rail lines – as a balance to the development of Dublin.
Mr Lawless suggested that the Dart line could be extended further, to towns such as Sallins, Kilcock and Enfield. Mr Ryan said counties such as Louth, Meath and Kildare “cannot be developed on a car-based system”.
“The development of those [counties] has to be beside railway stations, starting with Wicklow. There is no reason why we should not be able to extend the Dart to Wicklow [town], put a battery-charging system in there and when the battery electric trains arrive next year, they could run from Wicklow to Dublin and not from Greystones.”
