The new government has been formed and one of its first acts is to roll-back on one of the most successful policies of the old government. The FF/FG(Greens) coalition committed to a 2:1 ratio on transport spending in favour of public and active transport over infrastructure that served the private motorist. That radical vision took time to implement but last year began to be achieved. The FF/FG(Independents) coalition have a rather more regressive perspective.
It is not like the outgoing policies were floundering. In fact, the people responded with enthusiasm with consistent growth in public transport usage and active mobility across the country. Public transport is often seen as an “urban” concern but one of the most remarkable successes of the last government was their investment in the “Local Link” bus network. There was a five-fold growth in journeys on these routes, which connect towns and villages in rural Ireland! The number of routes has grown massively and the benefit to the commuter, the communities, and the economy (nevermind our national carbon emissions!) cannot be disregarded.
And yet.
Before the government was even formed, the signals were clear that scrapping this sensible, popular, and environmentally beneficial policy was on the agenda. One of the reasons given for this u-turn was that motorways are environmentally friendly now because of the rise of electric cars. Let’s forget about the fact that electric car sales are declining in Ireland. Let’s forget that electric cars are often astonishingly wasteful of valuable resources. The reality is that if we build more motorways, we will not solve the traffic congestion problem. We will just induce demand. People concerned about traffic should be concerned about this plan.
The only way to reduce traffic is to get people out of private motor transport and on to buses, trams, trains, bikes, and footpaths. The astonishing impact of congestion charges in New York City testifies to this fundamental reality. This approach alone will succeed. It will lower congestion, increase productivity, and leave the roads clear for those who most need to use them, including delivery trucks, worker’s vans, and cars driven by those with disabilities.
Just as those who seek to delay climate action are seeking to resist the laws of physics, those who believe that more accommodation of driving will eliminate traffic are trusting in magical thinking.
At the JCFJ, we hear a lot about evidence-based policy. It is a phrase repeated like an incantation by politicians, policy makers, and NGO leaders. Perhaps we are more philosophically sceptical than others, or maybe we are just pedants, but the evidence-base for much of our collective decision-making is thin on the ground.
If we had evidence-based policy in Ireland, politicians would be resisting the call of sectoral interests and lobbyists and insisting that we continue the good start we have made on shifting our means of getting around. But instead, we have talking heads platformed to pass off personal opinion as common sense.
In Ireland, we have ludicrous reports, written for profit, which promise apocalypse, that are widely reported in the press. And then what actually happens is that instead of economic doom, the very people who commissioned the reports announce buoyant numbers. And none of this blatant pantomime alters the course of our political discussion.
If we were working from evidence, we would conclude that a compromise trial that produced objective reductions in traffic would warrant full support. We would consider the data emerging from across the world which suggests that de-centering the private motor car from neighbourhoods is good for business. We would look at how transport emissions are stubbornly high even as our national figures reduce and the last thing we would decide to do is build a ganseyload of new motorways.
We are not dealing here in the realm of reason. There is not vision enough to even call this faith-based policy. Before they have even begun, the current government is committed to believing in magic. Before they’ve even begun, we fear they are going only backwards
