Dublin 3rd dec 2007 T21 presentationshortrev
Transport 21: Sustaining Transport or addressing Sustainability Presentation by
Professor Austin Smyth University of Westminster at
‘Policy measures to manage transport impacts and demand’ Comhar, Dublin 4th December 2007
educating for professional life
Overview At €34billion, Transport 21 is an investment programme without precedent in Ireland. Given its strategic importance, a key objective is to ensure that such a high level of expenditure, delivers value from the use of taxpayers’ money and addresses the wider challenges facing Ireland today: How do current strategies underpinned by Transport 21 (and the National Development Plan) match up to such challenges? educating for professional life
Road and rail Investment 1994 to 2000 Road & Rail Investment - 1994 to 2000 700 600
€m
500 400
ROAD
300
RAIL
200 100 0 1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
Year Source: Strategic Rail Review p31 and Iarnród Éireann
educating for professional life
Profile of Expenditure for the Ten-Year Period: Year
Total
Exchequer
Public Private
capital
Partnership
€billion
€billion
€billion
2006
1.9
0.2
2.1
2007
2.3
0.5
2.8
2008
2.5
0.6
3.1
2009
2.5
1.6
4.1
2010
2.4
1.5
3.9
2011
2.5
1.6
4.1
2012
3.1
1.6
4.7
2013
3.2
0.3
3.5
2014
3.2
0.2
3.4
2015
2.6
-
2.6
Total
26.2
8.1
34.3
Source: http://www.transport21.ie/WHAT_IS_TRANSPORT_21/TRANSPORT_21/Expenditure_Profiles.html
educating for professional life
Identifiable expenditure on Transport for UK and Republic of Ireland, per head, 2000-01 to 2005-06 700
accruals £ per head
600 500
London England
400
Scotland Wales
300
Northern Ireland UK identifiable expenditure Republic of Ireland
200 100 0 200001
200102
200203
200304
200405
200506
Year
educating for professional life
Total expenditure on Roads for UK (by Devolved Territory) and Republic of Ireland, per head, 2001-02 to 2004-05
accruals £ per head
250 200
Northern Ireland Total Roads Expenditure Scotland Total Roads Expenditure
150
Republic Of Ireland Total Roads Expenditure
100
Wales Total Roads Expenditure
50 0 2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
Year
educating for professional life
Total expenditure on Public Transport for UK (by Devolved Territory) and Republic of Ireland, per head, 2001-02 to 2004-05
accruals £ per head
180 160 140
Northern Ireland Total Public Transport Expenditure
120
Scotland Total Public Transport Expenditure
100
Republic Of Ireland Total Public Transport Expenditure
80 60
Wales Total Public Transport Expenditure
40 20 0 2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
Year
educating for professional life
21st Century Challenges for Transport in Ireland: Key Arguments Proponents of Transport 21 argue that it will: •Address Ireland’s infrastructure deficit. •Meet Irelands mobility needs / congestion and the slow inter urban road journeys. •Promote a modal shift to public transport. •Underpin Ireland’s competitiveness. •Meet the country’s spatial development needs.
educating for professional life
21st Century Challenges for Transport in Ireland: Key Arguments Detractors on the other hand say that Transport 21 will: •Promote use of less sustainable modes. •Fail to address greenhouse gas emissions targets under Kyoto. •Promote sprawl. •Not address congestion and safety issues.
educating for professional life
21st Century Challenges for Transport in Ireland: Key Arguments This begs the question; what are the challenges Transport 21 is intended to address? These can be subsumed into five broad challenges facing Ireland today: •Competitiveness challenges. •Environmental sustainability challenges. •Spatial development needs. •Promoting equity in access to opportunities. •Addressing safety problems.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Key goals for transport investment therefore include; •promotion of economic competitiveness; •balanced regional development; •environmental sustainability; and •social inclusion. How do current strategies match up to these challenges? educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Little consensus among expert opinion on overall effects of transport on economic development. Improvements to the transport infrastructure yield small cost savings and gains to firms. Transport costs not the primary business location driver at an international and national scale. Levels of prosperity remain unevenly distributed throughout the country: Populations without reliable access to transport and related services tend to be poorer than those with reliable access.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals According to the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland: 2002-2020, housing demand requires development to take place in a way which avoids urban sprawl, achieves high standards of urban design quality and promotes more compact and public transport friendly urban areas and therefore maximises peoples’ quality of life and the sustainability of future development. Transport 21 must align strongly to the National Spatial Strategy if coordinated and all-encompassing efforts to increase economic prosperity and balanced regional development in line with decentralisation are to be achieved. The question is will it achieve this goal.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Transport provisions of the NDP (including Transport 21), with exception of developments at national airports unlikely to perform strongly in relation to overall competitiveness of the Irish economy. The inter urban road programme is likely to yield most benefits, mostly involving redistribution of relative competitiveness within the country. Large scale public transport investment in the Greater Dublin Area will contribute to a more efficient city region providing it is allocated efficiently across the area and maximises the exploitation of network effects. According to the Department of Transport, Ireland’s overall greenhouse gas emission levels (GHG) in 2003 were 24.7% above 1990 levels, compared with the overall Kyoto target of 13% above 1990 for the 2008-2012 period. The transport sector is the fastest growing contributor to national CO2 emission levels. Between 1990 and 2005, transport emissions increased by 160%, with road transport accounting for the vast majority of that growth. This is a much poorer performance than the EU-15 average.
educating for professional life
Greenhouse Gas (CO2, N2O, CH4) Emissions Source: Environmental Protection Agency, www.epa.ie 1995-2002
Transport Re sidential
20000 Industry 15000
Agriculture
10000
Services
5000
Fue l, Power, Water
02 20
01 20
00 20
99 19
98 19
97 19
96 19
95
0 19
Tho usa nds o f To nnes o f C O 2 Equiv a lents
25000
Year
educating for professional life
Transport Energy Demand by Mode (2003) Source: Sustainable Energy Ireland, 2003a.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Improving fuel efficiency of the passenger vehicle fleet should yield savings of 0.48 million tonnes. The existing Mineral Oils Tax Relief (MOTR) II Scheme, will yield emissions savings of 0.27 million tonnes by 2008, complemented, from 2009, with the introduction of a biofuels obligation scheme. Achievement of the 2010 target will reduce emissions by an additional 0.5 million tonnes in 2008-2012. Policy measures before the announcement of Transport 21 estimated to yield a reduction in CO2 equivalent output of less than 2% of the projected total transport sector output in 2008/2012. Under Transport 21 and more effective land use planning this is projected to increase to some 6%. These modest achievements highlight the challenge posed by the massive growth in energy consumption and associated emissions of CO2 from road traffic (and air travel). The problem is exacerbated by the scale and spatial development of new housing developments throughout Ireland. educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Contradictions between elements of the T21 programme, in particular how they seek to address both the economic and environmental challenges, as well as social inclusion and spatial development needs. In the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) measures seek to restrain car use. In the absence of a coherent strategy for traffic management and restraint, its impact on traffic congestion will be limited. Network expansion of the Dublin Suburban Rail likely to contribute modestly but significantly in terms of promoting sustainability. A major concern however is the potential for delay to the Interconnnector arising from constraints in the construction sector, the planning capacity of Irish Rail or the implications of cost overruns in relation to other projects including Metro. In view of the strength of the business case for the Interconnector fast tracking of this project is recommended to ensure both that it is implemented and its evident benefits secured as early as possible.
Luas is also likely to perform positively in this regard. The very limited extent of the Metro would make its contribution marginal on a national or even city basis. educating for professional life
Source: Department of Transport
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Elsewhere, strategy will encourage greater use of private transport as the road programme erodes the competitiveness of a modestly enhanced inter urban rail system. The road programme will also tend to promote further spatial dispersal and rural isolation as it becomes increasingly expensive to sustain local public transport.
By implication this will pose an even greater challenge for the country, in terms of meeting its commitments under the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Government is producing a Sustainable Transport Action Plan. This Action Plan will balance the need for economic efficiency, reduced environmental impact and social cohesion as well as proposing the appropriate institutional arrangements requisite to deliver a sustainable transport system. Even with advances in vehicle and infrastructure technology, given the dominance of road and air for passenger transport and the absence of a competitive rail freight or other sustainable modes for freight movements, and against the backdrop of existing macro economic policy priorities, it appears almost certain that for the foreseeable future Ireland will be unable to constrain greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector, let alone achieve reductions. Whatever the transport policy outcome the effectiveness of any transport measures will be determined to a large extent by the effectiveness of supporting regional development and planning policies.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights In addition to higher throughput at airports and increased freight movements growth in greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to: growing population, rising employment, increased demand for housing and urban sprawl, increased commuting, greater dependency on private transport. Ireland’s economic success in recent years has been accompanied by spatial patterns of development, which have seen employment opportunities becoming more concentrated in some areas. A key concern is the apparent overheating of the Dublin City region with all the attendant economic, environmental and social consequences of such a state of affairs. Accommodation of large increases in the household numbers, together with the associated employment, services and facilities is the major planning challenge for the Greater Dublin Area. As house prices have spiralled, particularly in areas close to Dublin, long distance commuting has become increasingly the norm. The typical low-density suburban housing meeting much of this demand generates increased car travel as low densities cannot easily support public transport services.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Increased housing demand requires future development to take place in a way, which avoids urban sprawl and promotes public transport oriented urban areas. Access to high quality and affordable housing in the right locations, and at high densities and in substantial sized compact urban forms, is an important spatial planning requirement economic and environmental challenges. The most influential policy levers for addressing the environmental sustainability challenges posed by burgeoning transport demand may be the combined effect of housing policies and prioritisation of urban consolidation as envisaged under the National Spatial Strategy. It is likely to be most effective for development patterns in the Greater Dublin Area. While a policy of containment, associated with higher residential densities and good public transport, has an obvious appeal from a sustainability perspective, it remains to be seen just how achievable this would be in practice.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights A significantly more attractive rail network could limit mode switching to private transport and obviate the requirement for some of the existing Public Service Obligation subsidies provided to domestic air services. Inter city rail also has significant potential in helping to meet spatial development needs. A re visioning of the role of the interurban railway allied to introduction of a mechanism to reflect the true environmental and economic costs of private vehicle use would have the potential to bring about a modest improvement in performance. The enhanced competitiveness of the intercity rail system will also reinforce the competitiveness of city centre locations with attendant benefits of social cohesion and reduced tendency to urban sprawl. It will promote regional balance and a more ordered settlement pattern as development is encouraged to locate adjacent to stations served by the upgraded system.
educating for professional life
Ia rn ró d É ir e a n n N e tw o rk
S o u r c e : Ia r n r ó d É ire a n n
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Such a step change in the service offered by the rail system could also offer a further environmental and fiscal benefit to the state by affording an alternative to internal air services. Many of the latter are supported by very large per capita subsidies. A related development of the rail system which would appear to make sense in terms of environmental sustainability, while promoting regional balance in development and a coherent all island policy on air transport would be to create a rail air hub at Dublin airport served initially by DART services but later potentially by intercity services from the South and West and North. This would be similar to the concept employed at a number of major airports in continental Europe. For internal air and interlining trips rail could become the preferred mode for many areas of the country, thereby obviating the requirement for subsidies on thin routes with attendant reductions in emissions from aircraft. It would also free up slots at a growing Dublin Airport, perhaps reducing the requirement for some additional capacity. educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Figure 9 Air Passenger Trips per Capita Air Passengers 2005 7 6 Passengers
5 4
Passengers
3 2 1
e R ep ub lic P or tu ga l
Iri sh
G re ec
Fi nl an d
ria Au st
B el gi um D en m ar k
U ni te d
K in gd om
0
Country
Source Eurostat
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights KILOMETRES FLOW N (BILLION)
PASSENGER KILOMETRES FLOWN (BILLION) 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0
1995
25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0
2005
5.0 0.0 Austria
Belgium Denmark Finland
Greece
Irish Portugal Republic
COUNTRY
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights This begs questions about the future role of air transport to meet Ireland’s economic and environmental challenges. In the case of Ireland the geography of the country and in particular its absence of land borders with its main attractors and generators of traffic mean that the country has few competitive options for most out of state journeys as reflected by an unusually high dependency on air transport. For some journeys including domestic and internal to the island as well as those involving short sea journeys there are or could be alternatives which are less demanding on the environment. With increasing pressure at a EU level to impose charges to reflect the costs which air travel imposes on the environment the attraction of many leisure journeys may well diminish in the not to distant future. It is recommended that a comprehensive policy for air transport is developed covering not only future airport development but also the regulatory and control frameworks governing airlines serving Ireland.
educating for professional life
Transport 21: Sustaining Transport or addressing Sustainability Presentation by
Professor Austin Smyth University of Westminster at
‘Policy measures to manage transport impacts and demand’ Comhar, Dublin 4th December 2007 educating for professional life
Professor Austin Smyth University of Westminster at
‘Policy measures to manage transport impacts and demand’ Comhar, Dublin 4th December 2007
educating for professional life
Overview At €34billion, Transport 21 is an investment programme without precedent in Ireland. Given its strategic importance, a key objective is to ensure that such a high level of expenditure, delivers value from the use of taxpayers’ money and addresses the wider challenges facing Ireland today: How do current strategies underpinned by Transport 21 (and the National Development Plan) match up to such challenges? educating for professional life
Road and rail Investment 1994 to 2000 Road & Rail Investment - 1994 to 2000 700 600
€m
500 400
ROAD
300
RAIL
200 100 0 1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
Year Source: Strategic Rail Review p31 and Iarnród Éireann
educating for professional life
Profile of Expenditure for the Ten-Year Period: Year
Total
Exchequer
Public Private
capital
Partnership
€billion
€billion
€billion
2006
1.9
0.2
2.1
2007
2.3
0.5
2.8
2008
2.5
0.6
3.1
2009
2.5
1.6
4.1
2010
2.4
1.5
3.9
2011
2.5
1.6
4.1
2012
3.1
1.6
4.7
2013
3.2
0.3
3.5
2014
3.2
0.2
3.4
2015
2.6
-
2.6
Total
26.2
8.1
34.3
Source: http://www.transport21.ie/WHAT_IS_TRANSPORT_21/TRANSPORT_21/Expenditure_Profiles.html
educating for professional life
Identifiable expenditure on Transport for UK and Republic of Ireland, per head, 2000-01 to 2005-06 700
accruals £ per head
600 500
London England
400
Scotland Wales
300
Northern Ireland UK identifiable expenditure Republic of Ireland
200 100 0 200001
200102
200203
200304
200405
200506
Year
educating for professional life
Total expenditure on Roads for UK (by Devolved Territory) and Republic of Ireland, per head, 2001-02 to 2004-05
accruals £ per head
250 200
Northern Ireland Total Roads Expenditure Scotland Total Roads Expenditure
150
Republic Of Ireland Total Roads Expenditure
100
Wales Total Roads Expenditure
50 0 2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
Year
educating for professional life
Total expenditure on Public Transport for UK (by Devolved Territory) and Republic of Ireland, per head, 2001-02 to 2004-05
accruals £ per head
180 160 140
Northern Ireland Total Public Transport Expenditure
120
Scotland Total Public Transport Expenditure
100
Republic Of Ireland Total Public Transport Expenditure
80 60
Wales Total Public Transport Expenditure
40 20 0 2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
Year
educating for professional life
21st Century Challenges for Transport in Ireland: Key Arguments Proponents of Transport 21 argue that it will: •Address Ireland’s infrastructure deficit. •Meet Irelands mobility needs / congestion and the slow inter urban road journeys. •Promote a modal shift to public transport. •Underpin Ireland’s competitiveness. •Meet the country’s spatial development needs.
educating for professional life
21st Century Challenges for Transport in Ireland: Key Arguments Detractors on the other hand say that Transport 21 will: •Promote use of less sustainable modes. •Fail to address greenhouse gas emissions targets under Kyoto. •Promote sprawl. •Not address congestion and safety issues.
educating for professional life
21st Century Challenges for Transport in Ireland: Key Arguments This begs the question; what are the challenges Transport 21 is intended to address? These can be subsumed into five broad challenges facing Ireland today: •Competitiveness challenges. •Environmental sustainability challenges. •Spatial development needs. •Promoting equity in access to opportunities. •Addressing safety problems.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Key goals for transport investment therefore include; •promotion of economic competitiveness; •balanced regional development; •environmental sustainability; and •social inclusion. How do current strategies match up to these challenges? educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Little consensus among expert opinion on overall effects of transport on economic development. Improvements to the transport infrastructure yield small cost savings and gains to firms. Transport costs not the primary business location driver at an international and national scale. Levels of prosperity remain unevenly distributed throughout the country: Populations without reliable access to transport and related services tend to be poorer than those with reliable access.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals According to the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland: 2002-2020, housing demand requires development to take place in a way which avoids urban sprawl, achieves high standards of urban design quality and promotes more compact and public transport friendly urban areas and therefore maximises peoples’ quality of life and the sustainability of future development. Transport 21 must align strongly to the National Spatial Strategy if coordinated and all-encompassing efforts to increase economic prosperity and balanced regional development in line with decentralisation are to be achieved. The question is will it achieve this goal.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Transport provisions of the NDP (including Transport 21), with exception of developments at national airports unlikely to perform strongly in relation to overall competitiveness of the Irish economy. The inter urban road programme is likely to yield most benefits, mostly involving redistribution of relative competitiveness within the country. Large scale public transport investment in the Greater Dublin Area will contribute to a more efficient city region providing it is allocated efficiently across the area and maximises the exploitation of network effects. According to the Department of Transport, Ireland’s overall greenhouse gas emission levels (GHG) in 2003 were 24.7% above 1990 levels, compared with the overall Kyoto target of 13% above 1990 for the 2008-2012 period. The transport sector is the fastest growing contributor to national CO2 emission levels. Between 1990 and 2005, transport emissions increased by 160%, with road transport accounting for the vast majority of that growth. This is a much poorer performance than the EU-15 average.
educating for professional life
Greenhouse Gas (CO2, N2O, CH4) Emissions Source: Environmental Protection Agency, www.epa.ie 1995-2002
Transport Re sidential
20000 Industry 15000
Agriculture
10000
Services
5000
Fue l, Power, Water
02 20
01 20
00 20
99 19
98 19
97 19
96 19
95
0 19
Tho usa nds o f To nnes o f C O 2 Equiv a lents
25000
Year
educating for professional life
Transport Energy Demand by Mode (2003) Source: Sustainable Energy Ireland, 2003a.
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Improving fuel efficiency of the passenger vehicle fleet should yield savings of 0.48 million tonnes. The existing Mineral Oils Tax Relief (MOTR) II Scheme, will yield emissions savings of 0.27 million tonnes by 2008, complemented, from 2009, with the introduction of a biofuels obligation scheme. Achievement of the 2010 target will reduce emissions by an additional 0.5 million tonnes in 2008-2012. Policy measures before the announcement of Transport 21 estimated to yield a reduction in CO2 equivalent output of less than 2% of the projected total transport sector output in 2008/2012. Under Transport 21 and more effective land use planning this is projected to increase to some 6%. These modest achievements highlight the challenge posed by the massive growth in energy consumption and associated emissions of CO2 from road traffic (and air travel). The problem is exacerbated by the scale and spatial development of new housing developments throughout Ireland. educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Contradictions between elements of the T21 programme, in particular how they seek to address both the economic and environmental challenges, as well as social inclusion and spatial development needs. In the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) measures seek to restrain car use. In the absence of a coherent strategy for traffic management and restraint, its impact on traffic congestion will be limited. Network expansion of the Dublin Suburban Rail likely to contribute modestly but significantly in terms of promoting sustainability. A major concern however is the potential for delay to the Interconnnector arising from constraints in the construction sector, the planning capacity of Irish Rail or the implications of cost overruns in relation to other projects including Metro. In view of the strength of the business case for the Interconnector fast tracking of this project is recommended to ensure both that it is implemented and its evident benefits secured as early as possible.
Luas is also likely to perform positively in this regard. The very limited extent of the Metro would make its contribution marginal on a national or even city basis. educating for professional life
Source: Department of Transport
educating for professional life
Compatibility of strategies with transport and wider societal goals Elsewhere, strategy will encourage greater use of private transport as the road programme erodes the competitiveness of a modestly enhanced inter urban rail system. The road programme will also tend to promote further spatial dispersal and rural isolation as it becomes increasingly expensive to sustain local public transport.
By implication this will pose an even greater challenge for the country, in terms of meeting its commitments under the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gas emissions.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Government is producing a Sustainable Transport Action Plan. This Action Plan will balance the need for economic efficiency, reduced environmental impact and social cohesion as well as proposing the appropriate institutional arrangements requisite to deliver a sustainable transport system. Even with advances in vehicle and infrastructure technology, given the dominance of road and air for passenger transport and the absence of a competitive rail freight or other sustainable modes for freight movements, and against the backdrop of existing macro economic policy priorities, it appears almost certain that for the foreseeable future Ireland will be unable to constrain greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector, let alone achieve reductions. Whatever the transport policy outcome the effectiveness of any transport measures will be determined to a large extent by the effectiveness of supporting regional development and planning policies.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights In addition to higher throughput at airports and increased freight movements growth in greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to: growing population, rising employment, increased demand for housing and urban sprawl, increased commuting, greater dependency on private transport. Ireland’s economic success in recent years has been accompanied by spatial patterns of development, which have seen employment opportunities becoming more concentrated in some areas. A key concern is the apparent overheating of the Dublin City region with all the attendant economic, environmental and social consequences of such a state of affairs. Accommodation of large increases in the household numbers, together with the associated employment, services and facilities is the major planning challenge for the Greater Dublin Area. As house prices have spiralled, particularly in areas close to Dublin, long distance commuting has become increasingly the norm. The typical low-density suburban housing meeting much of this demand generates increased car travel as low densities cannot easily support public transport services.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Increased housing demand requires future development to take place in a way, which avoids urban sprawl and promotes public transport oriented urban areas. Access to high quality and affordable housing in the right locations, and at high densities and in substantial sized compact urban forms, is an important spatial planning requirement economic and environmental challenges. The most influential policy levers for addressing the environmental sustainability challenges posed by burgeoning transport demand may be the combined effect of housing policies and prioritisation of urban consolidation as envisaged under the National Spatial Strategy. It is likely to be most effective for development patterns in the Greater Dublin Area. While a policy of containment, associated with higher residential densities and good public transport, has an obvious appeal from a sustainability perspective, it remains to be seen just how achievable this would be in practice.
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights A significantly more attractive rail network could limit mode switching to private transport and obviate the requirement for some of the existing Public Service Obligation subsidies provided to domestic air services. Inter city rail also has significant potential in helping to meet spatial development needs. A re visioning of the role of the interurban railway allied to introduction of a mechanism to reflect the true environmental and economic costs of private vehicle use would have the potential to bring about a modest improvement in performance. The enhanced competitiveness of the intercity rail system will also reinforce the competitiveness of city centre locations with attendant benefits of social cohesion and reduced tendency to urban sprawl. It will promote regional balance and a more ordered settlement pattern as development is encouraged to locate adjacent to stations served by the upgraded system.
educating for professional life
Ia rn ró d É ir e a n n N e tw o rk
S o u r c e : Ia r n r ó d É ire a n n
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Such a step change in the service offered by the rail system could also offer a further environmental and fiscal benefit to the state by affording an alternative to internal air services. Many of the latter are supported by very large per capita subsidies. A related development of the rail system which would appear to make sense in terms of environmental sustainability, while promoting regional balance in development and a coherent all island policy on air transport would be to create a rail air hub at Dublin airport served initially by DART services but later potentially by intercity services from the South and West and North. This would be similar to the concept employed at a number of major airports in continental Europe. For internal air and interlining trips rail could become the preferred mode for many areas of the country, thereby obviating the requirement for subsidies on thin routes with attendant reductions in emissions from aircraft. It would also free up slots at a growing Dublin Airport, perhaps reducing the requirement for some additional capacity. educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights Figure 9 Air Passenger Trips per Capita Air Passengers 2005 7 6 Passengers
5 4
Passengers
3 2 1
e R ep ub lic P or tu ga l
Iri sh
G re ec
Fi nl an d
ria Au st
B el gi um D en m ar k
U ni te d
K in gd om
0
Country
Source Eurostat
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights KILOMETRES FLOW N (BILLION)
PASSENGER KILOMETRES FLOWN (BILLION) 50.0 45.0 40.0 35.0 30.0
1995
25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0
2005
5.0 0.0 Austria
Belgium Denmark Finland
Greece
Irish Portugal Republic
COUNTRY
educating for professional life
Key issues and selected insights This begs questions about the future role of air transport to meet Ireland’s economic and environmental challenges. In the case of Ireland the geography of the country and in particular its absence of land borders with its main attractors and generators of traffic mean that the country has few competitive options for most out of state journeys as reflected by an unusually high dependency on air transport. For some journeys including domestic and internal to the island as well as those involving short sea journeys there are or could be alternatives which are less demanding on the environment. With increasing pressure at a EU level to impose charges to reflect the costs which air travel imposes on the environment the attraction of many leisure journeys may well diminish in the not to distant future. It is recommended that a comprehensive policy for air transport is developed covering not only future airport development but also the regulatory and control frameworks governing airlines serving Ireland.
educating for professional life
Transport 21: Sustaining Transport or addressing Sustainability Presentation by
Professor Austin Smyth University of Westminster at
‘Policy measures to manage transport impacts and demand’ Comhar, Dublin 4th December 2007 educating for professional life
