Public Transportation

Improving public transportation was the top local priority that came out of Fuller Democracy 2016, with 90% of participants rating it as the most important objective for Fingal. Indeed, a good, affordable public transportation system is both an important environmental and economic objective. The key issues in Fingal are: infrequent services and the practical inability to connect to other parts of Fingal without passing through Dublin. Even in the centre of Dublin, the transportation system is not joined up (for example, you have to walk at least 15 minutes to connect from the DART at Pearse Station to the LUAS Green line at St. Stephen’s Green).

The best way to resolve this is to build a wheel and spokes transportation system that covers the Greater Dublin Area, including Fingal. 

An example of how a wheel-and-spokes system could look in Dublin from An Taisce – I would propose a slightly different configuration myself that connects at an earlier point with our existing train line, but this gives a rough idea of the basic model.

The wheel-and-spokes model is a standard of public transportation systems in major cities. Under this system one would have a ring line running at approximately the level of the outer fringes of Clontarf/Drumcondra/Cabra, with other lines passing though that ring as spokes, e.g. the existing train lines coming from Balbriggan and Maynooth respectively, a new line connecting Swords and Dublin Airport to the city centre, etc. Wherever two lines cross, there would be a hub where one can transfer lines. The spoke lines sometimes join up again, at points far outside of the city, creating additional loops that make transferring from one outer region to another even easier. This means smaller trains running more frequently, less congestion in the city centre, and shorter commute times, as people do not need to pass through the city centre bottleneck to get to their destination. We would basically be doing for public transportation what we have done for single vehicle transport with the M50. Indeed, the main wheel line could potentially be built somewhat further out of the city depending on costs and feasability.