Climate ticket scheme would cost between €4.5m and €9.5m for six month trial in Cork city

THE National Transport Authority (NTA) has estimated that the cost of trialling Labour’s proposed €9 ‘climate ticket’ in Cork city for a six-month period would be anywhere in the region of €4.5m and €9.5m.

The party, in its alternative budget last year, called for the introduction of such a system that would give people unlimited usage of public transport anywhere in Ireland for €9 a month.

Cost estimates from the National Transport Authority (NTA) recently requested by Labour state that the introduction of this proposal on all public service obligation (PSO) services in Cork city “is likely to incur an annual additional cost in the range of €9m to €19m”.

The NTA also provided cost estimates to roll out the initiative in other cities for the period of a year.

The authority said introducing the €9 climate ticket proposal in Limerick city could cost anywhere between €11m to €15m, while in Galway it would likely cost in the range of €18m to €23m and in the Dublin region it would likely be €126m to €269m.

Nationally to roll out the initiative on all PSO services for one year would likely incur an annual additional cost in the range of €235m to €411m, the NTA said.

“That is a lot of money to trial something that we don’t know the full impact of,” Labour Party local area representative for Cork city Peter Horgan said, speaking in relation to the national estimates.

“If you look at the Cork figure, the top end is €19m and the bottom end is €9m.

“Cork is actually the smallest of the figures at the low end so why not do a six-month trial in Cork city and see what happens?

“We’re big enough to see the impact that it would have on roads, we’re big enough to see the impact that it would have on commuters, but it wouldn’t cost the earth to do a six-month trial to see how it goes, and then you could trial it in other cities and then you could trial it nationally after that if the evidence is successful,” he continued.

Mr Horgan said he believes more needs to be done to incentivise a greater use of public transport.

“We need to incentivise public transport, we need people on buses and trains more,” he said.

“If it [results of a six-month trial of the climate ticket proposal] comes back and it doesn’t work and there’s no material change then fair enough.” The NTA said that calculating the costs of the proposal “required a number of assumptions to be made” and, consequently, “the cost information provided should be regarded as indicative only”.

It stressed that information provided to the Labour Party “relates only to the State subsidised (PSO) services and does not include any private commercially operated services”.

In addition, it said the estimates do not take account of any additional vehicle capacity, or additional driver resources, which may need to be provided.