'Cork Dart would do nothing for congestion in city suburbs'

LABOUR Party Candidate in Cork City South East has said that the Taoiseach’s comments on a Cork dart style system would do little to nothing in terms of removing traffic in Douglas, the city centre and oher suburbs like Blackrock, Ballincollig and Carrigaline.

“The Taoiseach wasn’t talking about new tracks headed into the city centre and the outer suburbs,” said Peter Horgan, “What we need is the route for the Cork Luas published and a front loading of the BusConnects proposals.

“I still can’t understand why the emerging preferred route can’t be publish with a provision that work is still needed on the city centre element. We are about to finish the third round of consultations for the Sustainable Transport Corridors under BusConnects and this route would be important to have as part of that consultation.

“We need to publish the route and begin the process of fine tuning this project in the hope of revitalising public transport in Cork and reducing the burden on Cork’s roads.”

Having ticketing elements and orbital routes in operation would help encourage the public transport push, Mr Horgan again called for Cork to be the test bed for the Labour €9 Climate Ticket.

Mr Horgan said it is a radical but costed proposal to reduce costs for all commuters in Cork through the Labour €9 Climate Ticket.

The Climate Ticket that would allow unlimited public transport access for €9 a month. Figures released to Labour and Mr Horgan showed that the introduction of the €9 Climate Ticket in Cork on all public service obligation (PSO) services in Cork City is likely to incur an annual additional cost in the range of €9 million to €19 million.

Said Mr Horgan, a long time proponent of the scheme: “Even to introduce just in Cork on 6months at the top cost side would cost €9 million.

“Where is the ambition to even trial it here? Labour’s flagship climate measure in our Alternative Budget 2024 was the introduction for one year of a pilot €9 monthly Climate ticket for public transport, modelled on the German scheme.

“Based on that example, and the NTA estimated cost range of €235m to €411m, we have costed this proposal at €330m over 2024.”

In three months, the German scheme save 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions - equivalent to the annual output from 388,000 vehicles. In Ireland, that would be the equivalent of taking 23,000 cars off the road.

“If introduced, our Climate ticket would help people make the move to public transport, save costs on fuel, and help Ireland meet our emission targets. Imagine the impact that would have in Cork city of reducing the traffic jams. It’s not anti-car, it’s pro-commuter to help with costs and ensure they are supported.”