Comment & Analysis: In the last few days, both the Irish Independent and The Irish Times have published articles in which the author of the Dublin City Centre Traders Alliance economic report defends his worth. However, both failed to address the substantive issue of why people criticised the report.
Dr Pat McCloughan, managing director of PMCA Economic Consulting, told the Independent that he’s “absolutely standing over the report,” which tried to claim that the Dublin City Transport Plan “would reduce retail spending in the City Centre by €141,253,366 in 2028”.
Saying that the data doesn’t add up is too soft for this. How McCloughan came to his conclusions is more fantastical than that.
The criticism of the report came in hard and strong. The first report on this website was the panning of the report by the Dublin Commuter Coalition, a group advocating for sustainable transport. The next morning on RTE Radio, Professor Brian Caulfield, head of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, said the consultation was not robust and did not follow international evidence from places where car use has been reduced.
Then the knockout punch came from Barra Roantree, an assistant professor and director of the MSc in Economic Policy at the Department of Economics at Trinity College Dublin. In an article on TheJournal.ie he wrote that: “If this analysis were submitted as an undergraduate dissertation to the university I teach in, I would fail it. It shouldn’t have any role in informing the debate around the Dublin City Transport Plan.”
So, what’s wrong with the plan, and why is the defence from its author so weak?
Simplified: McCloughan combined the spending figures from a shopper survey focused on Grafton Street and Henry Street with traffic count data for a much wider area as far out as the canals.
This is highly problematic as most of the traffic crossing the canals are not shoppers but commuters. This is something that business groups such as DublinTown have been saying for years — that shoppers are not generally the primary source of traffic in the city centre.
Dublin City Council has estimated that 60% of traffic in the core city centre passes through the area without stopping. So, the majority of motorists entering the city centre across the canals are not shoppers or spending money on dining out or going to the cinema etc.
In footnote 8 of his report, McCloughan wrote: “Behaviour & Attitudes for the NTA (‘Dublin City Centre Shopper Survey’, Summer 2022) (sample size 1,477 comprising 764 people interviewed on Grafton Street and 713 on Henry Street), 55% of people making a trip into the City Centre did so for shopping, 5% for eating out, 4% for an event/cinema/theatre and 1% to go to the pub/have a drink out, which together implies that 65% visited the City Centre for retail spending (mainly shopping).”
However, the survey results do not imply any such thing.
The city centre is defined by the council and in planning terms as inside the Canal Cordon. The survey — as with any survey — is limited to the respondents and the location chosen to interview people etc. In this case, people on Grafton Street and Henry Street. It’s suitable for a snapshot view of things.
Later in his report, however, McCloughan relies on the 65%. He states: “…we also need an estimate of the number of people crossing the Canal Cordon whose principal purpose for coming into the City Centre was retail spending. The relevant number is the aforementioned 65% (outlined earlier in footnote 8 in reference to the Behaviour & Attitudes survey commissioned by the NTA in 2022).”
Data cannot be used like this. Not correctly, in good faith, at least.
McCloughan uses quick references to footnotes. If he had spelled out how he arrived at his estimates for the total spending in the city centre, it would have looked even dafter.
With such a large mistake or intentional error — I cannot tell or presume his motives — outlined above, the report cannot be relied on at all.
That’s just the primary issue with the report.
There are so many layers to the problems with the report, including the fact that people shopping in more prime pedestrian streets are more likely to spend more than in the city centre overall, that a shift to sustainable modes and growth in city living will counteract any reduction in car shoppers, and that car shoppers are not being targeted by the plan but rather it’s focused on those who are not stopping in the core.
But it’s worth looking a bit more at how flawed McCloughan’s analysis of traffic trends is.
In his report, he claims: “…in the absence of any traffic management changes or restrictions being introduced (i.e. based on the actual travel mode share changes which occurred 2006-2019), the Draft Plan targets in 2028 would be surpassed in (1) walking and (2) public transport (bus, rail and LUAS) and would be met in (3) cars, taxis and goods vehicles. On the other hand, the targeted 13% share for cycling would not be met in 2028.”
Then he concludes that “These findings suggest the need for fewer traffic management changes in the City Centre between now and 2028…”.
This is based on trends alone without looking at what led the city to those trends — namely, what he calls traffic management changes and restrictions. The idea, for example, that bus use can grow significantly without substantial traffic measures to enable bus priority is not tenable.
The report even says that extra measures are needed to achieve the cycling targets. How, with finite space, will those extra measures be possible without significantly restricting traffic?
But — hold on a second — think about what is being done here. In the same report, which outlines that if there’s a drop in car use, it will be disastrous for the city centre, the author is saying the drop will happen anyway. It’s a bit like the purpose of the report is to attack the transport plan and will use anything to achieve that aim, including agreeing with the targets that resulted in the plan.
Outside of mashing together figures that should not mix and abstractly examining trends without examining what’s behind the trends, the report does not make sense because we know lower-car city centres don’t cause economic rune.
The Dutch city of Utrecht, for example, has far more car restrictions than is even planned in Dublin and still has a healthy retail sector. Meanwhile, across the border in Belgium, disaster was also predicted for Ghent’s traffic plan, but the city has thrived under a lower-car core. The Dutch even advised them not to do it ahead of a local election.
Ghent went ahead, and the politicians who supported the plan were rewarded at the election. Much like how Dublin City councillors who clearly supported the transport plan were reelected just months ahead of it being implemented — some of the strongest voices for the plan topped the poll in their areas.
But — again — hold on. Even the argument of looking at international examples is a bit of a needless distraction. Even this has us spinning around, following our tails.
McCloughan outlines that the “Canal Cordon Report 2022 shows that there have been significant changes in people’s travel modes in the City Centre since 2006 — towards sustainable travel modes as evident in Table 1.”
Then, show us the money!
There has been a significant shift to sustainable modes. The data is clear on that, and it’s accepted in the report. So, where’s the data showing the economic impact on the city centre retail? Of course, Covid and working from home have had their impacts, but the trend towards sustainable transport has not.
When asked by the Irish Independent about his previous report, which made the equally fanatical claim that the loss of just 10 car spaces in Lucan Village would result in the loss of over 300 jobs, over half of the village’s jobs, he told the Independent that he was “happy with the findings.”
He said the Lucan report was “ancient history” — sure, wouldn’t anybody who issued such unrealistic findings want the matter confined to history? As reported by this website at the time, South Dublin County Council said that the on-street parking capacity within Lucan Village is 225 spaces, and their plan would see an overall level of 215 on-street parking spaces being provided.
You could say that anybody who believed that claim is gullible. But The Irish Times lapped it up, and shortly afterwards, councillors bowed to the pressure. Things are a bit different this time. The stakes for Dublin City are higher in terms of the future of the city, its climate action and its transport network. Far more people are engaged in support of the city centre transport plan.
McCloughan added that “the work I do is fast-paced.”
As far as the Dublin City Centre Transport Plan is concerned, it sure is fast. Fast and loose.