“Dublin won’t work without” MetroLink and Dart+, but Eamon Ryan says there’s a risk other areas will only get roads

— “Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael got in the way” of progressing sustainable transport, Miniter Ryan says, they were “very nervous about the likes of the rural independents.”

VERY LONG READ: In December, IrishCycle.com interviewed outgoing Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan as he leaves office after not running in the last election, and he says he cannot see himself running for election again in the future.

He thinks issues like gridlock and growth will push the incoming government to progress to construction, at least on some large-scale Dublin public transport projects such as MetroLink, Dart+, and BusConnects. However, he thinks a renewed focus on roads might derail public transport projects in Cork, Limerick, Galway, and elsewhere.

On active travel infrastructure — projects for pedestrians, bicycles and more recently e-scooters (which max out at 20km/h) — he repeats throughout the interview that the national government cannot implement it “top-down” and there must be support at the local level.

Local authorities have the “knowledge and democratic mandate”, he says.

He says areas where progress has been firmer have local support. He points to the examples of Dublin City, with the city centre traffic plan; Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, with the Living Streets project;; and the active travel network in Limerick City, where councillors took “hard decisions” to support those projects in the face of opposition.

On opposition to greenways, he says, “You’d think we’re trying to build a nuclear power plant”, while he strongly criticises delays to transport projects caused by the legal and planning systems.

IMAGE: The bus gate on Dublin’s central quays, as part of the Dublin City Centre Transport Plan, has resulted in faster buses.

Legal issues slowing progress on transport

He says there’s “a real imperative” to build the Strand Road cycle path, a key remaining unbuilt section of the Sutton to Sandycove route. This route was blocked by a High Court Case that has been under appeal for several years, with the judgment pending for nearly two years.

He says this legal delay affects all sorts of projects. Several approved BusConnects routes and Dart+ projects are now being challenged in the High Court.

As covered last month ahead of this article, in reference to the Court of Appeal judgment on Strand Road, Minister Ryan says: “It’s two years we’ve been waiting for the judgement and, without going into the specifics of the case, I think there is a real issue in our planning and legal development system, legal planning system where the common good increasingly seems to be losing out to individual rights and/or to legal processes.”

[you already read the Strand Road article; you can skip below the image of Eamon Ryan below]

“That applies to cycling, but the same applies in housing, energy and water [infrastructure], and in so many different aspects. There is a real concern. I think that our legal system is increasingly probably the main block to developing our local environment in a way that really promotes the common good,” he says.

He says that local authorities are proceeding with projects, but that council officials now have to “write 500-page tomes on every tiny little intervention to protect against legal challenge and our entire system now spends a fortune and an age in trying to minimise the risk of legal challenge by just doing incredible amounts of reports.”

This issue also affected other areas besides transport, and he says: “Our entire system is now paying consultants small fortunes to write massive reports that wouldn’t be needed in other jurisdictions but are needed here to protect against legal risk.”

Minister Ryan says: “And so that decision around the appeal is waited with absolute bated breath because we do have to resolve it. We can’t just leave it as is. In my mind, we can’t just say, ‘Well, we won’t do a Sutton to Sandycove route’ or ‘We’ll just do a bit from the northside to the northside and the southside to southside, but we’ll forget the middle’.”

The Government, he says, has acted with the new Planning and Development Act 2024. However, he admits that critics of the new planning law point out that legal changes usually result in more delay — the opposite of what’s intended.

Taking a wider view on cycling, he says that currently, in Dublin, “it’s not safe to cycle” but that “we have a huge opportunity to massively expand the cycling population.” He says this would be good for the city, given the wider benefits, including reducing congestion, improving health, and reducing emissions.

“How do we advance cycling? Well, I think one of the things you start with is that you work with incredible assets — we have, which are the seafront, the rivers, and the canals,” says Ryan.

IMAGE: An impromptu image of Eamon Ryan in 2013 cycling down Dublin’s O’Connell Street in 2013, two years after his first stint as a Minister, although not in transport. He just cycled by as impromptu photos were being taken for the cover of the Cycling in Dublin newspaper were being taken (he didn’t make the cover).

Setting targets?

The old national mobility plan, the Smarter Travel Policy launched by then Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey, had a shelf life of between 2009 and 2020. It was signed off by a Fianna Fáil minister but was signed off with then Green TD Ciarán Cuffe as Dempsey’s junior minister.

It had a target that “by 2020 10% of all our trips will be by bike” but with little funding for cycling, this was widely missed. But Minister Ryan says, “in the intervening 10 years, nothing happened… there wasn’t really an attempt to reach them, and those targets are not abstract. It would have improved people’s health, improved quality of life and reduced gridlock”.

This is why Minister Ryan thinks having the funding and staff in place is more important than targets.

“We felt that we’ve issued all these targets and widely ignored, so was the target setting the key metric?” Minister Ryan says. “In my mind, the focus was on getting the budget, getting the right people in place, getting whatever legislative or other changes you need to facilitate them.”

But then he adds: “To a certain extent, the targets will come from the climate targets that we have. Every local authority this February will have to present their own local climate action plan, and there’s lots of targets there. We can’t meet our decarbonization targets without a radical change in the transport system.”

He says it is better to keep “certain flexibility” so that if some countries say, “no, this is too hard for us” or “we don’t want to do it”, then he’d prefer to “make sure that the money goes to those who do want to do that” and make progress or even “exceed their targets.”

In a way, this mirrors the Smarter Travel approach, with which cities were expected to do the heavy lifting on the national target of 10% of trips by bicycle. Dublin City reached the national target in the 2016 Census and exceeded it by the 2022 Census, but it was always expected that all cities would have to be punching above 20-25% for the national target to be met.

Instead of targets, Minister Ryan set up a ‘Pathfinder’ programme to push projects forward. This has some mixed results, including projects being built faster than ever in some council areas and others getting bogged down as usual. The verdict is still out on many of the projects and what results will come from them.

On the verge of change for cycling and public transport?

Before his life in politics, Ryan was a chairperson of the Dublin Cycling Campaign.

“On frustration… in my case, it goes back 30 or 35 years. I would have started involvement in cycling campaigning back in the late 80s, early 90s, and my poor wife now, girlfriend then, is sick and tired of me saying, ‘mark my words, honey, Dublin’s about to change’.”

“And 30 years on of me repeating that mantra, she’s kind of, she kind of throws it at me, occasionally and says ‘Dublin has not changed,” he says.

There has been “change in some small parts, but nowhere near enough,” but that is being sped up, and BusConnects should accelerate it further.

But after what he sees as a place of broad agreement from councillors and others on the draft BusConnects plans ahead of them being submitted to An Bord Pleanála, he notes we have since had a five-year delay.

He says that after “deep public consultation in 2017, 2018” on BusConnects. He says this consultation “really worked because the original schemes were very much corridors over communities” and since then, improvements have been made in the design, which reduces the need to CPO gardens and “run four-lane carriageway systems through [urban] villages.”

He notes how one of the planning inspectors looking at the routes says that this scheme “should have been stronger on the on reallocating space rather than creating new space”. Although Ryan half maintains his glass-half-full approach and adds: “You could argue that, but it was significantly improved compared to the original plans.”

He also admits the plans have flaws, including in Phibsborough, where cycle lanes will be removed and footpaths narrowed.

Is sustainable transport at risk from a change in government?

Minister Ryan says: “What’s the alternative? So, like, ‘oh great, we all get in our cars and drive them in and out [of cities]’, that’s not gonna work. One of the reasons we see that people feel frustration is that gridlock is coming back very, very noticeably on our streets, and a car-based solution to that simply will not work. The only way you can tackle that, as well as the emissions issue, is through a modal shift [to sustainable transport]”.

For that reason, he doesn’t expect BusConnects to be “withdrawn or fundamentally changed”.

He says that the draft transport demand strategy, titled ‘Moving Together: A Strategic Approach to Improving the Efficiency of Ireland’s Transport System’, which the Green’s coalition partners rejected as a topic for discussion at the last Cabinet meeting because it was too close to the election, shouldn’t have been seen as a surprise to the other parties.

Minister Ryan says the strategy was not presented to Cabinet at the last minute but rather at the end of a process, including public consultation, that developed the strategy into what it was. This strategy would have paved the way for measures such as congestion charging and a quicker rollout of things like bus gates.

He says very few of the submissions at the public consultation were negative, and most were supportive, including IBEC, the business lobby group.

“There is a choice — do we manage the growing gridlock by just trying to price people off the road?” but he says he doesn’t agree with such an approach — “I don’t think it would work, I don’t think it would be fair, I think you need to get the alternative transport system in place first, and even then I think that’s going to take some time.”

Key measures in the mobility plan, in his mind, is to have a policy in place for advancing bus priority via measures such as the bus gates at O’Connell Bridge in Dublin City Centre.

He says that demand management on Dublin’s M50 will be limited. He says he “spent three weeks of my life, the longest three weeks, at the oral hearing of the widening of the M50” and the engineers said that it was all that was possible in terms of meaningful upgrades of the motorway.

“No more capacity on the M50”

“We can marginally manage it on things like speed management, but there’s no more capacity on the M50,” he says.

Transport Infrastructure Ireland, the agency that develops road projects, sees urban motorway speed management as a way to improve predictability on the M50 by reducing the number of major delays caused by collisions on the ring road. International experience shows automated variable speed enforcement, with the limit changing depending on conditions, stabilising capacity on such busy motorways.

“Dublin doesn’t have any new road plans. There are no plans to increase road capacity in the city. Therefore, as the city continues to grow, which it will, needs to, and should, the only solution is towards better public transport, better walking, and better cycling for the sake of everyone.,” he said.

He said Dublin “will address the transport issue” as it has BusConnects, Dart+, MetroLink and active travel projects planned, and he thinks these will be funded because “Dublin won’t work without them”.

“I think the real question is that Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford need the same investment, and their BusConnectss plans are not as far advanced, and I think that’s going to be a real budget issue… how do we fund rail for Cork and Galway? And metropolitan railways for Cork and Limerick?”

More rapid progress?

While there has been significant progress on active travel, asked if he would have liked to have seen faster and more connected progress while he was Minister, he refers back to Strand Road as especially slowing things in the Dublin City Council areas.

“I would like to see much more rapid progress. And I think the Strand Road decision didn’t help. Because I think that did that say to everyone, ‘down tools’ in a way… it kind of gave them a shock.”

There’s a clear contrast in progress between the three more urban Dublin councils, with Dublin City Counci looking slower than South Dublin County Council or Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. There was also slowness outside of the capital. I point to the snails’ pace of Cork City and its lack of progress, and Minister Ryan interjects: “And Galway”.

He says that was the same with more rural counties, with some more willing than others.

With some frustration in his voice, he said, “In our system, it takes time to ramp up” changes.

Everything has to have a “quadruple, protected, massive analysis” — pointing towards the legal system again. But when questioned, he also agrees that the political side of things slows progress too.

IMAGE: Cycle tracks on the Clonskeagh Road.

He said that a lot of progress on cycling was made using things like plastic bollards or “wands”, but he said these are problematic for various reasons — there has been a lot of criticism of their ugliness, the lack of robustness over time and things like a buildup of dirt in the lanes they protect.

Ryan thinks greater progress in the future will be made by using cycle tracks with raised kerbs, such as those installed by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council on the Clonskeagh Road (pictured above), close to where he lives.

This type of design, he said, offers a “clearly identifiable segregated” surface for cycling and a “sense of safety”.

He thinks the Cycle Design Manual, produced by the NTA, will help. He says: “We’ll see a lot of further work being done quicker because I think we’ve started to come to some standardised approaches, particularly for Junctions, which won’t mean every single junction has to be a whole new learning experience and so on.”

“But why did it take so long?”

He says that in his own area around Ranelagh and Rathmines are some of the most heavily cycled routes, and they are “atrocious”. “Ranelagh is a mess,” he says, with parking allowed in cycle lanes at night in Ranelagh village, “at the time when it’s most dangerous.”

When I mention that the council has said it will soon start an interim scheme with segregated cycle tracks for Ranelagh village, Minister Ryan asks, “But why did it take so long?”

He then switches back to his more characteristic optimism. He acknowledges that he is thinking locally again but says he thinks progress will continue on the Sandyford route and the Dodder Greenway, which intersects with the route from the city centre to Sandyford via Ranelagh and the Clonskeagh.

“As long as we don’t stop, I think there will be quite a transformation in the next two or three years,” he says. “Because a lot of projects are through their legal/planning quagmire and are starting to be ready to be built.”

He says some projects, like the central Dublin section of the Royal Canal Greenway, “good core infrastructure” but “eat up a lot of resources”.

“Per kilometre, it was incredibly expensive… was that the right call or the wrong call? I don’t know. In Dublin City, they tended to put a lot of money into a small number of projects, which really chewed up a lot of their budget,” he says.

IMAGE: New Dart train carriage signs off on by the outgoing Government will only start to enter service next year.

“Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael got in the way

Who’s more or less committed to sustainable transport? The Green Party spoke a bit more liberally about their collision partners in the run-up to the election. But Ryan says: “I’m an optimistic kind of guy.”

He has high praise for Ciarán Cannon, former Fine Gael TD for Galway, who championed the 1.5 metre passing distance message but didn’t stand in the last election. On transport, Ryan says Cannon is a “hero in my books, a brilliant advocate”, and he also names another now former Fine Gael TD, Richard Bruton and then, without prompting about party balance, he says there’s a number of people in each party and indicates he would often see eye-to-eye with junior transport Minister James Lawless, a Fianna Fáil TD who was reelected just before the interview took place.

But in Government, who got in the way more? “Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael got in the way. Because both, I think, were very nervous about the likes of the rural independents who were opposed to this [progress on sustainable transport] outright. They were very nervous to cover that flank from their perspective politically,” Ryan says.

He says that was the picture at the national level, where they were “more worried about what the rural independent would think” than anything else, and it can vary at the local level.

The nervousness was around the 2:1 funding in favour of public transport over roads. Ryan says on top of that was the commitment to 20% of land transport infrastructure to be ring-fenced on active travel. Combined, he says it was “quite unique” and “probably world-leading”.

He says keeping those ratios is very important — since the interview was conducted the commitments have been dropped from the Programme for Government, which was agreed between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Regional Independents group, mainly made up of rural independents.

“If they don’t” retain the commitments, Ryan says: “I’ll be screaming from the rooftops that they have abandoned climate ambition, and they don’t care about making it safe for people who walk and cycle.”

Asked what he says was his greatest achievement and largest regret, again on transport, he first says that the Programme for Government, including the 2:1 and active travel funding commitments, were one of them.

So, what’s stopping Ryan from getting up on the roof and screaming? After the new Programme for Government deal was done, those involved said their government would be just as green on public transport.

In that vein, an unnamed “senior source” told The Irish Times that increased spending on major public transport projects like MetroLink and Dart+ would mean that — in the newspaper’s paraphrasing — “the ratio would likely remain at the same level or higher”.

The government will be “ambitious” on both roads and public transport, according to the source who was quoted as “being involved in drafting” the Programme for Government. But the source was happy, under the cloak of anonymity, to be quoted by The Irish Times as stating that: “There won’t be as many cycle lanes built, that’s for sure.”

A “silent majority” supportive of public transport

Back in December, Ryan says he doesn’t think it will change that much, “Because if it changes back, you’re saying goodbye to BusConnects Cork, goodbye to Luas in Galway and goodbye to railway stations in Limerick.”

He says a “silent majority” of people who want to see good public transport progress will come out and ask, “Why have you abandoned all of these projects?”

A prediction of the silent majority in favour of public transport might seem glib coming from the former leader of a party that lost all but one seat in the general election, but since the interview was conducted with Ryan, a Sunday Independent poll found that 50% of voters said that the 2:1 ratio of spending on public transport to roads should be maintained, compared to only 30% who opposed keeping the focus on public transport.

When voters were asked, “Do you believe the new government will do enough to meet Ireland’s climate change commitments?”, 57% said no, and only 27% said yes. This was even stronger than the findings of the RTÉ/Irish Times/TG4/TCD Exit Poll, which found that 51% thought that “the current Government has not gone far enough” on climate action.

And regrets?

When pushed on this and asked if the delays in building new large-scale public transport projects would be one of his regrets, Minister Ryan pointed towards the planning and legal side of things. I point to the rail advocacy group Rail Users Ireland, which has documents showing there were delays at the administration level between the Department of Transport, the National Transport Authority, and Irish Rail.

Rail Users Ireland is hardly a lone voice on this — in Irish Rail’s annual report for 2022, published in 2023, Frank Allen, chairperson of Irish Rail at the time, said: “All of the relevant agencies, including Iarnród Éireann, need to ensure that we have the appropriate skills to plan and implement new projects. The lengthy period between an in-principle decision to proceed with an investment and the award of contracts to begin implementation is a cause of concern,”

Minister Ryan didn’t see much of this from his side of things. He recalls back decades ago when he “saw infighting between CIE, Dublin Bus, the Dublin Transportation Office (now the NTA), the Department…. and meanwhile, the NRA (National Roads Authority, now TII) just ruled the roost.”

In terms of transport agencies in the last five years, Ryan says, “Everybody was on the same page”.

On the Dart+ project, not only have timelines for pre-planning approval not been met, the Dart+ South project was also split into smaller projects to deal with different sections of the route. Many would see this as much or more a political issue than a planning or legal one.

There was a smaller-scale disagreement on the handrail colour for Dart carriages. As reported before this interview was published in full, he says he agrees with Irish Rail on that.

IMAGE: One of the many improved bus routes outside of cities.

A lot of political capital was used outside of cities

The Green Party has come under a lot of flack in Government over its widely perceived focus on urban areas, but the party’s team in Government used a lot of political capital in smaller urban areas and rural areas far away from cities.

The centrepiece of this is Connecting Ireland, a huge expansion and upgrading of town and rural bus routes, partly under the Local Link brand. As with anything else like this, it’s still a work in

Because of a mix of EU rules and the way Irish law around the rules is set up, the Connecting Ireland programme cannot affect existing commercial bus routes, and something similar applies to the 20% discount not applying to commercial bus routes.

So, for example, in my own area, the direct bus service between Ballina and Castlebar is mainly a commercial service, and the route from Ballina to Enniskillen via Sligo is a public obligation service. Both are run by Bus Éireann, but (besides one or two buses on the Castlebar route) only the latter benefitted from an increase in service and the Government’s discount in fares.

A Local Link bus route was also launched between Ballina and Castlebar. However, because of the route, most people view it as a Crossmolina area bus to the two large towns. This route might not be appreciated too much by townies like me but it has hugely increased the level of service to rural areas.

While the national media tend to portray the Greens as anti-rural, many people around the country credit the party with the increase in rural and town bus services. But even with a huge rollout so far, it takes time for the rollout to reach the whole country and sometimes for people to even find out about the routes.

For those who follow transport issues closely, it was clear that these were issues raised but hard to explain during the heat of the recent election.

So, would it have been easier for the Greens to get elected if they had focused on cities with a larger support base?

At different times, there were clear capacity issues with buses in Dublin, Cork, and Limerick. Mostly related to driver shortages. Drivers in one part of the country are not able to serve a city on the other side, but there is limited funding and capacity for transport agencies to plan and implement improved routes.

Minister Ryan says: “If there’s one message I have as outgoing Minister for Transport it is we have to be really careful that we don’t put all the investment into Dubin,” he says. Ryan says that while he is Dublin-based, “If we keep everything advancing in Dublin and the rest of the country not advancing, that’s bad for Dublin” with the “whole country tipping over to the east coast.

He says the Greens only caring about urban areas was an “easy trope or cliche to put out there but very hard to refute”.

Ryan says this was not just because of him but other colleagues across the country but, in his case, he says he spent most of his working life before going into politics on bringing tourists around Ireland on cycling holidays around rural Ireland — a business he set up in 1988 which his sister still runs.

He says this gave him knowledge of backroads across Ireland, especially on the West Coast”.

Without promoting, he finally says, to answer my question, he doesn’t agree with just targeting investment in areas where they have support because he “absolutely believes in balanced regional development”. He adds that the public image of this is something the Greens need to overcome.

“Maybe we could have hit back at the Healy-Raes — when the Healy-Raes were doing that easy ‘oh, you’re not in favour of rural Ireland’, it’s rubbish, it’s not true. It hit home because it’s an easy cliche, it’s an easy thing for people to believe,” he says.

Minister Ryan referred back to his earlier days as a Minister, where he visited “every single” council around the country and spent three or four hours with councillors and the council managers. He says the reception is different face-to-face, with less rhetoric.

Back on his optimism, he says that people want to get traffic out of towns and “bring life back in”. He says that there should be a focus on building bypasses around towns to help remove regional and national traffic from town centres.

“We have amazing 19th-century market towns, and what do we do with them? Do we just let them become derelict? Or do we bring life back in?” he says.

IMAGE: A section of the current Great Western Greenway in Co Mayo.

“You’d think we’re trying to build a nuclear power plant”

With the Westport to Murrisk greenway route, a Mayo county councillor told IrishCycle.com that if an inland route goes ahead, “you will never see a war in Ukraine like it”. The problematic area is around Cloonagh, southwest of Westport.

Minister Ryan says: “You’d think we’re trying to build a nuclear power plant… to a certain extent, my answer there is that if Mayo does not want to spend the money, that’s no problem at all because Galway next door is looking for money.”

He added: “I’d put the question [locally]: Do you really want not to do this and let neighbouring counties benefit instead?”

He agrees that it should be clearer from the start if a process gets too bogged down in local opposition. He says there isn’t enough money to go around for greenways compared to the demand for them. Across the Department of Transport, he says, “we have €100 billion in projects in development and with €35 billion” to develop them.

But he adds: “I cannot tell people in Cloonagh that the greenway has to go here [using one route option or another]. But the local authority can if they decide to if they want because there are hard choices to be made.”

What’s next?

With the new government expected to be established tomorrow, Minister Ryan is about to leave his caretaker role. This interview was conducted last month when he was firm that this was the end for him in terms of elections.

Does he see himself ever running again, maybe if climate action goes wrong in the next government? “I’ve run for election eight times, and I’ve done it for 30 years in public roles in one way or another.”

He adds: “No, I’ve done by bit. I want to use that experience now in other ways, but it won’t be running for political office.”

4 thoughts on ““Dublin won’t work without” MetroLink and Dart+, but Eamon Ryan says there’s a risk other areas will only get roads”

  1. Ex-Minister Ryan was consistent in his efforts to effect the walking and cycle “Greenway” along the Dodder River. He championed public meetings to swap hardly used car park lands for a green “Linear Park” along the Dodder River with limited rational development providing 24 hour oversight. There have been many statements in multiple 5 year DCC Development plans for this Linear Park. Finally in 2025 there might be a breakthrough as the Dodder flood protection works reach Clonskea bridge and beyond.
    This has been due to relentless work by Ex-Minister Ryan, local Councillors (Cllr. Dermot Lacey being especially persistent), as well as many other Councillor. TD’s and two Lord Mayors – all who are trying, with the help of the DCC Executive, to finally make progress. Hopefully 2025 will break the 40 year logjam!!

    Reply

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