There’s stuff in the papers today about how a congestion charge is being considered to reduce gridlock in Dublin’s traffic.
This has made me quite mad, I have to say. Firstly, do we not pay enough road motor tax? Secondly, how can you introduce a congestion charge on the back of public transport cuts? Dublin Bus are cutting staff, routes and timetables. Surely the whole point of a congestion charge is to encourage people to leave their car at home and use public transport?
As Dublin has possibly the worst public transport network of any city in the world, ever, it’s a bit fucking much to ask people to pay to drive around the city.
Of course the Green Party, and that utter cunt John Gormley, are wrapped up in this, claiming that it would also be a good thing for the environment if it were to happen. I cannot even begin to explain to you how much I detest the Green Party and their insistence on foisting these taxes and charges on us in the name of their little crusade. They’re zealots, liars and any sense of principle they had went right out the window the minute they got into bed with Fianna Fail.
They are the born again Christians of politics, bleating on and on and on with their bullshit agenda. I hope, and I mean this quite sincerely, that they’re as good as wiped out at the local elections and in the next general election. Then Gormley, Boyle, de Burca and the rest of the irrelevant cunts can spend their time wearing sandals and cycling around wondering where it all went wrong. And I will point and laugh at them.
Anyway, I’ve strayed off point a bit there. They have a congestion charge in London but London is a huge city. It has an underground. Dublin has the DART, two unconnected tram lines and less buses than it used to. The Metro North is unlikely to happen now in the current financial climate and while it might not have been the answer to all the problems it at least would have done something to remove some of the surface traffic.
They say the zone for the congestion charge would be similar to the one for HGV traffic meaning …they would extend from the Royal Canal on the north of the city to the Grand Canal on the south; and from the Eastlink toll bridge, or just before it, over the River Liffey on the east of the city centre to around Heuston Station or beyond on the west.
So, let’s take someone who lives in Harolds Cross or Rathmines, for example. Would they be seriously expected to pay a congestion charge to cross the canal to drive into town? Similarly someone who lives in North Strand or Drumcondra would face the same charge?
It’s fucking mental is what it is. We pay huge road motor tax here, huge VRT, there’s massive duty on petrol and now they want to charge us to drive around the city because they have failed over and over and over again to provide a decent alternative in terms of public transport? Remember, these are the people who built a two-lane ‘motorway’. Fucking morons.
They can go and fuck themselves. Seriously. I would not and will not pay it. I’ll have fisticuffs with them if I have to.
Given the amount of admin fuck ups since the M50 Toll bridge changed, you’d think they’d be aware of their limitations in terms of implementing these ideas.
Of course people in the inner suburbs shouldn’t be charged to drive into town. They shouldn’t drive into town full stop.
Dublin’s bus network would actually work if it wasn’t permanently snarled up with single-occupancy vehicles. Anyone who insists on driving in central Dublin doesn’t get to complain about the traffic because they *are* the traffic.
And nobody anywhere in this country pays any road tax. There’s no such thing.
“It is a legal requirement in Ireland to have motor tax if you want to drive your vehicle in a public place. Motor tax is a charge imposed by the Government on some motor vehicles. The revenue from this tax is used to maintain and upgrade the road network in Ireland. Motor tax is collected by your local authority on behalf of the Government. ”
And the smell of fart on Dublin buses would knock you out.Last time I was on one somebodys lung nearly landed on my lap.
Motor tax certainly is. But Twenty’s “road tax” exists only in his imagination.
Actually a congestion charge is probably the only thing that will help with the traffic. There’s a great explanation why in the book ‘The Uncercover Economist’. It worked wonders in london, and yes I do concede they’ve a better ublic transport infrastructure.
The quesiton is not should we have a congestion charge, it’s how much it should be. You can solve the issues you raise by varying the charge based on where the person live or their income for example. Road tax is economically inefficient, why should someone that drives their car once a eyar pay the same as someone that helps clog up the inner city capital everyday pay the same annual fee?
Motor tax, that’s what I meant. You knew that.
Actually a congestion charge is probably the only thing that will help with the traffic.
That’s quite patently untrue. Better public transport and taking traffic off the surface, would help much more.
Has anybody considered nuking inner city Dublin? It would mean me not struggling in to work every day.
If government introduced an efficient and connected public transport system and drastically reduced the number of private vehicles on the road the revenue lost thru fuel levies, vrt etc would be astronomical! It’s in the governments best interest to keep us all in cars!
A better bus service or even an underground probably wouldn’t be enough to stop inner city road congestion. If this was the case they wouldn’t have needed the congestion charge in London in the first place. If you don’t give people a disincentive against driving, they will.
Everyone calls it “Road” tax, No?
You should focus on incentivising, not disincentivising. You cannot punish people without providing them with an alternative.
Perhaps. But it’s not a tax for using the road; it’s a tax for havin’ a motah.
Alb – “Road tax is economically inefficient, why should someone that drives their car once a eyar pay the same as someone that helps clog up the inner city capital everyday pay the same annual fee?”
Bet they still keep the Road (sorry, Motor) Tax as well, though.
So someone who drives their car once a year is still going to pay the same as everyone else, unless both cases keep out of Dublin City Centre or both cases enther the City Centre once a year.
But there’s no doubt that some people need a kick in the hole. I live right beside a train station and I know people here who drive into the city at standard rush hour times just because, y’know, it’s nicer and stuff.
But we need to understand that revenue collection is most likely top of the agenda right now and to think that this is going to be done for any other reason is naive at best.
This proposal belongs in the category of “fuck the people”, so what’s new?
Exactly.
Supergrover, yeah I know, they would for sure keep it, but thats a different issue really. Wether there is a motor tax or not does not affect the case for/against a congestion charge, I was just pointing out that it’s ecomically unfair. In an situation any tax paid would be preportional to public road usage and the negative impact of your driving on other people. Petrol taxes go some way towards this at least.
“Dublin has the DART, two unconnected tram lines and less buses than it used to.”
Also, really shit cycle lanes.
I dunno, they’re really handy for parking two wheels on while nipping in to the shop
I’m feeling a bit congested at the moment.
There’s two good articles describing the benefits of congestion charges at Freakonomics.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/why-youll-love-paying-for-roads-that-used-to-be-free-a-guest-post/
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/why-youll-love-paying-for-roads-that-used-to-be-free-part-two/
They go through the benefits and answer some of the common objections.
And it has nothing to do with tree-hugging nonsense – it’s about putting a proper price on a scare resource (commuter time).
One of the main benefits, as I see it, is that it’ll provide badly revenue that can be invested into public transport. It’s all very well saying that the solution is better public transport and taking people off the surface, but short of selling Kerry off to Disney as a themepark, where’s the money going to come from to do that?
One of the main problems, as someone pointed out above, is implementation. Getting a system that’ll work requires people who can tell their elbow from their shitpipe – and they don’t seem to be exactly thick on the ground.
Still – there’s models we can look at: London and variable toll systems in the States.
One of the main benefits, as I see it, is that it’ll provide badly revenue that can be invested into public transport.
That’s making the rather large assumption that revenue generated from any congestion charge would go to improving public transport.
“I’ll have fisticuffs with them if I have to”
It needn’t come to that, there’s local elections in June.
I have a proposal that will save drivers money, reduce fuel costs and pollution, and incentivise folks to leave their cars at home and take the faster moving more-likely-to-be-on-time buses.
Make it illegal to overtake a bicycle.
That’s making the rather large assumption that revenue generated from any congestion charge would go to improving public transport.
Yup, it is – but what the government spends revenue on is a political problem that goes far beyond congestion charges.
Not re-electing the same old cunts over and over again would go a long way to solving it. No matter how cuntish they are, Irish politicians never seem to pay a price by being booted out at the next election.
It’s only when they start having the fear of god that they’ll have to go back to being a third-rate solicitor in Ballyarsebackwards that they’ll actually start doing what the public want them to do.
On one hand, these extra charges would be very irritating and toll bridges make we want to go on a rampage.
On the other hand, dubs are lazy fat cunts and need to get out of their cars.
My brother came up to visit me in Dublin a while ago and asked for directions to my house and he was told that it was twenty minutes walk away but “sure ya wouldn’t walk it” and suggested a taxi.
Surely Dublin’s not that difficult to navigate by Bicycle?
Oh wait…..
http://www.geocities.com/cyclopath2001/
If they want to introduce a congestion charge, fine, provided it is used to fund proper, safe, clean public transport. Just because there is a bus route does not mean anyone in their right mind would want to use it. The 77 out in Tallifornia is a fucking nightmare from memory.
However, if they do introduce a charge, then they should stop charging for the M50, as it is an orbital, alternative route to get to either side of the city.
But they would never do that, because we’re used to paying it.
And for beerhunter the pedant, it is effectively more of a road tax than a motor tax, because the only reason fro paying it is to use public roads.
And yet it isn’t paid by hundred and hundreds of non-motorised road users.
There was a point to my pedantry — the old “cyclists should pay road tax ‘cos they use the roads” non-argument. I think it is important to note that using the roads and not paying any tax (or future congestion charge) for doing so is viable, legal and deliberate. Especially if you live in the inner suburbs like the people Twenty was talking about.
Test
The city I live in has eight tram lines, all connected, a metro and seven or eight suburban rail lines radiating out from the centre. A ticket, valid for one hour’s travel on all public transport – buses, trams, the metro or mainline trains, (transfer as often as you like) costs €2.20. Monthly and annual tickets work out a lot cheaper and there are rechargeable fare cards that are likewise cheap.
The municipally-owned public transport company expressed regret in its annual report last year that, owing to major construction projects in the city centre, its “punctuality factor” (meaning how many buses, trams and metro trains start their journeys on time) had fallen from just under 99% to slightly over 98% and the MD apologised to the public. Can anyone imagine that happening in Dublin?
No one has ever suggested congestion charges here, because congestion is unknown except on roads in and out of the city on two or three major public holidays each year.
Just in case anyone asks, this city is actually on the same planet as Dublin, the third rock from the Sun.
question, do you believe global warming is man made?
I think its perfectly acceptable for the Green party to be supporters of this.
I don’t think it is entirely man made and I’m not sure what making people buy more expensive lightbulbs is going to do to solve it anyway.
Sounds awesome, Fintan. It looks like Belinda Carlisle was right.
Heh…
The Planet’s Temp has risen and lowered many times over the Billions of years,while i dont think that pollution is good for us at all,i dont believe that there is anything that we can do about climate change.Its just something that happening anyway..
Im not say lets go out and burn tyres made out of whales or anything, but alot of evidence points to the planet just doing what it does,a temp change over the course of 100 or 200 years is insignificant in the grander scheme of things..
Plus the Greens are a shower of Higher than thou,u-turning cunts..
I dont drive by the way,i walk everywhere,and i recyle and all that other stuff everyone has been guilted into..
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Twenty!
We dubs are hounded by these politicians, and we pay for EVERYTHING!!
Any culshie who slags off Dubs, knows what he can do: Fuck off back to the bog!!
Yes, I mean you, Morgor, the Knob!!!
Thank God for people like you, Twenty, who can say what so many Dubs think, and make the point succintly!
Well, I walk the places I can walk to but I need to drive sometimes and I need to drive into the city centre sometimes so I’m attaching a gattling-gun to the front of my car.
Fuckin’ A Twenty… Nothing wrong with a bit of pro-active traffic management..
Yippee:You have just demonstrated why so called culchies take the piss out of you,as you jump on the defensive so easliy..
Just to point something out to you: The protests over the bin charges there a while back….
Every major town outside Dublin has had to pay for Bins for years..
Im a Dub btw way before you start off the rant with that….
you should also put those Ben Hur style blades on your hub-caps for Jay-walkers..
I like an element of danger while crossing the road..
Call me sensitive, but being called a fat lazy cunt makes me mad!
I’m just funny that way.
Anyway, we all know that culshies LOVE to see Dubs being shafted, as they are all jealous of us!
Congestion charges will all be replaced by GPS based charging soon enough anyway. You will pay based on location and time of day. So if you are driving in the city centre in rush hour, you pay more than if you are driving in the outer suburbs at two in the morning. So where there are currently no charges at all, there will be in time to come and it will replace your road tax charge.
The way the recession is going, there might be fuck all traffic in the city by the summer
“Call me sensitive, but being called a fat lazy cunt makes me mad!
I’m just funny that way.”
Heh..you are in the wrong Blog dude….
Do we really think the government is capable of being organised enought o bring in this quite complicated system?
I really hope not, cos penalizing the ordinary people is the completely wrong way to sort out traffic, whic, by the way, is not that bad, most of the time.
“I have a proposal that will save drivers money, reduce fuel costs and pollution, and incentivise folks to leave their cars at home and take the faster moving more-likely-to-be-on-time buses.
Make it illegal to overtake a bicycle.”
Yeah,that’d work really well cause no motorists do anything illegal in Ireland…ever.
BTW, I’m a laydee!
That’s the thing – the city centre isn’t really that bad. It’s the M50 and narrow suburbs that are the problem.
A gattling gun fitted to the car eh? Let me know when you’re driving to town, I’ll have a lie in.
Apologies Dudette..
Every bus every ten minutes.
:)
“Illegal to overtake a bicycle”
Sorry Twenty, I shouldn’t have.
Pay a congestion charge? Hell no.
It’s things like these that make me even less willing to bother learning how to drive and getting a car…
It’s going to be implemented half hearted anyways. Unfortunately you can’t drive close behind the trucks when passing the cameras as the trucks are not allowed. Something you could do when crossing the toll bridge. So that trick only works there. Other thing is to drive a 30 year old car and don’t pay any motor tax. problem solved as well. Left over is the fuel. There are a couple of E85 petrol stations over in Dublin. up to 15% of it in your tank will not harm your engine, and you don’t need any special computer. It actually makes your car pick up faster as the octane is higher. Plus it’s cheaper than petrol.
For older cars that have a carburettor it’s even easier. Just a bigger jet in there and you can safely drive 100% E85. You will only have starting problems when it’s minus 10.
So buy an old 30 year old car you always dreamed of as a kid, don’t pay motor tax, drive closely behind a lorry when going over the toll bridge, fuel it up with cheap E85. and well the only thing you have to pay is the charge.
What?
morgor, do you realise that Fill3rup called you a ‘so-called’ culchie?
Tell him you’re a proper culchie!
Post him a picture of your girlfriend, if ewe have one on ewe.
Dont be sheepish Morgor.
Daniel, can you clarify something for me please:
‘It’s going to be implemented half hearted anyways. Unfortunately you can’t drive close behind the trucks when passing the cameras as the trucks are not allowed. Something you could do when crossing the toll bridge. So that trick only works there. Other thing is to drive a 30 year old car and don’t pay any motor tax. problem solved as well. Left over is the fuel. There are a couple of E85 petrol stations over in Dublin. up to 15% of it in your tank will not harm your engine, and you don’t need any special computer. It actually makes your car pick up faster as the octane is higher. Plus it’s cheaper than petrol.
For older cars that have a carburettor it’s even easier. Just a bigger jet in there and you can safely drive 100% E85. You will only have starting problems when it’s minus 10.
So buy an old 30 year old car you always dreamed of as a kid, don’t pay motor tax, drive closely behind a lorry when going over the toll bridge, fuel it up with cheap E85. and well the only thing you have to pay is the charge.’
Cheers.
Fuck off back to the bog!!
But I don’t live in a bog . . .
Why would you say something like that?
Are you just trying to hurt me?
You’re a bad person.
she was just using so fat,lazy,cunt,stereotypes…
heh..
hooronahonda,
Twenty is going on all about the taxes and things you have to pay for, I summed up some things you can do to avoid. But i’m afraid they won’t do the congestion thingy any time soon. And if they do, it will have a load of leapholes in there.
Like with the toll-bridge where they should be filming for front and rear when you pass. As of now the angle of the camera is wrong. So when you’re close behind a truck you won’t be registered that you passed.
Money saved
Motor tax can be avoided if you’re car is old enough. Just make sure that the breaks are sound, see above tip.
Money saved
E85 is a mix of ethanol and petrol. It’s subsidised as it’s a cleaner fuel. Funny thing is that you don’t need a special engine to use it. But to take 100% advantage you need to. All modern petrol cars can drive safely on a mix of 15% E85 and the rest with normal petrol.
Money saved
Take an old car that still has a carburator than all you need is a bigger jet inside and you can run on 100% E85.
Even more money saved.
At that point the congestion charge, if it ever arrives, will be less missed.
Clear now?
“They are the born again Christians of politics, bleating on and on and on with their bullshit agenda.”
Born again Christians are the born again Christians of politics.
What a bunch of crap. Go to bed, fool.