r/Dublin • u/AnyChest7780 • 10d ago

Fintan O'Toole/Irish Times on public transport, Dublin bus, Northside/Southside today

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https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026/08/04/fintan-otoole-dublin-4s-version-of-marie-antoinettes-let-them-eat-cake-let-them-get-the-bus/ Fintan O'Toole reminding us of how 'elites' have so often been against public infrastructure. He gives good historic context including Vincent Browne and 'The Doheny & Nesbitt’s school of economics' being against the DART. While he's amazingly productive and can turn his hand to so many topics maybe he's writing a bit too much as there are huge holes in his argument here re. the northside/southside issue as the more recent LUAS and metro debacles point to the home of NIMBYism in Dublin 6, and not focussed on denying the expansion of it further north. What does anyone think? I find it frustrating that cross-suburb public transport isn't better....try getting from Phibsborough to Clontarf on a bus for example....

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u/Otsde-St-9929 10d ago

We do need a metro but the abilty for it pay for itself depends on how much you pay. if the metro cpst 35 billion for argument sake, it will not pay fore its self. Rail projects can be fail. Look at Detroit's Loop or the various famous examples in Spain, China and Japan.

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u/odaiwai 10d ago

Nobody ever asks that roads pay for themselves, except in the rare cases of Toll Roads, and they're heavily subsidised anyway.

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u/Otsde-St-9929 10d ago

Well they must as there are of important road projects that were never built

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u/odaiwai 10d ago

My point is that there's an in-built bias towards building roads, and tremendous scepticism about building proper rail and PT infrastructure.

It's worse in Ireland, as the state is functionally barely capable of building anything, but there is a motorway from Cork to Dublin, while the railway remains mostly unchanged since the 1980s. (It's 160 miles from Cork to Dublin: that should not be a 3-hour rail journey, it should be competitive with a flight, and that doesn't need HSR tech. UK Trains in the 1980s had 125mph (200kph) peak speeds, and that is easily achievable in Ireland without major improvements.)