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Category: Traffic

Toll Bridge Charges: Up and Down

19 August 2017Written by Joerg Steegmueller

If you drive a car, you definitely will have heard of the West-Link and the East-Link toll bridges, The West-Link is on the M50 near Lucan and the East-Link connects Ringsend with the Point Village/Dublin Port area and brings you now to the M1 tunnel.

Back in the 1980s when they were built, Ireland was a LOT poorer and corruption was even more prevalent than later and so the Irish Government got a private company to build the bridges and gave them the right to charge the people using the road a toll on an ongoing basis.

It was a very profitable business and in the end the National Roads Authority (now called Transport Infrastructure Ireland) bought the West-Link Bridge in 2008 and Dublin City bought the East Link bridge in 2015 from the private companies. So now the bridges are NOT in private ownership anymore, instead they are now owned by the state / Dublin City and since WE are the state or the City, and it would make sense to stop charging a toll, but not so fast!!! Neither the Irish government nor Dublin City wanted to stop charging that extra tax on us, so we are still paying for something that already has been paid.

National Toll Road who originally built the West Link made a profit of more than EUR 1bn from it!!!! Read it here!

Dublin City tried to claim that removing the toll plaza at the East Link would be too expensive, therefore they had to keep it and had to continue charging money. A very ….unique…..argumentation.

In 2010 Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) and Dublin City were told that they will have to pay VAT to Revenue from the toll they charge. At the West-Link, back then the toll was not increased, but remained the same and TII paid the VAT from that amount. Dublin City on the other hand increased the toll by 21% (VAT was back then 21% and is now 23%).

TII went to court over the VAT and now the European Court of Justice has decided that VAT should NOT be paid to state-owned companies and immediately the PR spin started.

TII declared that they will leave the charges as they were because they absorbed the VAT when it was added to the toll price and didn’t increase the charges back then. There is some merit in that argument because on paper the toll stayed the same all the time, but commercial companies were able to claim the VAT back so they now have to pay more. In addition the question has to be asked how TII was able to absorb the VAT. If they didn’t need the 23% at that time and had no problem absorbing it then it looks like they just increased their profit margin by the 23%. In addition there is another little aspect that is normally overlooked: When the bridge was owned by the private company, they had to pay VAT, when then NRA took over in 2008, they didn’t have to pay VAT anymore before the 2010 ruling but they decided NOT to lower the toll, So strictly speaking the NRA NEVER absorbed the VAT ans therefore they are in essence INCREASING the toll now.

Dublin City on the other hand was even cheekier! They send out a press release claiming that they were lowering the toll charges! But they are not! Sure the charges are going down by the amount they had added a few years ago, but that was because they had to stop charging something that they were not allowed anymore to charge (i.e. VAT). So while the charges went down it was not at all oh-so-generous Dublin City that decided to lower the charges, they were TOLD to stop charging a VAT surcharge.

We don’t need to go to Washington DC to see how spin works! ;-)

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Taxes, Traffic Dublin Ciry, East Link, Spin, TII, toll bridge, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, West Link

College Green Plaza – The Good and the Bad

27 May 2017Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Already more than 2 weeks ago the Irish Times reported about the new layout and timescales of the creation of the College Green plaza. I had planned to write about it here before, but only now got the time. Anyway, the creation will take at least another 5 months until it has planning permission and then another 18 months until it is finished. So there is still plenty of time to discuss it’s good and bad sides.

As a car driver I am not completely thrilled with the increasing pedestrianisation of Dublin, but as a Dublin Bike cyclist, pedestrian and as an Electric Unicycle user (ask if you want to know! ;-) ), more car free areas make sense to me. So I am always a little conflicted when it comes to changes like that.

However, as long as the changes are good, we will all get used to it and will gain from it. So, are the changes good?

1) I think having a central civil plaza in Dublin is a great development and much needed.

2) It will HAVE to be available for events (e.g. regular flea or food market, gigs, street performance and busking). Unfortunately Dublin City has in the past been more a spoil sport than a supporter, but here is an opportunity to do better!

3) Ban ALL cars from the plaza! Obviously the LUAS will have to go through it and that’s not a problem and as long as they use the same lane, Busses could also go through, but MAKE SURE that there will be NO taxis! It just doesn’t make sense to have a pedestrianised plaza and then allow taxis to compete with each other for business or to have a situation where they suddenly stop to pick up people and therefore interfere with LUAS and busses.

4) I read about “32 water jets” and was concerned that a fountain will be built there. This would immediately reduce the flexibility the plaza will provide. But on closer inspection it looks like 32 water jets built into the street level surface. So there is no fountain, but the water will come directly out of the “floor”. Nothing new or unique, many cities have similar fountains, but there is nothing wrong with that.

5) Unfortunately the existing trees will all be cut down. Not something I like the idea of. Yes, new trees will be planted, but that doesn’t replace 1:1 an existing tree. I do understand though why the current trees are in the way. To make maximum use of the plaza you have to get rid of use-limiting features in the wrong places.

6) 18 months of more digging in Dublin doesn’t sound great, but hopefully the result will be worth it

7) If there is a nice civil plaza, it would be great to sit there and enjoy the place during weather like we had this week. But benches or concrete blocks or other street furniture to sit on will automatically reduce the versatility of the plaza. So as a result, you can’t really provide anything that will make the plaza more “homely”.

So all in all, it seems to be a good idea, that makes a lot of sense. But my non-negotiable requirement would be that the car ban is absolute and includes taxis and my other requirement would be that use of the plaza will be regulated already now and will explicitly permit all types of busking and street performance.

What do you think about the proposed design?

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Traffic College Green Plaza, Dublin City Council, LUAS, Taxis

30 km/h Speed Limit on all Residential Roads!

30 March 2017Written by Joerg Steegmueller

You might think it is an April Fool’s Joke, but such nonsense is just day-to-day business in Dublin: From 01 April there is a 30 km/h speed limit on all residential roads between the canals all day, every day. I am totally on favour of 30 km/h speed limits near schools, in areas with a large amount of pedestrians and in other danger spots. But a blanked speed limit of 30 km/h is total nonsense.

Dublin City claims it will save lives, but they don’t seem to substantiate that with clear numbers that tell us how many people actually died in traffic accidents between the canals in the last 12 months or the last few years. And out of these fatal accidents, I would like to know how many involved a speed of the car of more than 30 km/h. I bet Dublin City has NO such numbers or statistics, so they just use the emotional argument that lives will be saved, expecting that everybody will shut up then.

Speed limits should make sense, then the majority of people will stick to them. But where they don’t make sense, the “30” signs are a waste of effort and the speed limit will have absolutely no effect.

At the time of writing this, the new speed limit wasn’t in effect yet, so we will have to see after 01 April if the “residential road” classification was applied to the right streets, let me know if you find streets that are in the speed limit zones that shouldn’t be. Oh and if you think it won’t affect you because you don’t have a car, think again: Every bus and every taxi will also have to adhere to the limit. (Only cyclists don’t have to! They can now easily overtake busses and cars at any speed they like because they can’t be taken to task when exceeding the limit.)

Dublin, Traffic 30 km/h, Dublin City Council

Suicidal Cyclists? – Helmet: Check! Lights: Who cares?

10 February 2017Written by Joerg Steegmueller

Let me start with the promise that this won’t be one of these many blanket rants about cyclists that we find in plenty of media outlets, but it is an odd observation that I made in the last two week.

I don’t know if this is a new trend or a test of courage or stupidity or suicidal tendency among cyclists?! But in the last two weeks I encountered four (!) cyclists that were perfectly equipped with helmets and a pretty bike and even with lycras, but they completely left out the lights when they cycled at around 19:00/20:00 in pitch dark.

How can this happen? If they think they can be seen without lights or if they think nobody has to see them, then they are idiots. If they were just badly equipped or not serious cyclists or caught out by sudden darkness, I could understand it. But this time of the year, it is more dark then bright and these four were serious cyclists (judging by their good and serious bikes) and they were people that seemingly were aware of the general risk, otherwise they wouldn’t wear a helmet. ALL four wore a helmet!!!

How can you leave the house and check if you have your helmet and your bike and your bike lock and if you have put your lycras on, but then leave the lights behind? How can you think that it is in any way safe to cycle anywhere if you don’t have strong front and back lights?

Sure it can happen that you forget something (even lights) or that you run out of batteries/charge, despite otherwise really good planning. But FOUR forgetful cyclists in two weeks? Do they maybe really not realise that they are virtually invisible in the night?

Odd!!

Dublin, Odd, Traffic cyclists, helmet

Big Time Crime vs Small Time Crime: Speed Limits and Killing people!

26 May 2016Written by Joerg Steegmueller

I got caught breaking the law! Yes, it is hard to admit (especially for a German :-) ), but I did break the law (unintentionally) and I got caught AND paid for it. A few weeks ago, I drove home on a very quiet Sunday evening on a well built and well lit street in Dublin. Hardly any traffic, no pedestrians or cyclists and I was not distracted by mobile phone or anything else. All was well…

…until about two weeks later when a letter arrived, telling me that I was recklessly breaking the law. What a bad boy! I know! I drove 59 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. I had to pay EUR 80 and will be punished for three years due to the 3 points I also got.

Interestingly, if I had driven 120km/h in a 50km/h zone, I would have been punished in the EXACT same way. Odd!!!

Then on Tuesday, I heard about the shooting of another gang member of the two feuding Dublin criminal gangs. We might think, that it is not the worst if they terminate each other, but keep in mind that in every killing one side will win over the other and it will give that “winning” side more power, which is never a good thing when you talk about criminals. These ongoing killings are a bad bad thing on another level. As we have seen, the risk for random bystanders is significant, because these killers seem to have trouble at times knowing who they really want to get and also because they are getting more and more ruthless.

So how does my speeding tickets link to the gang war in Dublin? — It doesn’t really! I am not the type of person who complains that the police should spend their time on hunting down the big criminals and let the small criminals go. I broke the law and got punished, which is annoying but fair. But when it comes to fairness, it seems that bigger criminals get away with a lot more.

For Friday of this week a big “clampdown” on speeding has been announced. It’s easy!! Put up a few vans around the country in locations that are not really accident hotspots and then just send the tickets by post. You will get lots of money back and have a nice Press Release about the success and the catching of the criminals.

At the same time, the gangs, make millions through drugs and from their HUGE amount of properties that most likely were bought from drug money as well. Clampdown? Not much!

Is it resources? I don’t think so! It is just easier to get honest people to own up and pay up for their small crimes than to get criminals to own up to their big crimes. It not wrong to punish the small time criminals, but it is wrong to let the big time criminals get away with as much as they do.

Justice, Society, Traffic Crime, Speeding