Public Transit == Crime
I just received a very nice info-pack through my front door regarding the new Dublin Metro line, which is in planning at the moment; it seems they’re soliciting feedback from residents near the proposed routes. Nicely done.
Right now, Dublin has an embarrassment of good public transit, at least when compared to my previous home in Orange County. There, public transit is actively campaigned against.
My favourite claim: that it ‘increases crime’ — in other words that poor people from Santa Ana would come down to Irvine and steal stuff, which they couldn’t do with vehicular transport, for some reason.
The OC Weekly thought it was pretty funny, too — and an opposing group comprehensively debunked it. Still, it seemed to work; while I was living in Irvine, I got to see the Centerline proposal gradually whittled down until it was finally killed off. During that time, in contrast, Dublin built the Luas.
Unfortunately it doesn’t exactly go where I want to go, but you can’t always have everything. ;)
Tags: commuting, dublin, irvine, octa, ocweekly, public-transit
Ann said,
March 29, 2006 @ 7:08 pm
It’s all about expectations and experience, isn’t it? Spent the last 8 years in Chicago, so Dublin’s public transport seems slow, over-priced, inconvenient and not-good-enough to me. I’m lucky enough to live right on a bus route and about a mile and a quarter from the Dart.
PS - You might want to take a look at your spam test there on your comment form. When a user presses TAB on the URI field, they’re taken right to the comment text field (bypassing the spam test).
Justin said,
March 30, 2006 @ 1:12 pm
Ann — yeah, I know about the tab wierdness, sorry about that! some day in my copious free time I’ll figure out what’s up there ;)
I have an embryonic post brewing about how travelling from one end of the US to another (e.g. Chicago to Irvine), brings as much culture shock as the same trip from Dublin. The SoCal car lifestyle is equally as alien to both, imo!
I still miss it a bit, though ;)
Conor Delaney said,
March 30, 2006 @ 1:29 pm
The same sort of thing hapened with the original Luas proposal. If you remember it was supposed to go across the city, down Dawson and Dame street and up O’ Connel st.. The Dublin Transport People had loads of public meetings about it and all seemed to be going well (this was around 1991). Then the FF government shot it down and got rid of the bit in the city centre and started coming up with the crazy underground bit. The underground bit was never part of the original plan, it is very expensive. The Dublin port tunnel looks like hitting €1500 for about 4km (original budget was about €120 million)? So why was the original plan shot down? Well to quote Frank McDonald “A less benign interpretation of Mary O’Rourke’s decision is that it amounts to a craven capitulation to the car lobby - as represented by the Automobile Association and the Dublin Chamber of Commerce - which would prefer if LUAS was sunk out of sight in the city centre.” Unbelieveably, at the time the DCC didn’t want LUAS above ground as they said it would reduce business for traders in the city centre. Something to do with people not being able to drive into town to do their shopping….mad!
PS: search the Irish Time archive, it is all there
nishad said,
March 31, 2006 @ 2:45 am
I saw local govt. campaign ads in Irvine that said, “Want TRAINS in your neighbourhood? Vote for Someguy!” I would have rushed to vote for Someguy if I could, but…you guessed it. These were negative ads put up BY Someguy’s staff.
Brody Mulligan said,
August 23, 2006 @ 12:36 pm
Because of a growing class divide here in SoCal, there is a stark contrast (usually) between those who can afford a car and those who cannot. There are many shady characters on the bus, in my experience.