National Transport Authority Bill 2003

26th March 2003

An act to broaden the focus of transportation planning and infrastructure provision by amalgamating the National Roads Authority and the Rail Procurement Agency

The purpose of this Bill is to integrate transportation. At present, four fifths of new transportation funding is going into roads. We suggest that 20% for public transport is not good enough and we need to reverse the allocation.

First and foremost, we need to reform the institutions. We believe that an umbrella body such as the proposed Transportation Authority would help unite the plethora of transportation agencies that exist. This is a problem that we discussed ten years ago when the National Roads Authority was introduced under the 1993 roads Act. At that time we said there was a real danger that roads would receive the vast bulk of funding and that public transport would be the poor relation, receiving only the crumbs of the transportation cake. That prophesy has proven to be true and today public transport is lagging dramatically behind roads investment.

Fifteen years ago when the Government commissioned a study into the Harcourt St. line, people were building extensions and garages on that line. The Government commissioned a study and those people are now receiving millions of euro in compensation for giving up the property they occupied. The Government did not take the initiative then and we are concerned that the Minister is still not taking the initiative with public transportation.

We believe that the NRA is an outdated body, that its terms of reference are wrong. We believe that its "predict and provide" approach makes ostriches look well informed by comparison. The legislation is ten years old. It fails to take into account the Kyoto Protocol. It fails to take into account recent thinking on transportation planning. It appears to take its cue from the 1950s interstate highway programme in the USA. We need to look towards modern European planning which integrates public transportation, land use planning and roads provision. We have yet to see evidence of this and we believe a new body is necessary to make this happen.

We believe a new body is necessary to take into account the national spatial strategy. If we are to give that fine plan some teeth, we must integrate transportation decisions with that, yet the NRA stated objective is simply to build roads. The NRA does not have a mandate in regard to planning. Indeed, the NRA is enthusiastically building roads from one urban area to another while refusing to take responsibility for what happens to the traffic once it arrives at the other end. In other words, it makes it possible for cars to travel from a certain point to the outskirts of Dublin in two and a half hours but it is not responsible for the traffic at the far end. That is not good enough in transportation planning or in roads planning. The institutions need reform.

We need to shake the NRA from top to tail and make it a modern body responding to environmental and archaeological challenges and the challenges and needs of local communities. We believe that at present transportation planning is being led by roads planning and it certainly needs reform.

Dr. McDaid: We will be long gone if we decide to develop our roads that way.

An Ceann Comhairle: Please allow the Deputy to continue without interruption.

Mr. Cuffe: The institution's terms of reference are Neanderthal. We propose that the body should have representatives from urban planning institutions and environmental agencies. That is the case to a certain extent at present but they are very much in the minority. If you ask a roads engineer for the solution, as the Minister will be well aware, the chances are he or she will tell you to build a road.

The remit of that body should be widened. All transportation issues should be put under an umbrella body, which unites and integrates transportation planning and gives it a strong environmental mandate. I commend this Bill to the House.

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