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Toll Bridge Charges: Up and Down

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Toll Bridge Charges: Up and Down

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, , , , , ,

Dublinbikes will get a new sponsor

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Dublinbikes will get a new sponsor

Coke Zero is gone and Just Eat will arrive as the new sponsor of the Dublinbikes. New ad stickers will be put on the bikes and the website will change and Dublin City will call it differently, but nobody in their right mind ever called the bikes any different than “Dublinbikes” and the new sponsor will not change anything about that either.

The advertisement contract will be for three years and while the amount that Just Eat will pay has not been released, we can assume that it is probably in the region of 2 mio.

There are currently nearly 69,000 subscribers at a yearly fee of EUR 25, a budget of 1.725 mio and if the advertisement costs 2mio, there is a total amount of 3.7mio available, which seems like a LOT of money! At the end of the summer there will be 116 bike stations with a total of 1600 bikes

www.thejournal.ie/dublinbikes-brand-new-sponsor-3506804-Jul2017/

Dublin, Dublin City Council

Don’t blink or you miss him! A new mayor for Dublin!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Don’t blink or you miss him! A new mayor for Dublin!

The most unnecessary yearly event has happened again a few days ago. A new mayor was elected for Dublin! I know, I know, you probably have no idea who the previous mayor was (It was Brendan Carr from the Labour Party.) and you also have no intention to remember the name of the new mayor, because – again – he will be gone before you will have heard anything of importance from him. Well, for he record, I will mention his name. The new guy is called Micheal MacDonncha.

The time when Dublin’s mayor really steps forward is when the Christmas tree needs to be lit. He has no powers and is just a representative roles. Sounds cynical? It is! See, this is now the 348th Mayor of Dublin, so there have been a LOT of them around and because they are power less and the city is run by a non-elected bureaucrat, hardly any of them made any impact. I was talking to some of them over the years and oddly some of them are convinced that they are hugely important, but I guess they try do as much as they can within a framework of powerlessness.

See, it is not the fault of the Dublin City Mayor that he has no power and is elected in such a nonsensical charade. A few years ago, there was a plan to change the local government structures and to go forward with ONE directly elected mayor WITH RESPONSIBILITIES and POWER for whole Dublin, but thanks to the dimness of the councillors in Fingal (North County Dublin), that sensical new idea was voted down.

In some dealings with one of the previous mayors it always amused me how he was soooo madly keen on wearing that silly golden chain even when there are no photographers around, but then I realised that the only thing that gives the mayor the appearance of having an important role is that golden chain and otherwise nobody will ever recognise him. Without a doubt you have not seen a golden chain on the Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn. Why? Because he is important and therefore people recognise him.

Oh and one more thing: I know that the official title is “Lord Mayor” but come on, he is not even a proper mayor, so the “lord” makes the joke even bigger, so I will stick to “mayor”.

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Politics, ,

Dublin City’s silly fight against competing bikes: BleeperBike

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
1 Comment
Dublin City’s silly fight against competing bikes: BleeperBike

We all know and love the Dublin Bikes. The Dublin Bike scheme is a huge success and will hopefully get expanded more and more. Back when it was introduced, a somewhat dubious deal was struck with advertisement company JCDecaux and I am still not convinced that that was the right decision by Dublin City. Since then the cost to run the scheme seem to be outrageously high and some have wondered where the money really go. And the increase in charges some while ago also weren’t the best news. So there are some issues, but all in all it is a really good scheme. AND it is a very financially stable scheme, which means that competition couldn’t really harm it: There is more demand than the Dublin Bike scheme can deliver and the prices are in general so low that any other bike rental business would find it difficult to harm the Dublin Bike business.

Regarding the future of traffic in Dublin we are constantly shown by Dublin City’s actions that the shift from cars to bikes is a huge and definite goal for Dublin.

In this bike-positive climate and having seen the same in many other European cities, a private company has decided that they want to also offer a bike rental scheme that will – to a degree – compete with the Dublin Bikes scheme, but at the same time it will not compete at all. The company is called BleeperBike and their approach is that that put bikes on bike stands in the City Centre (NOT at prescribed locations!) and you can find the bike through an app. Through that app you also book the bike and pay for the use. The fact that bikes can be in locations that are not “bike terminals” is a big advantage (Flexibility!) but the price is a LOT higher than the Dublin Bikes price.

If you use a BleeperBike for 2x 20 minute rides every working day of the year, you will pay EUR 440 in the year (Each ride up to 1 hour is 1 Euro.). If you use Dublin Bikes for your 2×20 min trips on 220 days per year, you will pay just EUR 25. So the difference is sooooo dramatic, that the BleeperBikes will never fully compete with Dublin Bikes for regular users. VERY infrequent users could however terminate their Dublin Bike card and pay the occasional Euro. And because I expect that Dublin City plans to increase the basic fee step by step (I don’t think it is justified by the way!) a pay-as-you-go scheme would be very unwelcome competition.

So what happened? BleeperBike announced that they will launch in July or maybe even before (this week was even mentioned) and immediately Dublin City goes into panic mode and spits out silly and nonsensical threats.

For example Dublin City says that the bike scheme does not have its consent to operate. So what? As long as BleeperBike doesn’t break any laws – and it doesn’t seem to – who cares about their “consent”.
DCC also have warned us that we would be using the service at their own risk? Excuse me? Is that any different than when I use my own bike? Or when I cross the street? It is the idiotic “Health & Safety” excuse that is used in Ireland whenever people have run out of arguments against something.
But it gets better! The next argument against BleeperBike is that Dublin City would have to first ensure that “there is adequate cycle parking capacity in city centre locations”. Who wrote that?????? Will we soon have check points at access roads where the (private) bikes are counted and the gate will get closed if too many people enter the city on bikes? And with all the cars that are taken out of the city we sure have more than enough space for bikes.
Next argument: Dublin City has to ensure “that bikes are not abandoned at unsuitable locations”. How is that different for my own bike than for a rental bike scheme?
Bu if you thought you have heard now the hight of stupidity, we are not finished yet. The final clincher from DCC’s point of few seems to be the threat that “Dublin City Council is empowered under Section 71 of the Roads Act 1993 to remove unlicensed items on the footpath/roadway without further notice.” That law was made to give the authorities the right to remove signs/advertisement that is not licensed, not to remove your bikes (or someone else’s bikes) whenever they feel like! And they use the fact that (very small!!) BleeperBikes’s name is written on the bikes. If you go to the BleeperBike website, you will see that it is TINY writing and would be not bigger than the brand/manufacturer name that is printed on every bike, but DCC is clearly grasping for straws.

I have no connection with BleeperBikes and heard the first time about it today! But I think DCCis REALLY going over the top here. Sure, competition blocking is always a cool thing if you want a monopoly, but in my opinion it will be a good thing if there will be some competition. It will keep DCC on their toes, one would hope.

…and if you have concerns then at least use proper arguments instead of nonsensical ones.

Here are some links:
The Journal.ie wrote about DCCs objections here.
The Dublin Bilkes website is www.dublinbikes.ie and the BleeperBike site is www.bleeperbike.com

By the way: The BleeperBike website is really not finished yet and the app crashes every time you try to start it, so they have a LOT more work to do before they can even compete with Dublin Bikes. But the above opinion is about the principle and about how bully tactics are used instead of genuine arguments.

Dublin, Dublin City Council, Environment, , , ,

College Green Plaza – The Good and the Bad

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
College Green Plaza – The Good and the Bad

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, , ,
 
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