Car parking curbs and slashing journeys among Irish Government climate plans
By Paul Homewood
News from Ireland this week:
The Government wants to slash the number of car journeys and clamp down on parking spaces as part of its climate action plan, it is understood.
The plan, which will set out how the Government will achieve the agreed sectoral emissions targets and the overall target of a 51 per cent reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050, will be published on Wednesday.
The Cabinet will meet on Wednesday afternoon to sign off on the plan.
The Cabinet is to meet on Wednesday afternoon to sign off on the climate action plan.
While it is understood there is no specific commitment to congestion charges within the plan, the Government is considering them as one of their options.
They would only be brought in where there are viable alternatives to cars, including good public transport and active travel.
The plan will encourage the public to take other forms of transport and reduce the use of and dependency on cars.
It will aim to reduce the total distance driven across all car journeys by 20 per cent, and to have nearly one in three private cars as an electric vehicle by 2030.
The plan is also expected to recommend reducing public sector parking but will only apply where there is good public transport.
It is also expected to remove minimum car parking requirements but, again, only where there is good public transport.
The plan will also include a reduction of on-street parking to prioritise active travel and public transport and to “improve the public realm”.
Local authorities will also be encouraged to move towards the “market pricing” of car parking – again where there is good public transport.
Of course the government will decide whether there is “good public transport” or not!
But just as the German Health Minister warned, restrictions on freedom of travel will be enforced one way or another.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
They never mention how they will be measuring the effectiveness in climate terms these various policies are designed to achieve. Nor what effect is actually predicted.
Dead right.
Thermodynamically speaking, does public transport cost less in carbon than using your car? Where is the saving – is it the lower friction of a metal wheel on metal track. What about buses?
The real agenda, and the real carbon saving, derives from fewer journeys made when the ease and convenience of hopping into your own car is denied you.
And what about these who need to drive to get to the ‘public transport’ hub? Where will theg park? Will stations gave to close their car parks?
They also never mention that reducing carbon dioxide has no effect on climate.
Or that any such reduction is not measurable globally and thus cannot have any effect.
You have to wonder what planet these deluded fools live on. There is no way that 1/3 of Irish car owners will be driving EVs by 2030 if ever.
Presumably horses and caravans remain unaffected, so you can still hire one for a holiday if that floats your boat. Will they try to restrict visitors from NI?
It has been pointed out by structural engineers that many multi-storey car parks will not be able to handle the same number of cars without beaching redundancy limits. The same will apply to manty road bridges. Who will pay for those to be be reconstructed ?
They want to reduce car journeys by 20% and at the same time reduce the capacity or number of car parks. So while you are diving around from car park to car park looking for a space car journeys will reduce by 20%. There’s an Irish joke in there somewhere.
I see in their planned reductions there is no figure for how much they intend to shrink the economy, reduce employment, and ultimately the population.
It’s just like the “Yes Minister” climate sketch. The nebulous, unproven and unprovable enemy of the world can be attacked with massive virtue-signalling and, of course massive tax rises “for the public good”. Booker forecast all this years ago.
Irish jokes are the best.
Yes it reminds me of the one which says “If you want to get to Dublin it’s best you don’t start here”.
Or ” Mick, if you can guess how many bottles of Guinness I have in my bag you can have them both”
Or the old one, why are Irish jokes so stupid?
So the English can understand them!
If the Irish government were to mandate the use of methane instead of liquid hydrocarbons in the entire transport fleet – road, rail, cars, HGVs, ships – there would be many advantages: lower CO2 ; lower NOx; vanishingly low particulates. Piping in shale gas from the Celtic Sea would provide secure supplies, save import costs and score lots of brownie points at EU climate jamborees.
What’s not to like?
JF
“You will own nothing” – including cars. “As the German Health Minister warned, restrictions on freedom of travel will be enforced one way or another” What happens in Ireland will happen in the US, once this Deep State government finishes destroying our 2nd Amendment, and our Constitution. 2030?
What we need is Net Zero Government Interference in our lives.
Their job is to make things go along smoothly with the minimum of intrusion but they seem to think they can redesign society and human behaviour with grandiose schemes that would make a Bond villain jealous.
15 years back I was predicting that in the future you’ll need a permit for a walk in the countryside, I could see it.
It’s time to take the pruning shears to governments.
In France, during the lockdown, we had exactly that. Before I could leave my house and garden I had to fill in an official form to say that I was going to take exercise. I had to put the date and time that I was leaving the house and sign it. Whilst I was out of the house I had to carry the form and my ID. I had to be back in the house, at lease, one hour from leaving. Failure on any item could result in a 135€ fine.
The government did it twice, and I expect that they will do it again.
Some friends who lived in France seemed to think it was fine for them to fill in those forms. Their unquestioning acceptance that this was the right thing to do shocked me to the core.
Not only the general public, but particularly as regards cars, it is beyond shocking that the manufacturers and even the RAC and AA and their equivalents in European countries make zero protests against the eco-terrorists in the European Commission and the respective national governments, not even Switzerland (never in the EU) and not even the UK despite the infamous “Brexit”.
>> unquestioning acceptance
” unquestioning acceptance ”
As others have written: Western governments were probably surprised at how meekly most populations accepted the Covid restrictions but – as someone else wrote – Covid was demonstrably killing people, whereas there is no evidence that humans are responsible for dangerous climate change.
Unfortunately, the power of “groupthink” can be strong, even to the extreme of the acceptance of totalitarian regimes.
“…Covid was demonstrably killing people”
As was flu.
And yet as of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases ( HCID ) in the UK.
https://onthewight.com/why-covid-19-was-downgraded-from-high-consequence-infectious-disease-hcid-classification-the-reasons-and-understanding-them/
So why was it bigged up to be the new Bubonic Plague?
” So why was it bigged up to be the new Bubonic Plague? ”
For the UK, it was probably a combination of the reports from Italy re: hospitals being overwhelmed, an incubation period with minimal or zero symptoms and the dismal lack of preparation in the UK despite the warnings arising from Exercise Cygnet and Exercise Cygnus.
Too late now Tim – The Great Reset aka UN Agenda 30is well under way and has the support of all the UK parliaments.
‘The Government wants to slash the number of car journeys and clamp down on parking spaces as part of its climate action plan’
The government considers the people to be subjects, not citizens. ‘Its climate plan.’ Not the people’s plan.
The government does not feel like it exists to serve the people; the people exist to serve the government. This is the totalitarian outlook. Should the people allow them to restrict travel, it will just be the BEGINNING.
The irony being that it is the people who pay for the state. The government slashing (sic) will constrain the economy, reducing the people’s ability to pay. Long term, it will end the government, as the people will no longer be able to afford it.
This is universal. UK is on the same path. Net Zero means no economy, hence, no state.
Who will monitor the government officials who are dreaming up all these plans for the hoi polloi. IIRC certain government officials were not exactly blameless in this regard.
Yet another bunch of politicians who HATE their own population
This is bound to negatively impact urban small businesses. So, look forward to suburban sprawl.
The first time an EV catches fire in the basement of a multistory parking lot there will be some soul searching.
Especially if there’s a line of them in a designated recharging area. I see some insurance companies are offering special insurance for EV’s and hybrids.
Here you go!
Electric Buses on Fire after Huge Explosion at London Transport Depot
They said those buses were soon back on the road and blamed the fire on human error. That’s all I have seen.
Of course they will Joel, nothing that won’t buff out!
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/9DF4/production/_124863404_busfire5.jpg.webp
No it won’t. It’s already happened:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-46290095
There’s a move in Parliament, a ten minute rule bill, for a study on the rules needed to manage large battery storage systems. I’ve suggested it should be extended to mobile batteries. Not confident anything will happen as it goes against the narrative.
I wonder if they’ve thought it through.
Those Paddies can get pretty volatile if they’re annoyed, and they tend to have pretty short fuses, that’s why they make such good warriors!
Greens have taken over in Ireland (3 % of the vote ?) but all our politicians in the main parties try to be best boy in class in Europe Union. What the people want comes second sorry LAST , which our own fault because we vote the same guys in . (Although we really don t have a selection to choose from ) we sold out long ago to the Germans believing them to be better overlords than our cousins across the Irish sea . While state funded NGOs (4.5 billion per annum) and the media dictate and cheer lead from the side line .
Happy Days !
How good is public transport when the bugg@rs go on strike?
The private car = freedom.
And that, Mickey, is precisely they’re trying to effectively ban them.
It must be dismal trying to rely on the railways in the UK at the moment, planned strike days for early January 2023:
”
Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 January 2023 – action by the RMT union.
Thursday 5 January 2023 – action by the ASLEF union.
Friday 6 and Saturday 7 January 2023 – action by the RMT union.
”
Don’t forget, services on the day before a strike day are disrupted as the network prepares for a strike day; services after a strike day are disrupted as the network recovers from the strike day, unless there’s another strike day of course.
It’s funny how the solution to the ‘ climate crisis ‘ ( sarc.) is more communism and extra taxation.
Yes that seems to be the only one on offer these days. Never mind “Take it at your Peril”.
These people clearly haven’t considered the impossibility of doing the weekly grocery shop by bus.
Or on a bicycle!
Not to mention EVERY other journey.
>>These people clearly haven’t considered the impossibility of doing the weekly grocery shop by bus.
Well, as I remember from when I lived in the UK, I used to shop almost daily, since it was a 30 minute walk to get anywhere with a decent supermarket! How people living in “the country” manage with (possibly) a daily bus service, I can’t guess!