Five Degrees of Change: NTA chief Anne Graham

If Anne Graham had to map a route to a sustainable transport system, she wouldn’t start from here.

As the head of the National Transport Authority (NTA) she has to manage a host of legacy issues.

From historical underinvestment in public transport, to a planning policy that has allowed urban sprawl and the proliferation of one-off rural housing, there are systemic issues that need to be addressed.

“Following the financial crash, there’s definitely been a period of at least 10 years where we’ve lost investment in public transport that we’re now trying to rapidly catch up on,” Graham said during an interview on Five Degrees of Change, the Business Post’s energy and environment podcast, sponsored by PwC.

Historical model

With money finally flowing into a range of major public transport projects, Graham and her team are challenged by a historical model of development that has left housing spread out across Ireland, and not easily serviced by public transport.

“We can only do so much on the public transport system, and even with all the investment that we want to do through our rural ‘Connecting Ireland’ plan, there would still be about 25 per cent of the population in rural Ireland that won’t be served directly by a frequent bus,” she said.

As planning guidelines are updated to encourage more “compact development”, where new housing is built close to urban centres or existing villages, does Graham think one-off rural housing should be a thing of the past?

“For true compact development, it would have to be limited. And I suppose it’s not about trying to reduce the development in rural Ireland, I think it’s more about developing around rural villages. Then it’s much easier to serve not only public transport, but other services as well,” she said.

Graham’s primary job is to deliver major public transport infrastructure projects in the coming decade.

‘It’s widely acknowledged that one of the areas where the country has struggled across all our infrastructure has been through the planning system’

From Bus Connects, to Metro Link, to the expansion of the Dart network, there is no shortage of big infrastructure projects coming down the line, if they can get timely approval.

“It’s widely acknowledged that one of the areas where the country has struggled across all our infrastructure has been through the planning system,” Graham said.

“It’s obviously frustrating if you can’t get your project through the planning system. But I’m not going to play a blame game, because we know there was under resourcing of the planning system that’s now being addressed.”

Graham welcomed the passage of two out of twelve Bus Connects corridors through the planning system, with approval now in place for the Clongriffin and Liffey Valley routes.

“It does involve in some cases the compulsory purchase of property, mostly garden space... For the first time, we looked at providing that infrastructure not just by trying to provide it within the boundaries of the existing road infrastructure, but with minimum impact on private property, how could we make the bus priority much better. It’s a very significant infrastructure project,” Graham said.

Decade of delay

After a decade of delay, Graham said the NTA would now be entering a decade of action. While that will be disruptive at times, it will also deliver a completely new public and active transport paradigm.

“Anyone that lives in Dublin at the moment sees what’s been delivered along the Clontarf corridor. That’s the quality of what we want to deliver in other parts of the city… But there are a few eggs to be broken before we get to that position,” she said.

Despite a new law reforming the planning system currently making its way through the Oireachtas, Graham said she was keen to ensure people’s right to challenge infrastructure developments was not hindered.

“The country does allow for judicial reviews. I think it’s important that we don’t try and close that down hugely…If there are concerns about how we’re approaching a particular infrastructure project, we would not like to see that constrained in any way.”

Central to the delivery of the NTA’s ambitious transport infrastructure plans is funding. Eamon Ryan, the minister for transport, has warned the government that there is a €14 billion hole in the transport capital budget out to 2030 because of construction inflation, and is currently negotiating with Paschal Donohoe, the minister for public expenditure, for more money to be allocated to his department.

“Nobody could have foreseen the level of construction inflation that hit the country. That’s definitely had an impact. The return for that investment is a lot lower,” Graham said.

“If the funding gap is not met, it just might mean that it might take a little bit longer to deliver those projects, rather than necessarily pausing them.”

Capital funding

As well as increasing capital funding, Graham said the funding model for day to day spending by the NTA needed an overhaul, from an annual budgetary cycle, to a multi-annual budget.

“What is challenging for us is not knowing what funding we have from year to year, in terms of planning for service delivery,” she said.

“If we had, even a five year horizon of what might be possible, even a baseline figure of what an increase might be in terms of our operational funding, that would certainly ease our planning, and be a much more effective way of planning for service delivery.”

As well as building new infrastructure, the NTA is challenged with decarbonising exiting infrastructure. One of the chief projects on that front is the electrification of the Dublin Bus fleet.

“We’re doing it on a replacement basis, rather than just fully changing out the fleet,” she said.

“We will continue that up until 2032, when all our urban bus fleet is scheduled to be zero emission… The challenge is on our inter-urban services, which are the longer distance services where most of the carbon emissions actually probably occur.”

The NTA also has a central role in developing a controversial strategy to reduce car use in urban centres.

It has modelled measures such as car-free urban centres, congestion charging, parking constraints, higher parking charges, improved public transport and reducing public transport fares.

Options

While a list of these types of options will be published shortly by the government as part of a high level strategy reducing car use, the NTA are steaming ahead with their own Dublin strategy, which may become a reality much quicker than many expect.

“We are modelling all the different aspects, whether it’s parking charges, congestion charging, tolling etc. So it is about what is going to be required in order to meet the demand reduction side of the equation to ensure that we reduce our carbon emissions,” Graham said.

“It will be next year before that Greater Dublin Area strategy will be published,” she said.

Coupled with these disincentives will be a new plan to give people somewhere to leave their cars outside of the cities, if they have to drive.

To that end, there are 13 proposed new park and ride facilities across six transport corridors, linking thousands of parking spaces to bus, train and Luas routes.

“Ahead of putting these in place, we need to ensure that the onward journey is very short and effective and efficient. We almost need some of the bus priority measures through Bus Connects in place to ensure that the journey time is not longer than it would have been if you were driving in directly yourself. That is how you encourage people to use the park and ride.”

Finally, Graham pointed out that the user experience on public transport would improve in the year’s ahead, with people being able to use their phone or bank cards to pay fares.

“Because of the ticketing system on most of our old buses isn’t compatible, we’re not going to be able to offer that service until late 2025 at the earliest. So in the meantime, on our newer rural transport services, where we have much more modern ticketing equipment, we are happily testing card payments already. So actually rural Ireland will get the benefits of that technology a lot earlier than our cities, which is a nice change,” she said.