Over seven years after Dublin’s BusConnects plan was officially announced, it is still “shuffling along at a ridiculously slow pace”.

The plan was announced by then Transport Minister Shane Ross in May 2017, with the aim of increasing bus use in the city by 50%.

The network of ‘next generation bus corridors’ was originally due to be finished by 2027; however, the Government has now set a new end date of 2030.

The cost of the project, initially estimated at around €1 billion, is now expected to hit between €2.6bn and €3.37bn by 2030.

'Can't do attitude'

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, presenter Ciara Kelly rejected claims the project has been slowed down by infrastructure delays and difficulties in hiring drivers.

“I don't buy that at all,” she said. “Yes OK, I accept that may be a factor – but literally, we are just so incredibly slow at doing anything.”

“We are crippled with objections; we are crippled with proceduralism. We just have a can't-do attitude that stymies us.

“No one sweeps in in Ireland and just achieves and does something.

“Every tree in Dublin had to have a little yellow ribbon and everything on it, do you remember that?

“People's two feet of their front garden that they were going to lose - and they were going to be paid thousands for it - became like a tragedy.

“It's unbelievable how bad we are at achieving change, even when we generally accept that that change is important, good for us and necessary.”

Objections

Fellow presenter Shane Coleman said BusConnects designer Jarrett Walker described the Dublin project as “the most politically charged he’d ever been involved with”.

“We don't, in Ireland, have an emphasis on the public good over private interests,” said Shane.

“I mean, there are countless examples of it over the years.

“Like do you remember taxi deregulation? Look at how long that took when people were literally queuing for hours [for a taxi].

“A small number of drivers decided, no we don’t want this and it actually took the courts and to be fair, Mary Harney, to actually put the foot down on it.

“Then there was the Shannon stopover – remember we all used to have to land at Shannon because again, a small interest group said that we should.

“There are objections to every housing development that ever was – even the modest, even the good ones, there are objections from politicians.

“We just don't prioritize the public good.”

He noted that Irish people lodged 72,000 submissions during the various stages of public consultation on BusConnects.

'Hilarious'

“It's actually hilarious,” said Ciara. “Like we are are ridiculous. We are paralysed by our own analysis of everything and our overthinking of things.

“It is ridiculous and I'm sorry if your garden is the garden that's affected but you know what? It's parochialism.

“It's a small island mentality and an inability to think big and maybe it's even a post-colonial thing, I don't know.”

BusConnects aims to revamp Dublin’s bus system in Dublin by redesigning the network and rolling out 230km of dedicated bus lanes.

So far three new ‘spine’ routes, three ‘orbital routes and several new local routes have been rolled out.

BusConnects systems are also planned for Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford.