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Archive for category Transport

Local Elections

Jun 9

Posted by admin in Environment, Politics, Transport | No Comments

It’s great to see that Malcolm Noonan got back into office, keep up the good work Malcolm. It would have been a shame if the people of Kilkenny did not vote him back in. It’s good to see that he was the second highest in number of first preference votes. Malcolm as campaigned against the inner relief road that 25 of 26 County councillors voted in favour off, I think this take great courage to stand up for what he believes in.

Had the plan for this road gone through the city of Kilkenny would have being effectively cut in two. As Malcolm pointed out in his brief to “An Bord Pleanala” there is more effective ways to reduce traffic.

  • Public transport.
  • Encouraging the use of bicycles and the provisioning of cycle lanes.
  • Park and ride facilities to reduce cars that come into the town.

Also with the down turn in the economy we should be trying to reduce the amount  project which consume money that could be better spend elsewhere. I think Investing in the future is what we need, and reducing our reliance cars, if only for town trips, would be a start.

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Bio Fuel

Sep 22

Posted by admin in Transport, biofuel | No Comments

It seems that with the High price of oil people are beginning to turn to Biofuel as a way to beat the pump price of oil. This also has its share of problems. The more people use, say Rapeseed oil instead of diesel the harder it is to buy it. It seems that the market for Rapeseed has gone through the Roof, where as even a few months ago farmers were still wondering what to do with all the Oil they produced.

A friend of mine as been running his van on rapeseed for the last 2 years. He is now finding it harder and harder to get rapeseed as a lot of local farmers have run out. It seems that supply cannot keep up with demand and its going to get to a stage that it might only be a few cents cheaper than Diesel….

According to an article in the Irish Times we use “183,000 barrels of oil per day”

I wonder how much land it would take to generate 183,000 barrels of oil a day, so that our economy can keep on ticking.

Considering that “One acre of rapeseed yields 115 gallons of biodiesel” That equivalent to 1591 acres, roughly 6 square kilometers. It take between 6-7 months to grow, (plant in march and harvest in September/ September to march). It is a very bad idea to have a mono crop so the land would have to grow other crops for the rest of the year. So we use on average 66,795,000 Barrels of oil a year. (70% for transport).

So to supply all the Biodiesel for Ireland for one year, if we could! it would take 2350 Km/2. But because we can only grow the crop in rotation and some time the land would have to be left idle(good farming practice, IANAF). so 3 to 4 times this amount of land would have to be set aside. So taking maybe 3×2350km/2 = 7051km/2 which isn’t a small patch of land by a long shot, Cork County is 7457km/2 in size. So providing Irelands need in Oil for one Year using Biofuel is huge undertaking and I don’t think that it is even possible to do.

What’s left for Ireland to do? Reduction would be a start! Increase the use of public transport, that is alot easier to say than to implement. I think for the foreseeable future Ireland will depend on Oil. Unless there is a radical shift in Goverment policy!

Transport Ireland

Jun 26

Posted by admin in Transport | No Comments

I did a comparison for 4 people travelling on public transport via the train/bus and then compared it to a rented car.

The Train:

Dublin -> Galway €24

Galway ->Dublin -> Cork €53.50

Cork -> Limerick Junction -> Waterford €31

*There is no direct connection from Galway to cork.

Cost: €108

Let do the same journey by bus.

Dublin -> Galway €13.50

Galway -> Cork €15.30

Cork -> Waterford € 15.50

Cost: €44.30

Now by Car (Rented).

A Opel astra cost €167 (5 days)

As the cost of travel is depending on distance.

Dublin -> Galway 215~ Km (12 litres)

Galway – Cork 209~ km (12 litres)

Cork -> Waterford 109~ km (6 litres)

Add another 20 litres for good measure ( driving around time)

* The Car has a fuel consumption of 6 litres per 100km

Total cost for 50 Litres would be $66 Euro at €1.32 litre.

Cost: €233

So my simple comparison looks like this.

4 people travelling by train: €424

4 people travelling by bus: €177

4 people travelling by car: €233

There is a lot of things that I am not taking into account.I made no attempt to compare like for like just the cost. I did not for instance compare comfort/ convience /time etc. I just looked at cost for 4 people make a simple tour around Ireland. I would think that the vast majority of people in Ireland know what our public transport is like and I don’t want to be seen taking a pot shot at public transport.I’m sure there is a more indepth report on this somewhere, and would love to see if there is a Government report on it.

Conclusions: It’s cheaper to get the bus, the car comes in second,and last is the train.