Transport briefs: On free public transport for more kids, bike bunkers, and air pollution at school gates

Expanding free public transport for kids

There’s no timeline yet for the roll-out of free public transport for kids aged 5 to 8 years, a spokesperson for the National Transport Authority said Tuesday.

Budget 2025 included funding for this, said Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe in a speech on 1 October.

Transport Minister Eamon Ryan said in the Dáil in October that the extension would be introduced in 2025, “with a lead time involved to allow for the necessary technical changes”.

The NTA spokesperson said Tuesday that “the details about how the scheme will be delivered and managed are still being considered”, said the NTA spokesperson.

Currently, children under 5 years old can travel for free on the Luas. They can also travel for free on buses.

Jason Cullen, of the Dublin Commuters Coalition, said he doesn’t know exactly what it needed before it is put in place.

But there could be issues around whether kids would need travel cards as proof of age, or bureaucratic processes with funding transfers between departments and operators, he said.

“Those are two of the most likely culprits,” said Cullen.

Rolling out bike bunkers

Dublin City Council expects to award a contract by the end of March to an operator to roll-out bike bunkers across the city, according to an update to a Green Party Councillor Feljin Jose.

Under the existing scheme, cyclists in Dublin who are squeezed for space at home can apply for a spot in a secure hanger on a nearby street so they can park their bikes safely outside.

The scheme began life as a trial a decade ago, run by the council’s BETA Projects team.

As of September 2023, there were 12 bike bunkers in place across the city.

In September 2021, the council had announced a plan to tender for 350 bike bunkers. But that didn’t happen then.

In April 2023, councillors had criticised the council’s reluctance at the time to expand the scheme. Patricia Reidy, a senior engineer, said at a meeting that the scheme was being reviewed by consultants.

In the end, the consultants at Arup recommended that it be expanded using a contractor, rather than directly by Dublin City Council, says a September 2023 summary of the review.

The council’s Environment and Transport department doesn’t have the staff to progress or manage the scheme itself, said the summary.

In July last year, the council issued a call-out for companies interested in installing and maintaining about 300 bike bunkers for Dublin City Council.

That’d provide about 1,800 spaces for bikes. But the document also notes that “There are currently 3,654 spaces requested”.

Dirty air outside schools

Parents who drive their kids to school can worsen air pollution at school gates by more than 50 percent, monitoring by Dublin City Council suggests.

Breathing in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) spewed out by traffic can irritate airways and aggravate respiratory illnesses, such as asthma.

Last year, the council’s Air Quality Monitoring and Noise Control Unit and its Active Travel Section began to survey levels of NO2 outside 24 schools.

The aim, says a council report, is “to determine the contribution of traffic associated with school drop offs to air pollution levels in the vicinity of the schools”.

Air pollution outside schools drops massively outside of term time, suggests early results from monitoring carried out by Dublin City Council.

Levels of NO2 at six monitoring spots were between 15 and 57 percent lower for a period from mid-June to mid-July, versus February, when drop-offs were in full swing.

The council’s full results aren’t published yet.

But examples of the data at six points, published in a council report this month, show levels in February last year of between 27 micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m3) and 36μg/m3. And, levels in mid-June through mid-July of between 12 μg/m3 and 28 μg/m3.

Currently, the mean level of NO2 in a calendar year is, by law, not supposed to top 40g/m3.

Dublin has also committed to meeting the stricter World Health Organisation (WHO) air-quality guidelines, which set a mean level of 10g/m3 in a calendar year by 2030.

So it would have to reduce these levels at school gates significantly in the next five years to meet those WHO guidelines.