I will make a note of that issue and come back to it. I will explain the rationale behind these operations. They were developed at a time when cities and city regions had spare capacity and we had the luxury of being able to minimise delays to vehicles. It is an entirely different paradigm now and most cities in Europe are looking to sustainable transport. They are looking to public transport, bus and tram systems, as the long-term solution. It is a different question and we must formulate a different answer. We cannot do this simply by changing the entire logic of the system overnight. We must ensure that ultimately we will move people and goods in the most effective way. We are moving away from the detection of vehicles to the movement of people. This project will run for 18 months to two years and the DTO is investing heavily in it. The two agencies concerned will put a lot of resources into the project as part of the plan.
Critically, we cannot afford poor utilisation of kerb space in the city centre. This issue will manifest itself more prominently as we move into the period of Transport 21. The idea is that we will remove buses from the kerbside back to the garages located around the city centre, in some cases to the far side of the city. We will have cross-city routes rather than having buses simply come into the city from one side and stopping in the centre. We have made some progress in this regard with Dublin Bus. Some of the new Tallaght-based buses are parked in Ringsend, using the Pearse Street quality bus corridor as part of the process, but much more can be done.
During 2007 Dublin City Council undertook simulations, using a package hooked into SCATS to see what the outcome would be in various scenarios. It produced some interesting results. Bus lanes were delivered in 2007. There was also a ban on turning on Parliament Street, which made a big difference to outbound buses. We have made significant savings on the north quays and coming in from Malahide and on the Howth Road corridor. The new services from Dublin Bus have exploited these time savings.
A number of issues arose in 2007 that required us to take a second look at our plan. The plan, in general, is robust and was improved by the board of Dublin Bus at the end of 2006. The strategic policy committee of Dublin City Council noted the plan and the work we were going to do in 2007.
Simulations presented us with a number of problems. As Deputies will be aware, evening peak hour traffic in Dublin is on a knife edge. It does not take an awful lot to clog the city in terms of congestion. I will explain the reason for this. When we simulated, the problems showed up but there was an indication that we would have problems, even when traffic was removed from certain plugs. Traffic interfered with buses elsewhere in the network. We also had a problem with buses in terms of dwell time at the kerb which caused a problem for other buses.
Another issue that arose in 2007 concerned the contract for metro north in that BX would be included as part of the contract. The sequencing had BX follow metro north. With regard to the metro north PPP, towards the end of last year those behind the project came back with an initial proposal on how to construct the city centre stations. That was the biggest change to the plan in that the extent of the works was significantly greater than previously envisaged, to the point where they would interfere with the public transport routes within the initial plan.
With regard to evening peak hour traffic congestion, we are dealing with a bigger take and speaking about buses having to migrate from their preferred alignment. Therefore, we are talking about having even more traffic move away from the central area. In the evening peak hours, in particular, this would cause problems. The bottom line, in respect of issues which arose in 2007, is that the position as regards evening peak hour difficulties would become significantly worse for general traffic. At the end of 2007 we understood we would need a short-term action plan to provide transport alternatives into the city centre because if the position was intolerable, it would certainly get worse.
We presented to the DTO steering committee that we would undertake six tasks which we are in the middle of doing. This is a work in progress. First, we would identify the level of demand in terms of new trips into the city centre in respect of a target date of the end of 2010. We would use census information and forecast demand. We would also obtain information on key development areas such as the Docklands and other centres in Dublin city. We would identify the restrictions and the capacity losses arising from services such as metro north and the area it would remove from the network. There are also other issues such as the Maynooth line and the level crossing programme, which impact on our road network. There would perhaps be the impact of increased frequency of services on the DART, as traffic is affected at some level crossings.
We will look at new capacities for 2011. Under Transport 21, we will have significant new capacity. The M50 project will be finished and there will be additional rolling stock on the Luas, as well as new Luas lines. We will examine these issues spatially to see where these components will provide us with additional capacity and consider if that is where the demand will be. Having done this, we will have a very good idea, by time of day and location, where the deficit in transport will be. At that stage we can consider how to overcome it.
By way of background on the scale of the task involved, I have some data for 2002. The data for 2006 are not in pictorial form but have been analysed. As members can see, the south-east quadrant of the city centre is bounded by the River Liffey running from west to east, the canal and Clanbrassil Street. In 2002 it had an employment population of almost 115,000. Adding Ballsbridge, we had in the order of 160,000 working in the area. The population living there was quite low. The people in question came from the entire region and outside to work in this area. It is the single greatest employment zone in the country. In addition, there are trips for shopping, etc. but our focus is on the south-east quadrant which presents our key challenge. The number of people coming in by car is highlighted on a slide available to members. Blue dots represent car trips and the bigger the dot, the more trips recorded. They are located at the centroid of the zone, although we have information down to street level. It shows that there are many people involved, some coming from very close to the city centre.
