An award we didn’t want to win.
If only the Luas actually was free, am I right?
While many tourists and locals alike are probably quite confused by the whole “Luas is free” mantra, it was likely born out of the knowledge that we as a city have some of the worst public transport around.
We’ve always known there’s something suss about buses frequently disappearing off schedules, or the fact we don’t have a direct link to and from the airport, or just how expensive it is to travel around the city.
Well, it’s official. Greenpeace has awarded Dublin the worst EU city out of 30 for public transport. Not just in the bottom 10. The literal worst.
Dublin ranks the worst EU city for public transport
Dublin scored a sad 36 out of 100 on the Greenpeace scale, based on affordability and how easy it is to purchase tickets.
Given that we cannot tap our bank cards to pay for public transport in Dublin, amongst other issues with our various travel links, this unfortunately comes as no surprise to us.
The reasons Greenpeace gave for their ranking were plentiful.
“Dublin is the only city analysed which does not have a fixed-price long-term ticket for all means of transport and available for all passengers, unlike all other cities. A monthly ticket is only available for employees, when the employer is joining the “tax saver programme”. All other passengers can only buy monthly subscriptions for buses, trams and trains in Dublin separately. However, Dublin has an electronic ticketing system. For the last few months weekly payments have been capped at €32. Greenpeace has taken this price as the basis for the ranking, in the absence of a monthly ticket. Nevertheless, the regular price is the second-highest out of all cities analysed, with €3.16 per day after the price level adjustment.”
Three EU cities had a score of 100, and these were Tallinn in Estonia, Luxembourg in Luxembourg, and Valletta in Malta. These were closely followed by Prague in the Czech Republic (98) and Bratislava in Slovakia (91).
Joining Dublin at the bottom of the list were cities such as London in the UK (40), Amsterdam in the Netherlands (48) and Paris in France (56).
While as a country Ireland ranked 13th, that was with a score of 21/100, so it’s really not saying much.
Header image via Shutterstock
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