By Dean Phelan, Madeleine Gan, Rachel McArdle, Niamh Moore-Cherry, UCD; Keyvan Hosseini and Brian Caulfield, TCD
In order to meet our climate objectives, reduce congestion, improve air quality and well-being, we have to look at how we use our transport networks in our cities, towns and villages. Much of the attention of researchers is focused upon our large cities. This is primarily due to the large impacts these cities have upon many people and the quantum of congestion and emissions produced.
But two thirds of our population in Ireland live in towns with populations of less than 10,000 people or in villages and rural areas across the country. Internationally much research has been conducted on rural transport and the challenges associated with decarbonising transport in these areas. The same attention has not been paid to decarbonising transport in small towns, especially in Irish contexts. Yet, given Ireland's demographics, providing sustainable and low carbon mobility for citizens living in these areas should be considered a priority. This will, however, prove to be difficult.
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From RTÉ News in 2021, report by National Transport Authority's plan to boost Irish rural bus services by 25%
We have seen much recent success in providing rural bus services under the National Transport Authority's Connecting Ireland Programme. In 2023, the scheme launched 65 new or enhanced bus services in 190 towns, villages and rural areas across the country. This success is very impressive, and one would struggle to find comparable international example. In fact, in 2023 rural bus passenger numbers increased by 36% on the previous year.
While this success is welcome, more needs to be done on how we understand how people move outside of our large cities. This is the main objective of the CONUNDRUM project which brings together academics from different backgrounds to reimagine how we tackle transport problems. The project is using Enniscorthy in Co Wexford as its testbed for challenging how we design solutions to transport issues. Enniscorthy has a population of just over 12,000 people and it's typical of many similar towns across the country.
Our approach centres on working with residents of Enniscorthy to identify the problems facing people in relation to transportation and mobility, and to identify possible solutions that can reduce carbon emissions, improve community wellbeing and benefit the town economically. This co-creation approach has its intellectual origins in participatory action research, which advocates for collaborative approaches to research that are explicitly orientated towards social change.
We believe that impactful and locally appropriate solutions to mobility and transportation challenges can only be identified by working with local communities who experience the problems first-hand. By including local communities in the research process and taking their local expertise seriously, there is an opportunity to co-create place-based transport strategies that can better inform local authorities in their decision-making and planning duties.
This approach to transportation in small Irish towns like Enniscorthy aims to help policymakers make decisions that have the widest social, economic and environmental benefits. By better understanding the specificities of the challenges faced in Irish towns by residents, local authorities will be better able to respond to them by implementing solutions that are locally relevant and that empower communities to adopt more sustainable modes of mobility. This is a key step in moving towards sustainable and inclusive transportation futures for small Irish towns.
We have engaged with 56 stakeholders to date via interviews, focus groups, community mapping events and walkthroughs of the town with residents with mobility impairments. We have talked to community groups and civil society organisations; residents from different areas of the town; staff and elected representatives from Wexford County Council; representatives from both regional and central governmental departments; private and public transport providers; local business owners; transport experts from relevant international case studies; and academic experts.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's News at One, record numbers of people took public transport in 2023
We have aimed to include as diverse a range of stakeholders as possible as we believe that cross-sectoral collaborative action offers a potentially impactful avenue for achieving shared goals. To that end, we have participated in the Enniscorthy Community Inter-Agency Team since its inception earlier this year. This is a diverse collective of Enniscorthy-based groups led by Wexford County Council with the goal of fostering and encouraging collaborative action in relation to key challenges facing the town, including mobility and transportation.
In addition to all of this, our team has also mapped the policy landscape of sustainable and shared transportation in Irish towns through analysing relevant policy from EU, national, regional and local levels. We have undertaken in-depth quantitative analysis of Enniscorthy's CSO data, creating detailed demographic and business profiles and maps of the town to better understand its social and economic dimensions.
When transforming transportation for Irish towns, we believe that accessibility for marginalised communities and the economic development of towns should be viewed as of equal importance to decarbonisation, if measures are to be impactful. Based on our findings, our team will publish the Enniscorthy Community Development Strategy later this year, with stakeholders and residents of Enniscorthy invited to the launch. Overall, the team will deliver a bottom up actionable plan to support plot a path to increase the sustainability of transport in Enniscorthy.
The CONUNDRUM project is part of the SFI Challenges Program and is in partnership with the TASC think-tank for action on social change.
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Dr Dean Phelan is a Research Fellow in the UCD School of Geography. Madeleine Gan is a research intern in UCD. Dr Rachel McArdle is a Research Fellow in the UCD School of Geography. Dr Keyvan Hosseini is a Research Fellow in the Department of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering at TCD. Prof Brian Caulfield is Professor in Transportation in TCD. Prof Niamh Moore-Cherry is Dean of Social Sciences and College Principal in the UCD College of Social Sciences and Law and Full Professor in the UCD School of Geography.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
