Ireland has a big infrastructure problem, that’s for sure. If you live anywhere between Limerick and Dublin, well good luck getting around without a car. It’s amazing how a country that’d be in an ideal position to have year round acceptable temps for cycling, barely any hills to speak of, and no extreme weather excuses either to keep up transit infra, is so regressive that they chose to go the route of 70s North America instead of becoming a second Netherlands or Denmark.
They actually have more problems. For example look at its population. It never recovered after the great famine. And they always whine about one thing or another. But they do anything except for the right thing to actually attract young people wanting to have children.
The whole country outside of four urban centres is an absolute nightmare if you don’t drive, and just not conductive to establishing a family anywhere.
The whole country outside of four urban centres is an absolute nightmare if you don’t drive, and just not conductive to establishing a family anywhere.
To be honest I don’t think this is a specific problem of Ireland, outside the urban centers the only option to move is to drive. There is not a critical mass for a public transportation system, expecially if you need to connect many small (< 20k people) urban centers.
A town with 1k-20k people is perfectly viable for a train stop and having an hourly train connect these smaller places with the next larger city.
I agree. But the problem is not to connect a small town with the larger one, is to connect the small town with the next small one where maybe there is the mall, or the other one where there is the school (higher level) or other services you need.
The point is that normally you have a relatively good connection to the big city of the area, but the connections between the small towns around it are patchy, that is what make you drive to the next small town instead of using the train or bus.