The Department of Infrastructure is to blame for Belfast’s traffic problems

It’s not been a good few weeks for Belfast visitors and commuters. Not only are key arterial routes more packed than ever with traffic jams during most of the day, but the bus and train systems have been up the swannie too, especially on Thursday and Friday last week. 

This issue hasn’t escaped the notice of local politicians. In the assembly, during Infrastructure questions on October 1,  the Minister, John O’Dowd, seemed to suggest that Belfast representatives Philip Brett and David Brooks should stop whining as other parts of the country would be glad to get the same kind of spend:

Your rural colleagues are looking on in envy at Belfast’s receipt of £3·2 million for road improvement and a £340 million bus and rail station. Your rural colleagues are asking, “What are you complaining about?”. 

Last week, the Minister urged people to take public transport : 

If you are in your car, ask yourself the question: ‘Can you use public transport?’ [..] I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised if you board one of the trains, or one of the buses..

Later in the same week, bus and train users were certainly surprised, but not pleasantly – the bus network ground to a halt with Translink warning of 40 minute delays. Delays and cancellations continued on Friday.

This week, the topic came up again. Responding to South Belfast MLA Matthew O’Toole, O’Dowd noted :

I remind Members that I provided them with a written ministerial statement as early as, I think, April or May, which outlined the challenges that Belfast would face as a result of the works that would have to be carried out as part of the public realm works for Belfast Grand Central Station. Members have been briefed on this since that time.

I cannot locate this statement as it does not seem to be present in the list published by the assembly. I’ve asked the assembly if they can locate it, and will update this article when they respond. I certainly can’t recall any warnings about disruption in the press.

This reaction from the Department and the Minister is disappointing. If you’re a regular bus user in the city centre, you’ll know that peak time delays and cancellations are an unsurprising feature of the bus timetable, and particularly bad days like this have been happening on and off for some time. The only difference is that they are becoming more frequent. As such, it looks like an attempt is being made to hide the blame for these problems behind the construction of a major public transport hub that has been in planning for ten years and under construction for the past five. 

Instead, the reality is that the Department, and those who have led it, have completely failed to develop policy and adequately plan for the evolving traffic situation in and surrounding Belfast in any meaningful way since the Belfast On the Move project of 2012.

Anyone can be an expert after the fact, but I’ve written here before that one of the major causes of congestion and underperforming public transport in Belfast is the decision to maintain the closure of the bus-only Castle Street and Royal Avenue arterial route to northbound bus traffic. I know about this problem because it affects me every time I use the bus to go to work. By doing this, they’ve directed several of the city’s most heavily-used bus services along the congested Chichester Street, Victoria Street, High Street and North Street route. Only Chichester Street, and (recently) a section of North Street, have bus lanes, so this ends up slowing down all the other traffic, including bus traffic headed to the east of the city. 

This decision has directly led to congestion, which in turn directly leads to cancellations, in turn driving the perception that the bus system is not fit for purpose. The network cannot work if the road network mitigates against the efficient progress of buses along their routes.

This is not just my opinion – the experts who published the report on the consultation into the North-South Glider route noted (see page 35) :

Recent experience of dealing with the impacts of the Primark fire has shown that without providing direct access through the city centre for public transport, patronage levels markedly drop off. By providing direct access, this will ensure the greatest chance to drive patronage levels which in turn will support economic activity.

There are other modest improvements that could be made easily. Extending the bus lane network through the city would also help. The city is covered in on-street car parking using up road space that could be allocated to public transport routes or cycleways. I don’t understand why Donegall Place, right in front of city hall and the main shopping district, needs parking spaces on both sides of the road. More than that, I don’t see why road traffic needs to cut through Castle Junction at all. 

Compounding these longer term planning deficiencies is the appearance of a lack of joined-up operational management. The Sydenham Bypass road surface wasn’t in the best shape but delaying its refurbishment for another year wouldn’t have ended the world. I also don’t understand why the one-year closure of the bridge at Durham Street was so poorly telegraphed, or why it is taking so long. Not being a civil engineer I can readily accept there are things I don’t understand, but I am surprised that the timescale for a bridge demolition is not measured in weeks or months. Are they taking it apart by hand ? In any case, it seems that nobody anticipated that doing both of these things in parallel might cause more disruption than reorganising things to do them sequentially.

Finally, alongside the lack of planning and modelling, we have fare increases. Politicians keep saying that the public should not pay more for inadequate services, but Translink have raised fares twice in the past 12 months – in October 2023, and again last May – with barely any discernible protest in the Assembly chamber. Not only do these increases serve to disincentivise would-be switchers from the private car, they hurt most those who are being punished most by inflationary increases elsewhere.

The same Department which is content to pass costs onto the users of bus services operates a markedly different approach to costs which might land on motorists, generally choosing to absorb them. Parking costs and fines for traffic violations rarely seem to increase with inflation, and the price of an MOT – despite the MOT system being in a long-running state of collapse – has been frozen since the mid-2000s, with the exception of a recent below-inflation increase which only happened because the Secretary of State had the power to force it through during the latest hiatus in devolution. Nobody at Stormont seems to be considering congestion charging or other levies on car usage, despite such revenue raising being prevalent elsewhere.

Right now, A metro day pass on Translink’s app now costs £4.00 and it takes 45 minutes to get to work. I can drive into the city in about 20 minutes and park all day in a multi storey on the edge of the city centre for £4.95 a day. This is emblematic of a policy footing at the Department of Infrastructure and the Executive which prioritises motorists over public transport users.

I appreciate that the Minister has numerous challenges to deal with while getting his feet under the table at the department, including managing a difficult budget and a legacy of policy deficit on the part of successive Ministers. But it’s not good enough to blame people for not using public transport when the Department operates a car-first policy. Even more bizarre is his apparent suggestion that allowing taxis into bus lanes will help in a situation where bus services are already broken (this is not the first time this has been tried, and circumstantial evidence suggests a policy to protect the interests of class A private hire taxi companies).

The next time the Minister takes to his feet in the Assembly, I’m hoping that he announces a comprehensive review of the bus network within the city centre and proposes an action plan to enhance bus prioritisation and discourage commuting into the city by car. I’d like to see the issue of Translink’s fare structure addressed, with a view to lowering fares and simplifying fare structures. For the political class more generally, I’d really like to see people get behind policy change and tough decisions that can actually address congestion, public transport usage and climate change, not simply paying lip service to those issues. If we can get those modest improvements, maybe there’s a chance that we can actually fix this.