Why your journey counts

Your Journey Counts. By choosing to walk, cycle or take public transport, you are part of the national effort to reduce transport emissions by 50% by 2030.

About transport emissions

• in 2022, 19.1% of Irelands greenhouse gas emissions came from the transport sector
• road transport accounts for almost 95% of all transport emissions
• passenger cars are responsible for around 50% of all road transport emissions

Between 1990 and 2022, the transport sector shows the greatest overall increase in Greenhouse Gas emissions of all sectors, more than doubling in that time.

(Source: EPA)

Monitoring & Assessment: Climate Change: Air Emissions Publications

Monitoring & Assessment: Climate Change: Transport

By choosing to take the bus, walk or ride your bike instead of driving, you’re part of the national effort to reduce transport-related emissions by 50% by 2030.

Our Climate Action Plan 2023 commitments include:

• reduce the total distance driven across all car journeys by 20%
• walking, cycling and public transport to account for almost 50% of our journeys
• nearly 1 in 3 private cars will be an Electric Vehicle
• increase walking and cycling networks
• 70% of people in rural Ireland will have buses that provide at least 3 trips to the nearby town daily by 2030

Climate benefits

Different transport modes (such as car, bus, train) emit different amounts of CO2 emissions for every kilometre travelled per passenger (PKM). Did you know that buses and trains emit lower carbon emissions per passenger kilometre than cars and can carry more people per trip, thereby saving a large count of CO2?

For example:

• a typical train from Cork to Dublin replaces 90 cars on Irish roads and saves 1.6 tonnes of CO2 for every journey
• a typical double decker bus in Dublin replaces 16 cars from Irish roads

By walking and cycling where possible, you can save even more carbon emissions.

For example:

• if you switch a four-kilometre typical car school trip with cycling a bike to school you could save 200kg of CO2 each year
• if we replaced all car trips less than 4km with cycling trips, we could cut national emissions from passenger transport by 9%
• if we replace all car trips of less than 6km with cycling trips, we could cut national emissions from passenger transport by 21%

The above insights have been distilled from a UCC study published in 2022 which calculated the CO2 emissions from Irish passenger transport according to trip distance, mode and purpose (UCC MarEI).

Health and well-being benefits

Regular physical activity, such as walking, cycling, wheeling, doing sports or active recreation, provide significant benefits for health.

By becoming more active throughout the day in relatively simple ways, people can easily achieve the recommended activity levels.

Walking or cycling for transport or leisure is a form of physical activity that can easily be incorporated into the daily activities for many people. In addition, travelling more sustainably also enables us to reorientate communities across the country so that they become more people focused, liveable places.

Many studies have specifically investigated the impacts of walking and cycling. Among these, it was shown that:

• walking for 30 minutes or cycling for 20 minutes on most days reduces mortality risk by at least 10%
• active commuting is associated with about a 10% decrease in risk for cardiovascular disease and a 30% decrease in type 2 diabetes risk
• cancer-related mortality is 30% lower among bike commuters

Air quality

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Environment Agency (EEA) both recognise air pollution as the largest environmental health risk in Europe and a major cause of premature death and disease.

It has been shown to have the comparable, if not greater, impacts on human health as a bad diet or smoking.

Rising traffic levels mean that where there are high levels of congestion, or where it is difficult for transport related air pollutants to disperse (such as in heavily built-up city streets), it is becoming increasingly challenging to maintain high standards of air quality for people nearby.

Reducing car traffic reduces traffic congestion, allowing people to travel more efficiently and for more predictable, reliable, and efficient public transport services.

The Walking and Cycling Index 2023 revealed that every day those who walk and cycle take 530,000 cars off the road every day in the Dublin Metropolitan area. If these cars were all in a traffic jam, it would tail back 2,500km, which is the equivalent to over 9 times the distance from Dublin City to Cork City.

The Census Population of 2022 found that:

• the numbers of people choosing to walk or cycle to work, school or college has increased between 2016 and 2022
• in 2022, there were 88% more primary school children commuting by bicycle than in 2016
• the number of students aged 13 to 18 cycling to school was up to 79%

Recent research carried out by Red C and commissioned by the Department of Transport has revealed some interesting insights into public attitudes towards transport. The findings are available in the document below.

The National Transport Authority announced that there wererecord number of public transport journeys.

More than 308 million passenger journeys were provided by Public Service Obligation (PSO) services last year. This was the first year ever that passenger numbers on PSO services exceeded 300 million.

• The figures represent an overall 24% increase in passenger numbers during 2023 when compared with the previous year, and a 5% increase above the previous record year in 2019.

• An estimated 45.5 million passenger journeys were made by rail during the past twelve months, up from 35.8 million in 2022.

Over 60 new and enhanced services were launched in towns and villages across Ireland, under the Connecting Ireland Rural Mobility Plan last year. TFI Local Link regular bus services carried 3.2 million passengers in 2023, a 78% increase on the 1.8 million passengers in 2022.