Metrolink – Il tempo per il dibattito è finito – The Irish Times
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2025/03/22/metrolink-the-time-for-debate-is-over/
di WickerMan111
Metrolink – Il tempo per il dibattito è finito – The Irish Times
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2025/03/22/metrolink-the-time-for-debate-is-over/
di WickerMan111
3 commenti
I dislike Elon Musk as much as the next man, but he did come up with a basic concept to understand when you were getting ripped off, when it was time to take on a building something yourself. He calls it the idiot index.
The “Idiot Index” refers specifically to the ratio of the cost of a finished product to the cost of its raw materials. So, if something costs $1,000 to make, but the raw materials are only worth $10, the Idiot Index is 100x. Musk uses this as a way to identify how much inefficiency, unnecessary complexity, or poor design has crept into the manufacturing process. A high Idiot Index suggests that the company is “being an idiot” in how it converts raw materials into a final product, likely through bad processes, over-engineering, or failing to question assumptions.
Every large infrastructure project the state has taken on over the last decade has a huge idiot index.
The stateneeds a construction agency. Not the OPW. A proper company. The projected €23 billion has huge margins for profit and risk. The state should absorb the risk and the profit to provide tax payers with something that isn’t a ripoff.
The problem is the glacial pace of our planning system, and the amount of uncertainty and back and forth it generates. We desperately need offshore wind too, but again most of those projects will be tied up in planning for years. Same with housing.
We also apparently lack enough “planners” for all the “planning”. We should take a cue from the new labour government in the UK and slash the amount of planning required for critical projects.
Here’s a radical idea, how about a short rail link from Shannon to Sixmilebridge, up-grade the rail link from Limerick to Galway, like actually connect to Galway city and we’d have some chance of rebalancing the economic development in this country. Instead we pour everything into an already congested eastern region with pollution, water shortages, soaring rents and house prices all a problem in Dublin.
Even with a Luas, Dart, trains, tonnes of busses, taxis and now a plan for Metro, Dublin is at capacity and quality of life is worsening. All the new jobs, tourism, investment, opportunity that is promised, well where is everyone going to live? I think we should be thinking outside the capital as well and distributing activity in regions all across the country, not pulling everything toward one city.