Forecasting the impact of the Planning, Land Use and Transport Outlook (PLUTO) Project – a 2040 Ireland case study

Abstract

In February 2018 the Irish Government unveiled a new National Planning Framework (NPF), which underpinned ‘Project Ireland 2040’ - a national development and capital investment plan to the year 2040. The chief aim of which is to mandate and direct planning and infrastructure investment decision making over coming two decades in order to cater for projected population growth of one million people in a balanced and sustainable manner. In order to support this vision, the National Development Plan (NDP) was published alongside the NPF and sets out a €116bn public capital investment programme to cover the first decade of the NPF to 2027. Planning Land Use and Transport Outlook 2040 (PLUTO) is the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport’s (DTTAS) response to the new NPF and NDP. The objective of PLUTO is to update the existing framework for transport investment published in 2015 to ensure alignment with Project Ireland 2040. This paper presents the transportation modelling and analysis of the schemes included in the NPF and NDP scenarios for Dublin City, which were conducted by the National Transport Authority (NTA) as part of the PLUTO project. The NTA’s modelling capabilities were utilised to highlight the transport ‘pressure zones’ in the existing Dublin City road network, in addition to identifying where new pressures, in terms of volume capacity and delay, may emerge as a result of population growth and consequential travel demand expected by 2040. This paper presents the results of this study produced from the NTA Regional Modelling System as a means of predicting and highlighting areas showing signs of stress in the urban road network in 2040, in addition to assessing the impact of introducing road, public transport and cycling schemes proposed under the NDP. This study identifies areas in the network that may require attention and warrant further investment in the next two decades in order to alleviate the forecasted pressure areas in the future road network.