Christmas shopping - two words that can put city parking into a tail-spin. Patrick Logue reports on the horrors that lie ahead for the motorised shopper
The scene is familiar. Rise early on Saturday morning, skip breakfast, load the little monsters into the back of the car and set off to Dublin for the Christmas shopping. As much a tradition as Santa Claus himself.
Make your way through the viscous traffic and arrive in the city centre "in plenty of time" to find that all the world, its grandmother, distant relatives and the really annoying couple you met last year on holidays have arrived before you. "Have these people camped out overnight?" you ask yourself.
Not a parking space in sight! So, duly have a row with the front seat passenger, ask the little monsters in the back to kindly stop squabbling and continue in a circular motion until you find a space that your eight-seater will fit into.
Many minutes and a few more domestics later, and you're ready to unload the family and head towards the ATM. Your stomach begins to rumble.
Moving a car from A to B and finding a place to park it are no fun at the best of times in this country, but at this time of the year it can be a mental health hazard. Moving house doesn't get a look in: this has to be the most stressful time in any person's life.
Heavy traffic and parking shortages are also headaches for businesses represented by the Dublin Chamber of Commerce (DCC). It's the busiest and most lucrative time of the year for many shop-owners, so anything that slows down and perturbs potential customers is not good news.
DCC spokesman Jerry Minihane says the Department of Transport needs to look at "immediately introducing" measures to help free up the city and provide more car parking spaces, especially over the festive season.
"Dublin's traffic problem has a serious impact on Christmas shopping and the main issue is parking," Minihane says. "But there are some short-term measures which should be looked at."
Civil service car parks, which lie empty most evenings, should be opened up for use by the general shopping public over Christmas, he says.
Minihane also believes that an integrated ticketing system should be brought in to allow ease of passage between the eccentricities of Dublin's transport system, making it a more attractive prospect than personal car use. Commentators have been calling for such a measure for some time now.
The annual onslaught on traffic in Dublin by the Garda - Operation Freeflow - "certainly does work" but he "finds it strange" that it's not extended to the rest of the year. Furthermore, the DCC would like to see a part-time dedicated traffic corps to enforce traffic laws at least over Christmas.
So, is there any need to travel to shops in the city centre at all? You might be forgiven for thinking that the availability of a number of large shopping centres outside most city centres - with thousands of free car parking spaces - would have made it possible to avoid arduous journeys through traffic altogether.
One of Dublin's newest and certainly Ireland's biggest out-of-town shopping facility, the Blanchardstown Centre, provides 6,500 free parking spaces and has plans to develop more. But even still, finding a space at certain times is problematic.
Patrick Fitzgerald, operations manager in Blanchardstown, admits demand for spaces is often not met. "You have a massive influx of shoppers at the weekends from Donegal to Limerick, Galway to the North," he says. This brings in an estimated 24,000 vehicles each day between Thursday and Sunday over Christmas.
"People are accustomed to it," Fitzgerald adds. "They will stay and drive around and eventually they will get a space . . . it's a fact of life."
The centre must stagger opening and closing times of retail units so that staff are not arriving or leaving at one time, he says. Over Christmas the centre employs about 4,000 people who get to and from work in about 2,000 cars.
The Liffey Valley shopping centre provides 3,500 spaces with overflow available nearby. Sean Farrell, operations manager of the Security Division at Liffey Valley, says there isn't a huge problem with traffic congestion and parking spaces. The facility has had talks with local gardaí who are stationed near the entrances at peak hours to help the traffic flow more freely.
Out-of-town centres such as these can never be the ultimate solution to a stress-free Christmas shopping trip. "They have impacted on city centre businesses but not as much as feared," says Jerry Minihane. "The city centre still booms at Christmas."
So, what's being done this year to help alleviate some of the traffic associated with the "boom"? The Dublin Transportation Office (DTO) begins the seventh annual Operation Freeflow next month.
DTO director John Henry says it's a "standard product" at this stage. He will be happy if it works as well as previous years.
A moratorium has been declared on road works, although some work will continue on large projects such as the Port Tunnel and the LUAS light rail.
The campaign is marked by highly-visible gardaí at busy junctions, a poster campaign, extra night buses and late-night DARTs to cope with Christmas revellers and shoppers.
Why is the campaign not extended to the rest of the year? Henry insists Dublin's traffic "does get daily attention. Operation Clearway runs all year round but we don't make a fuss about it." At Christmas time, he says, people might tend to do things they shouldn't."
The DTO, Henry adds, entered discussions last month to put two park-and-ride facilities in place over Christmas and hoped that at least one of them would have worked out by now. The city had no park-and-ride facility last year and remains without a permanent site, despite a park-and-ride policy being adopted in 1993.
In Cork a park-and-ride facility on Carrigrohane Road, two miles west of the city centre, is running daily over the Christmas period instead of just on Saturdays.
A Cork City Council spokesman said that the facility has been so successful that it was entering a public-private partnership to operate a second park-and-ride site, servicing the southern approaches to the city all year round.
A moratorium on road works has also been declared in Cork, with the exception of some work on the main drainage scheme. Gardaí are stationed in the city centre to help traffic flow on the approaches to the city's eight multi-storey car parks.
Galway will have no road openings over the Christmas shopping peak, but park-and-ride has not been considered. "Many of the suburbs are within walking distance of the city centre," a spokesman said.
However, in the New Year the city will see new pay-and-display parking as well as the beginning of clamping, in an effort to speed up the flow of city centre traffic.