PortTunnel/the first four months:Commuters are a glum lot, and with good reason. A taxi driver recounted recently that the M50 in Dublin was brought to a virtual standstill (again) - this time by a couch parked on the hard shoulder.
Yes, some wise guy decided to dispose of his old three-piece by the side of the road, instead of bringing it to his local centre for recycling.
It was enough for the rubberneckers to bring everything down to third gear to take a gawk at the unusual spectacle, resulting in chaos for the rest of us trying to get from A to B.
It doesn't take much for Dublin's traffic to reach crisis level. Whether it's a stray sofa, loose horses near Finglas, a llama lost from a circus in Blanchardstown or a two-car shunt on Dorset Street, things can get pretty messy, pretty quickly.
Last Wednesday will go down in the annals of congestion history as one of the worst days.
The failure of a height detector at the southern end of the port tunnel at 6.10am resulted in a red light for trucks trying to access the southbound lane of the tunnel. The ban on trucks entering the city cordon was lifted at 7.30am, but mayhem ensued nonetheless.
As Conor Faughnan of AA Ireland put it: "All merry hell broke loose," or as the Taoiseach put it, as only Bertie Ahern can: "As soon as there was a delay, everything happened." Indeed it did.
Two minor crashes on the M1 and a three-car crash on Amiens Street in the city centre added to the mess, and when the tunnel finally re-opened at 9am, it took a further hour and a half for traffic to return to normal. Motorists trying to access the city were stuck in their cars for two hours and commuters waiting for buses were seen leaving bus stops and walking to work.
So out of the ordinary was the congestion it was even mentioned in the Dáil, where Mr Ahern used commuters' misfortune to thumb his nose at the Opposition benches, claiming the chaos had shown what it used to be like before the €750 million tunnel opened.
"It shows the huge success of the tunnel in only a few months that as soon as there was a delay everything happened," he said.
Of course before the tunnel opened, HGV traffic was more dispersed and it didn't all need to converge on the M1 to enter the tunnel.
The Taoiseach does have a point, however.
"He is right," Faughnan believes. "The port tunnel is a critical piece of infrastructure for now and for the future. We have always been fans of the tunnel, which we think was a worthwhile investment."
"We have no criticism of the decision taken by the NRA to put a safety protocol in place," Faughnan adds.
"However, in hindsight the NRA, the port operators and Dublin City Council will have to look at this. Clearly you cannot compromise safety protocols, but we can't have a situation where we let the whole ship sink because of a broken light bulb."
Fine Gael's transport spokeswoman, Olivia Mitchell, said the traffic gridlock highlights the failure of the Government to have a Plan B if there is a problem with the tunnel.
She called for a permanent special mobile Garda traffic unit on all major approaches to the capital: "It defies understanding why a billion euro piece of infrastructure does not have a Plan B when disaster strikes."
But it is an election year after all, and in the end of the day the tunnel has made life a little easier for motorists forced into their cars on the way to work and for people living and working in the city centre.
Businesses, too, are feeling the benefit. Chairman of the Dublin City Business Association, Basil Good, said traders in the city have reported increases in trading and footfall in the past 12 months, and attributed much of it to the Luas, an extended Dart, more commuter trains and an increase in buses and QBCs.
He said the "positive impact on improving traffic flow for shoppers is already being felt" since the opening of the port tunnel and introduction of the HGV ban.
"As city centre businesses we have had to adapt and be flexible, but we are already seeing the benefits."
There are now 11,000 vehicles using the port tunnel on a daily basis: 8,500 of these are trucks, while the remainder are buses, taxis and private cars. The motoring public are voting with their wheels.
