Sick of being stuck in the car? There are lots of other ways to get to and from work or school, and you'll be saving money as well as doing your bit for the environment, four enthusiasts tell Michael Kelly
If you've ever sat in a car, rendered immobile by congestion, you will empathise with the feeling of helplessness and frustration that used to consume me in the Co Wicklow roadworks each morning. My commute from Wexford to Dublin could take two hours each way, but it was the half-hour stuck at an infamous black spot that got to me. What a terrible way to start and end the day. How appropriate the place was called Glen of the Downs.
Given the many downsides of driving to work - the jams, ever-increasing journey times, rising petrol costs and, of course, the environmental impact - it's a wonder we stick with the car at all. Some people have no option but to commute by car. But lots of others could ditch it if they wanted to.
Part of it is habit. And, God knows, there are loads of excuses you can use if you want to stay put in the gridlock forever: cycling is too dangerous; the weather is too unpredictable; public transport is terrible; the office is too far from the Luas stop.
Too often we dismiss alternatives to the car without giving enough thought to the idea that a combination of them might work - or to the idea that, if the thought of leaving the car behind every day is a little daunting, we could try something different once or twice a week. A good example is Walk on Wednesdays, a scheme, popular with schools, that encourages families that live a long way from school to drop their children within walking distance of it one day a week, so they can go the rest of the way on foot.
Those of us with no alternative to the car could still make a difference to the environment and to the quality of our lives by pooling. Most cars on the roads are carrying a single person, so an obvious solution to congestion - as well as a way to reduce emissions and make travel cheaper and less stressful - is to encourage sharing.
One Small Step (www.onesmallstep.ie) is an attempt by Dublin Transportation Office to emulate the Power of One energy-efficiency campaign by getting people to think about the cumulative impact of small changes in behaviour.
It's easy to be sceptical about such schemes - instead of getting us to walk or cycle, why doesn't Dublin Transportation Office sort out the congestion or give us decent public transport? John Henry, its chief executive, believes we all have a role to play.
"Walking and cycling are legitimate forms of transport," he says. "That's the whole point. We always tend to focus on roads when we talk about transport, but there are loads of other options that people could consider. Our key message is for people to ask themselves, before getting into the car, is there any other way that I can do this journey? If every person who uses a car in the Greater Dublin Area was to use another form of transport one day a week, the cumulative effect would be to take 200,000 trips a day off the roads. That's how extraordinary the effect of little changes can be."
THE WALKERS
RATHMICHAEL PARISH NATIONAL SCHOOL
Rathmichael Parish National School, in Shankill, Co Dublin, runs two "walking buses". Pupils walk in
pairs, led by parents, and they all wear high-visibility jackets.
Gina Murphy, who has two children at the school, leads the walking bus two mornings a week. "There's obviously an environmental impact, because there are fewer cars on the road," she says. "But also, very importantly, the kids get fresh air and keep fit."
Is it safe for children to walk to school? "There's lots of traffic going to and fro, so safety is of the utmost importance to us. We have volunteer parents at the front, middle and back of the bus, and they are responsible for keeping the kids together and helping them cross at lights."
Rathmichael's walking bus started with just eight pioneering participants; now nearly 40 children link up each morning on two routes, and a third is being developed.
"It's encouraged in class, and I think that spurs on the parents. It's an opportunity for the kids to be sociable before school. You hear them saying: 'See you tomorrow on the walking bus.' It gets to a point where kids who are not on it feel left out."
Does Irish weather play havoc with their plans? "With the good weather we had in September and October I didn't take the car out at all. The numbers go down when there is rain, but the bus goes regardless of the weather, and we would usually have a core group of 10 or 12 who will still go. That's fine with us. We don't specify that the kids have to use it every day."
The parents who volunteer to lead the bus are committing to about half an hour a few mornings a week. "I can't see why this couldn't be organised all over Ireland. The main thing is to have parents on board, although I accept that it's probably not going to suit some parents who have to go to work."
Murphy sees a difference in her own children, who are eight and six. "It definitely wakes them up. They are not falling out of the car, half-asleep going into school. For lots of kids it might be the only exercise they are getting."
Caroline Senior, the school's principal, agrees that the walking bus is making a difference to the students. "The children have started their day in such a
positive way, by breathing in fresh air and having some exercise before they start school. This has a knock-on effect when they come to school, as they tend to settle down more quickly and concentrate harder in class."
For more about starting a walking bus, see the travel section of www.greenschoolsireland.org.
THE CYCLIST
RAY D'ARCY
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and it was frustration with a 120-minute commute that got Ray D'Arcy out of his car and on to his bike.
"Bottom of my list of reasons for doing it would have been changing the world, to be honest," the Today FM presenter says. "The original reason was that I was living in Sandyford when the M50 was being finished, and it was absolute hell getting to and from work. It was taking me up to two hours to get home, and I just said feck this. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. That was five or six years ago, and I've cycled more often than not since."
His commute now takes him 20 minutes in the morning and 25 minutes in the evening. "We moved house recently, so the cycle is shorter than it was. I still love it, though. It's great exercise, and you arrive to work fully awake. I get pissed off if I have to drive in for whatever reason.
"We don't have showers in Today FM, which isn't great. I always wear shorts on the bike; this morning it was freezing but I still wore shorts, so I don't find I'm too sweaty when I get to work. The worst weather, in fact, is when it's wet and warm, because you have to wear the rain gear and you're roasting."
D'Arcy has talked frequently on air about the lot of the poor Irish cyclist. "There are obviously health benefits, although some would say that those benefits are offset by the dangers. Cycling is somewhat of an adventure sport in Ireland. We are treated as the lowest of the low. Below drivers, below pedestrians. It's dangerous if you're timid. You need to be a bit aggressive."
He mentions a recent encounter on Wexford Street in Dublin. "It was outside Whelan's, and this guy in a BMW was completely blocking the cycle lane. I tapped on the bonnet as I went around him, to let him know he was in the lane, and then rode off. I heard this beep behind me, and he came past with the window down and shouted out something abusive. Unfortunately, the next set of lights was red, and he came up to me again and said: "Get a life, ****, and don't touch my car again."
Although his helmet and high-visibility jacket make him look like many other cyclists, he is sometimes spotted. "There's apparently a video on YouTube that some students took of me cycling near UCD. I find it incredible that people would want to watch a video of me cycling. I was cycling in Sandyford one time, and a group of young lads were standing there, and one of them says: 'Jaysus, I thought you were loaded, but you can't even afford a car!' That's how cyclists are seen: we're people who can't afford cars."
THE PUBLIC TRANSPORT USER
KEVIN CULLEN
Kevin Cullen's home, in Beaumont in north Dublin, is only about 15km from work, at Ericsson in DúLaoghaire, but his drive was taking at least an hour and a half. "One evening it took me over two hours to get home, because Westlife were playing in the Point. The traffic was getting worse and worse, and it was getting harder to get home, especially in the evenings. I hated it."
Cullen decided to switch to the Dart, despite a 15-minute walk at either end. His employer helped by signing up for TaxSaver commuter tickets, which companies can buy tax-free on behalf of staff. "So I buy a yearly ticket. That's very handy, especially on Monday mornings, when there are mad queues for tickets."
Including a 35-minute train journey, his commute now takes about an hour. "I don't mind the walking, and it's very predictable as to what time I am going to get to work. It's also handy if you want to go for a few pints after work on a Friday; you don't have to think about what to do with the car."
He's a big fan of the Dart. "I'm lucky, in that I usually get a seat. Most people get off at Tara Street or Pearse Station, so I will always get a seat then, even if I didn't get one at Killester. I've tried the bus a few times, and it's horrible; the way it's jerking forward and back all the time is not very comfortable at all."
Cullen likes being able to switch off on the journey. "There's enough stress in daily life without adding to it before you even start your day. I have the headphones on, and I either read the paper or stare out the window. My wife says that I have my Dart face on when I'm on the train. It's a sort of vacant, don't-talk-to-me face."
THE CARPOOLER
BREDA GOOD
Breda Good, who has been an administration officer at University College Cork since 1992, commutes to the campus from Minane Bridge, about 25km away. She started carpooling three years ago. "It was totally a convenience thing for me. An e-mail went around saying that if two or more people carpooled, they would be entitled to a designated parking space. Parking is chronic in UCC, and I had just started a family, so the convenience of being able to arrive last-minute and know you would have a parking space right at the front entrance was brilliant. Normally you would have to be in the car park before 8.15am to get a space, but now we can arrive just before 9.15."
Good pools cars with a colleague in the administration office. "There's no awkwardness there. If you don't want to talk, you just don't talk, and the other person respects that. I am conscious that my car is only going into the city every second day, so you save some money that way. But, to be honest, the environmental side of it doesn't enter into it for me. All I was thinking about was how I could make it easier to get to and from work."
UCC's scheme is a good example of the way that employer-led incentives - in this case, preferential parking - can overcome typical objections to carpooling.
There are signs that other employers are also moving to fill the carpooling vacuum left by government inaction. Two UCD graduates, Paul O'Donovan and John Brady, recently established Swift Commute (www.swiftcommute.ie), which matches prospective carpooling buddies. Vipre, an organisation formed in The Netherlands more than 50 years ago to solve transportation problems, runs Dublin carpooling operations for East Point Business Park, Oracle and Mater Misericordiae University Hospital. And the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, RTÉ and the University of Limerick all encourage their staff to carpool, typically spurred on by parking problems similar to UCC's.