Transport:While Ireland clogs up with traffic, Denmark keeps moving, reports Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Imagine a capital where pedestrians rarely have to wait more than 30 seconds to cross a busy street, where bus and rail services run like clockwork, where there's no sign of serious congestion and where 36 per cent of all commuters bike to work - on cycleways wide enough to travel two abreast.
This urban Utopia actually exists, and it's called Copenhagen. The Danish capital is about the same size as Dublin in terms of population, with 1.2 million people living in its metropolitan area. It is a lot flatter, which facilitates cycling, but also two degrees further north and on the Baltic Sea, which means it's much colder in winter.
The big difference, of course, is that Copenhagen has been planned with people in mind, whereas Dublin has not - at least, not since the 1920s. The walkable city of the late 18th century has expanded so wildly that most of us have become totally car-dependent, especially those living at the extremities of the commuter belt, up to 100km away.
God be with the days when we thought Lucan was far out. But now "Dublin" is scattered all over the place, in suburban housing estates around Arklow, Wicklow, Gorey, Carlow, Naas, Newbridge, Clane, Portarlington, Portlaoise, Tulllamore, Mullingar, Rochfort Bridge, Trim, Kells, Navan, Ratoath, Drogheda, Dundalk, Carrickmacross and Virginia.
It's no wonder that the M50 has become Dublin's new "main street" - more congested than O'Connell Street ever was when it carried six lanes of traffic. That so many shopping centres, business parks and major employers, such as Intel, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, are congregated in the M50 corridor has compounded the traffic problem.
As Mary Harney famously said in July 2000, "Spiritually, we are probably a lot closer to Boston than Berlin," even though we are closer, geographically, to the German capital than we are to Massachusetts. What she had in mind was economic liberalisation, but her dictum might equally be applied to the Republic's unwitting embrace of North American-style sprawl.
Last November the sprawl of Dublin was cited by the European Environment Agency as a worst-case scenario of urban planning, so that newer EU member states, such as Poland, might avoid making the same mistakes. It concluded that this was the result of laissez-faire planning policies that had allowed development to run out of control.
Vast housing estates with no local shops or facilities of any kind, as well as the proliferation of single houses in the countryside, have made car dependency almost universal. Spurred on by the economic boom, car ownership has exploded - from 227 cars per 1,000 people in 1990 to 402 cars per 1,000 in 2005 - and it's set to rise even higher.
Carbon-dioxide emissions from road transport more than doubled over the same period and are projected to increase to 13 million tonnes per annum within a few years. To put this in context, it's nearly as much as the 18 million tonnes of carbon credits that the Government intends to buy, for €270 million, to offset Ireland's burgeoning emissions.
At least €18 billion has been ploughed into new motorways - all of which converge on the M50 - and there's more to come under the €34.4 billion Transport 21 programme between now and 2015. Sooner rather than later, global oil production is expected to peak, putting a long-term question mark over the fuel needed to keep cars on the road.
Meanwhile, traffic on the M50 jumped by 11 per cent in just two years (2003-2005) while the number of vehicles crossing it to get into the city every weekday morning rose by 16 per cent - reflecting the fact that 56 per cent of Dublin's commuters travel to work by car. It's even higher in Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, with their minimal public transport services.
We're driving ourselves into a hole in the ground. All over Ireland front gardens are being paved for off-street parking, to accommodate two, three, four and even five cars - from SUVs to runabouts for grown-up kids - while one of the problems faced by some of the posher private schools is to find parking space for sixth-year students with their own cars.
The number of children cycling to school in the Dublin area plummeted by four-fifths between 1991 and 2002, while the figure for those walking fell by half. Even among students living less than a mile from their schools, nearly a third travelled by car. This not only makes morning peak-time traffic worse but is also a major factor in childhood and teenage obesity.
Here again Ireland is closer to Boston than Berlin. Twenty per cent of children are overweight - an even higher proportion than American kids - and this means they're at risk of contracting early diabetes or heart disease. What's more, they're being "brought up to think that the car is the only way to get around", according to the Dublin Transportation Office.
The DTO, which is conducting an extensive survey to find out the latest situation on school trips, wants parents to adopt the "walking bus" idea. This involves parents volunteering, on different days, to gather children from nearby housing estates and walk them to school, in a way that not only guarantees their safety but also gives them a bit of exercise.
More actual buses are also desperately needed, but a Labour Party Dáil motion in December calling for 500 to be added to the Dublin Bus fleet was defeated by the Government. Labour was also proposing a flat fare of €1 for adults and 50c for children - although this would require a higher subsidy for public transport, closer to the norm for other European capitals.
While we wait years for the metro to materialise, the reliability of bus services must be improved. Average bus speeds in Dublin have dropped to less than 13km/h, even on quality bus corridors - a snail's pace compared with those in other northern European cities, such as Stockholm (28km/h), Helsinki (27km/h), London (26km/h) and Copenhagen (24km/h).
More investment in public transport could be financed by innovative green taxes, such as London's highly successful congestion charge. The most useful measure would be to impose a hefty benefit-in-kind tax on all workplace parking spaces, whether in the city centre or on the outskirts - including the large surface car park in front of Leinster House.
There are at least 20,000 free off-street parking spaces in the city centre and God knows how many more all over Dublin - and that's one of the main reasons why so many commuters don't think twice about driving to work. Eliminating these spaces would be very costly, but at least a benefit-in-kind tax would raise revenue to make alternatives to car commuting more viable.
Cycling must be part of the solution. It was identified by the European Commission in 1999 as "the way ahead for towns and cities", particularly for short trips, of up to 6km. For people living close to where they work, the bike should become the transport mode of choice. Cycling is also healthier, halving the incidence of heart disease compared with that for driving a car.
More room must be made for pedestrians, too. Still regarded as an inconvenience to the movement of traffic, they are forced to wait three minutes or more to cross at busy junctions. If we want to have more civilised cities, different priorities need to be set, allocating road space and time to favour people rather than vehicles. Only then will we be a match for Copenhagen.