There has been endless messing with the problem of Dublin's transport system, which has fallen between a plethora of stools: the Departments of Public Enterprise and Finance, the Dublin Transportation Office, CIE, the consultants employed to implement the Luas project and the Atkins consultants who were employed several years ago to review the Luas project.
From 1995, I was able to demonstrate that the Luas street-level tram project was misconceived, because the Department, CIE and the consultants planning the project had all failed to notice that since the beginning of the decade, the growth of employment and car traffic had been exceeding by a factor of 21/2 to one the projections upon which the plan for the on-street tram service had been based.
As a result, it had become obvious that by 2011, the peak-hour traffic on the route from Cabinteely into the city would start to exceed 6,000 an hour - the maximum that an on-street tram could carry.
All three of these bodies, as well as the Dublin Transportation Office, refused to face this obvious fact. It was not until the change of government in 1997 that a decision was taken by the incoming Minister, Mary O'Rourke, to ask a further group of consultants, Atkins, to re-examine the project in the light of my analysis.
The Atkins report confirmed my assertion that the traffic on the route would by 2011 be 60 per cent greater than had been provided for, and that it would attain a peak-hour level of 6,000 within a decade. The report also confirmed that coupled vehicles could not be used on streets, so that the capacity of a tram service operating overground could not be increased to carry traffic beyond that figure.
The only way this Luas line could cope with that traffic, the report said, would be either to duplicate this route from the Grand Canal inwards by running a spur down the canal and across the Liffey to Connolly station and O'Connell Street or to use monster 50-metre vehicles down Harcourt Street, Dawson Street, Nassau Street and lower Grafton Street. With such a vehicle arriving on average every 75 seconds at O'Connell Bridge, and with traffic on the quays needing two-minute slots to cross the bottom of O'Connell Street, these monster vehicles would be subject to "queueing and bunching" in Dawson Street and Middle Abbey Street.
Then, having listed a whole series of cogent reasons favouring the underground option, the report recommended the surface option it had just rubbished. Its reason was the need to "husband scarce resources", which might be needed for other purposes. Given that the one thing we are not short of is financial resources, this conclusion - which incidentally went beyond the team's terms of reference - was almost magnificent in its perversity.
The Government nevertheless decided against the surface option - largely one suspects because of fear of the political re action to prolonged street closures which this would involve. However, it then went on, with a perversity which equalled that of the Atkins report, to ignore totally the key question addressed in the report - that of the adequacy of the capacity on this line. It ignored the alternative of the duplication of the route from the Grand Canal inwards and decided to opt for a "short tunnel" to Broadstone, starting at St Stephen's Green rather than Ranelagh.
The result of this quite extraordinary decision, which was reported at the time to have emanated from the Progressive Democrats, was that because of the resultant overground running along Harcourt Street, single vehicles would still have to be used. This ensured that despite spending the extra couple of hundred million pounds on the tunnel to Broadstone, the line would still be unable to use coupled vehicles to carry the projected traffic.
This sad story made me despair of our system of government, but now, two years later, we hear of a further decision reversal, involving belated acceptance of my proposal to start the tunnel in Ranelagh, making it possible to carry future traffic. This ridiculous process has now cost us at least five years. We are now being told that the first part of this line, to be opened at the end of 2002, will have to stop at the Grand Canal while the work that should have started long ago on the Ranelagh-Broadstone tunnel is being undertaken.
The Department of Public Enterprise and the Dublin Transportation Office seem to have reacted more rationally to their belated realisation that Dublin's traffic demands will be much greater than had earlier been envisaged. Now, like other major cities which have solved their transport problems by going underground, we seem to have a real prospect of having a metro system.
Unfortunately, the Tallaght Luas tram route seems to be so far advanced that its conversion to a metro does not seem to be envisaged. It will certainly be distinctly odd, and probably not very economic, for Dublin to end up with a metro system ac companied by a single on-street tramline.
The operation of this street tram, given the limitations on its capacity, will have to be at very high frequencies and, as I said years ago, will constantly interrupt all traffic flows between the north and the south of the city, along a line from Inchicore to Spencer Dock.
Because of the combined impact on the street network of Trinity College, Temple Bar and Dublin Castle, there exists only one north-south street between Westland Row and Parliament Street - an eastwest stretch of almost three-quarters of a mile in the very centre of the city. The idea of blocking this sole north-south artery with high-frequency trams never made any sense.
Another overdue concept seems also to have emerged recently, apparently because of CIE's interest in the Spencer Dock project. This is the idea of a second west-east underground link at right angles to the Cabinteely-airport line - one which would link Heuston station with a new station at Spencer Dock, serving Christchurch Place, St Stephen's Green, and Pearse station in Westland Row. This could provide an east-west metro service across the south city centre and a direct mainline link between the Belfast line and the southern lines operating into Heuston.
It also seems to be envisaged that such a Heuston-Spencer Dock line might be used to provide a circular urban route, making use of the track from Spencer Dock via Drumcondra to Cabra and under Phoenix Park to Heuston to complete the circle. If, as seems also to be suggested, the line in the tunnel from Ranelagh to Broadstone is continued to Blanchardstown, with spurs to Dublin Airport and the proposed stadium via Finglas, we would at last have the outline of a combined metro and through mainline system which, supplemented by feeder buses, would go a long way towards solving Dublin's traffic problems.
If the old line to Dunshaughlin (and perhaps on to Navan) via Dunboyne were also to be reopened, as has been mooted, Dublin would have no fewer than 10 radial rail lines, all of which could be fed by feeder buses. They could interconnect at various points with a metro line circling the city centre. Moreover, for the first time, the rest of the country would be linked directly to the heart of the capital.
There remains one other rail transport problem. I doubt if even the upgrading to metro status of the proposed tram to the airport via Ballymun - which is now likely to be delayed to 2005 - would meet the needs of passengers as well as airport staff. It may well be necessary to supplement such a metro line with a diversion of the main Dublin-Belfast line through the airport to the city. It would be interesting to have the views of both Aer Rianta and CIE on this issue.
It will clearly take many years and billions of pounds to complete a scheme of this magnitude, but if we proceed at a steady pace which does not overstrain our human resources, we will give future generations an eminently accessible capital city, which they will be able to enjoy rather than endure.