There is no longer any dispute over whether Dublin is experiencing a crisis in traffic management. With 16,000 new cars a year being added to the congestion already affecting the roads of the capital city, gridlock is only a matter of years away unless radical measures are taken. The latest economic analyses predict average growth rates of 6 per cent for the next five years; a 50 per cent increase in the number of motor cars within the next eight years and an increase in population to 4.4 million by the year 2026. Faced by such immense planning and commuting problems, successive governments have delayed taking decisions. The present Coalition Government is no different. The handling of the Luas issue, with its controversial overground/underground options, by the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications, Ms O'Rourke, was a case study in political fudge. But, even there, work is still going ahead on planning parts of the light-rail system. And the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, has reallocated most of the £120 million EU funding lost by Luas to other rail and road developments in the greater Dublin area, including the purchase of buses and new rail cars.
Fine Gael held a special traffic forum, representing public and private interests, in Dublin last week in order to develop party policy. In supporting the Dublin Transport Initiative, which advocates a switch from private to public transport by Dublin commuters, the party leader, Mr John Bruton, spoke of the need for courageous leadership. He criticised the Government's plan to buy 50 additional buses to operate on yet-to-be-constructed bus lanes as totally inadequate, and said 400 buses were required. Urging a doubling in the number of taxi licences, he said there would have to be substantial further restrictions on private cars entering the city centre at certain hours of the day. The key to a solution, he suggested, was to make public transport accessible, clean, efficient and fashionable. But people would not make the psychological shift to public transport unless restrictions were imposed on the private motorist.
Recent research has identified traffic congestion as a more important issue for Dubliners than crime. The road space available is incapable of taking even existing levels of commuter traffic, so the situation is almost bound to deteriorate. To avert traffic chaos and to tilt the balance away from the private motorist, Dublin Corporation is planning to introduce a series of quality bus corridors and cycle lanes. Wheel clamping will be applied to cars that overstay their time at meters or otherwise breach the Traffic Acts. And inner city parking charges will be increased. If the promised package of measures is introduced and rigorously implemented, it would go some way towards addressing the problem. But without significantly higher investments in the bus, rail and DART systems the city will continue to choke on commuter traffic. Where politicians are concerned, the really hard decisions will involve revoking the traditional rights of motorists.