Sir, - There have been many complaints recently about the taxi service in this city but there is another side of the question, which has not been adverted to. The public transport system is quite inadequate for the people it is meant to serve. At the taxi rank in Stephen's Green, long queues stretching halfway along the Green can be seen waiting for taxis. These are not the rich, they are mostly the poor who cannot afford cars and cannot wait in the cold for hours before they get a bus.
CIE has its head in the clouds. On weekends after 12.30 am, the streets are packed with people walking home. CIE is cheating the public not only by not providing it with a means of transport, but by ignoring the fares it would get from the people who are walking and who would gratefully use a bus if thee could get one. Throughout the city public transport has broken down. In relation to the rest of Europe, it is about 50 years behind.
The public transport system in Dublin is not only appalling, it is in modern terms an obscenity. The majority of people these days travel by car thus they are unaware of the wants of the less privileged. But if there was a proper public transport system, people of all social backgrounds would, as in the days of the trams, travel by public transport and thus create a formidable constituency against the abuses currently perpetrated by Coras Iompar Eireann. - Yours, etc.,
Fairfield Park, Rathgar,
Dublin 6.