Madam, - I have used the Dublin Port Tunnel on several of the past few weekends and discovered it is the only place in Dublin where you can have miles of dual carriageway to yourself on a Saturday afternoon. This suggests that the €6 toll charged at that time is too high and that a publicly owned asset is under-used.
When there is spare capacity in the private sector prices are promptly cut to ensure that revenues are maximised. The airlines are an example. They account to shareholders every month on the percentage of seats sold and respond by cutting prices when there is a lot of spare capacity. This helps ensure that assets are fully employed and that shareholder value is maximised.
The same should hold for the tunnel. It is belongs to all of us since it was paid for by taxation but we have no information about how much it is used nor how much value we are getting for it. I know that its primary objective was to divert lorries from the city centre but that does not mean it makes sense for cars to be priced out if there is spare capacity.
We should have detailed data via the internet of hourly usage of the tunnel and there should be experimentation with the price for cars to maximise revenue. Indeed, the charge for cars could be varied every half-hour, using the electronic signs before the entrance to the tunnel and a computer program that calculated available spare capacity. The price at any given time would reflect the level of usage at that time.
This could ease the traffic pressures at peak times when the tunnel is not being fully used by lorries and maximise revenues from this publicly owned asset. - Yours, etc,
EUNAN KING, Harcourt Green, Charlemont Street, Dublin 2.