City's traffic is halted by shopping rush

A surge of late Christmas shoppers caused gridlock in Dublin city centre yesterday afternoon, with all shopping centre car parks full and motorists queueing for hours to get in or out.

The AA attributed the problem to commuters who had taken the day off work to go shopping. A spokesman noted that traffic was relatively fluid during morning rush-hour, but from 11 a.m. onwards became "as bad as we've seen it for a long time".

Delays were worst in the late afternoon. Dublin Bus reported one of its vehicles taking two hours to reach the city centre from Dundrum, while the AA said some drivers were abandoning cars, parking on approach roads to the city and continuing journeys on foot or on public transport.

But some of the most serious delays affected motorists trying to enter or leave the city's multi-storey car parks. One of the worst tailbacks was at Mercer Street, where two big car parks - at the Green Shopping Centre and the College of Surgeons - can accommodate more than 500 cars each.

Cars waiting for spaces crammed nearby streets during the afternoon, while drivers attempting to leave suffered delays of up to three hours. One driver said it had taken him two hours to get from the entrance ramp into a parking space.

Speaking from his home in Straffan last night, another driver said it took him from 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. to get from the fourth floor of the St Stephen's Green shopping centre car park to the exit. "Three hours to get out of the car park and one hour to get from Dublin to Straffan," he said. He had seen one woman in a panic because she was supposed to collect her children from school - "she demanded the car park management collect them, since she couldn't" - while a young woman trying to get home to Tipperary gave up, reparked her car and resumed shopping. A garda was able to control the traffic later in the afternoon, reducing the exit time to under half-an-hour.

Greasy road conditions added to delays in Dublin and around the country. Traffic was heavy around the big shopping centres in Limerick and Galway, while roadworks added to the serious tailbacks in Cork. But these problems were "nothing comparable" to those in Dublin, the AA said.