Una Mullally: Cars have to go. People can fight this all they want, but it has to happen

I’ve recently become obsessed with the air and noise monitoring stations in Dublin city. You can follow them at dublincityairandnoise.ie. Last Friday afternoon, the noise level, as registered by the monitoring station at Blessington Street Basin – a “designated quiet urban area” – was at the highest level, the reading around 3pm on Friday afternoon being 80.63dB. Noise pollution is linked to greater risks of heart attacks and heart disease.

A Harvard project in 2020 studied 500 adults over a five-year period, and gathered traffic and aircraft noise data from their addresses. Focusing on the impact of noise alone (with all other factors, including air pollution, adjusted for), the study found “that every five-decibel increase in the average 24-hour noise level was associated with a 34 per cent increase in heart attacks, strokes, and other serious heart-related problems”. We need to start confronting the environmental factors that denigrate public health in Dublin city.

Last week, Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon raised the issue of air pollution in Dublin 1 and Dublin 7. Gannon pointed out that respiratory problems in Dublin 1 are the highest in the country. Air pollution kills. Google’s Project Air View study in Dublin found that air pollution in Phibsborough, for example, was outrageous. The European Union Air Quality Directive indicates an hourly average of 40μg/m3 of nitrogen dioxide. The World Health Organisation is calling for a quarter of that, at 10μg/m3, as an acceptable level. But in Phibsborough, the level is 60μg/m3 at times. Air quality is also not properly monitored, as there is no monitoring station in the area. We need more air quality and noise monitoring stations in multiple parts of the city.

Gannon has also called for low-emission zones in the city (a good idea). What would that involve? Congestion charge programmes are controversial, often because they’re perceived (fairly or not) as the kind of moneymaking rackets that make the owners of clamping operations wealthy. Therefore, they should also be publicly owned, never privatised, and the money should go back into funding public space improvements.

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Considering heatwaves are going to become more frequent and more intense in Ireland, tree cover everywhere is such a simple solution that everyone – people and animals – benefits from

But we need to think bigger. Most cars have to go. People can fight this all they want, but it has to happen. Whoever takes over from Owen Keegan as chief executive of Dublin City Council in September, while the Government drags its heels on local Government reform, should arrive with a huge vision for the city. The first part of that vision needs to be about how people navigate the city centre. That means removing as many cars as possible. Fossil-fuelled SUVs, in particular, should be taxed into oblivion, or just banned outright. This does not mean penalising people who need to drive commercial vehicles for work, electric taxis, or obviously people with mobility issues. It also means a lot of thinking needs to be done around how people on lower incomes aren’t excessively penalised. Multiple new public – and free – transport options have to be provided simultaneously. That is essential.

Multi-story car parks should be removed from the city centre and placed on the outskirts with free electric transport into the city. Most car-parking spaces should also be removed. As car use decreases, we are going to need a car amnesty, where families can swap their car for bikes and scooters. City-centre residents without cars, or who want to get rid of their cars, should be able to avail of a greening package from the council for their driveways and on-street car-parking spaces. We could dramatically increase the amount of green space on city streets in this manner, with benches; beehives; trees; wild gardens; community gardens and allotments; communal barbecuing and picnic areas; and green play areas. Imagine walking out of your house in the morning, in the middle of the city, and being greeted not by dozens of stationary vehicles but by nature.

[ Dublin ‘noise maps’: How noise-polluted is your neighbourhood ]

Tree cover goes some way to address pollution. It increases air quality, relieves stress, minimises noise pollution, fosters community and, crucially, it lowers the ground temperature. In July 2021, Robert Burns, then in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown council, and now in Fingal, tweeted a comparison of surface temperatures on Marine Road in Dún Laoghaire. He referred to two sections of the street, 90 metres apart. One had tree cover, one did not. The section of footpath with tree cover was 20-22 degrees. The path without was 31-32 degrees. Considering heatwaves are going to become more frequent and more intense in Ireland, tree cover everywhere is such a simple solution that everyone – people and animals – benefits from.

Cars are parked 95 per cent of the time. They clutter streets, paths and roads. Get rid of them. The bad faith, hairsplitting arguments and selfish hysteria of middle-class drivers in particular carries no weight in a climate emergency. Of course, there should be exceptions for those who genuinely need their cars on the road. Positive change needs to be logical change. But if you want to keep your car in the city centre out of personal convenience, that simply does not, should not and cannot override public health, or Ireland’s embarrassing languishing on emissions targets. We need to skip the phoney, predictable, cynical “debates”, radio phone-in outrage and populist “push back”, and just do it.