Road rage, says the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, Right Rev Roy Warke, "is when you see a man get out of his car which is stalled in traffic, walk back to the car behind him and kick it."

The good bishop, who does not indulge in such tactics, says he saw this recently for himself along the quays in Dublin. But it might as well have been Cork or Limerick. The Celtic Tiger will not be escaping because it's gridlocked.

A colleague suggested recently that every motorist in Dublin should have a counsellor in the car each morning as he or she inches along the way to work. Motorists in Cork could do with some counselling too and nowhere more so than on the Lower Glanmire Road. Its infamy as a thoroughfare - an oxymoron if ever there was one - is relayed on RTE's AA Roadwatch slot each morning, as if those banging their heads off the windscreens did not know already that they were caught up in a traffic crisis.

Back to the bishop. He observed a few weeks ago that when he took up his position in Cork more than a decade earlier, the city was in a slump and suffering from acute depression following the closure of a number of major industries. Since then, he has seen it grow and blossom.

One consequence of that, of course, is an increase in the number of cars to mirror the new prosperity. Other consequences are more anger and more frustration. The statisticians no doubt, will be able to produce a formula showing that prosperity breeds an increase in car numbers. It's something akin to Murphy's Law. And the Lower Glanmire Road is a case in point.

If you are coming from Dublin, Waterford, Youghal or Midleton en route to Cork, you have little choice but to experience the pleasures of this roadway. Similarly, if you are heading out of Cork in the opposite direction, namely towards Dublin or the East coast, the road beckons unless you know the complicated secrets of the detour. The truckers and lorry drivers obviously do not and trundle up and down it each morning adding to the general chaos.

The road is significant only because of its arterial status - and that's another contradiction in terms. This artery is in dire need of bypass surgery. When Cork Corporation admits that the road has reached saturation point, you know something is wrong. Too many cars trying to get to where they want to be and too many heavy vehicles trying to do the same - that's the problem, something has to be done. And it is being done.

The Lower Glanmire Road caters for almost 40,000 vehicles a day. It was never designed for that type of traffic and that's why so many motorists feel like getting out and kicking the car behind.

But the corporation has laid long-term plans and if it all works out, the opening of the Lee Tunnel early next year, will alleviate the problem in a dramatic fashion. There is already in place in Cork a network of fine motorways and ringroads which will allow traffic coming in from Dublin and going to Dublin to skirt the city and use the tunnel to cross under the River Lee and avoid the Lower Glanmire Road altogether.

The tunnel is being developed at an enormous cost - almost £90 million when everything is taken into account and its success or otherwise will be a measure of how the Cork Land Use and Transportation Study, undertaken in the 1970s by a firm of British consultants, has worked.

Ideally, all the heavy traffic will be taken out of Cork's city centre and off the Glanmire Road. There will be a free flow as the 40-footers duck under the River Lee to join a network of roads made possible by EU funding which may now be about to dry up.

Hopefully, it will all have come to pass just in time to avoid more frustration and even greater road rage among the generally well behaved driving population in Cork.