Dublin doesn't just suffer from what is probably the worst traffic congestion of any European capital, it is now locked in a deep psychosis caused by an irrational love affair with the car. This, more than anything else, explains why the city is being choked to death daily by the increasing volume of traffic its streets are expected to carry.
The fact that congestion is now costing Dublin £500 million a year, according to the best estimates, does not seem to impinge on the consciousness of car lovers. Neither does it enter their heads that they are collectively responsible for causing the city to breach EU air quality standards due to traffic-generated dust and noxious fumes.
In the year just ended it is reckoned that 60,000 of the record 130,000 new cars sold in the Republic were registered in Dublin. That works out at 5,000 new cars per month, costing £50 million (at an average of £10,000 per car). It is little wonder then that every road leading into the city centre is clogged with cars each weekday morning.
Europeans accustomed to a more civilised urban environment are shocked when they come here. At a seminar last November on the cost to Ireland of curbing its greenhouse gas emissions, a Dutch contributor said it took him longer to get from the airport to Jury's Hotel in Ballsbridge than it had taken him to get from Amsterdam to Dublin.
Two days before Christmas the peak of a record boom in consumer spending was reached when every multi-storey car-park in the city centre was crammed with cars, and many motorists found themselves having to queue for up to three hours to get in or out. Yet Dublin now has more purpose-built carparks than other cities of similar size.
The proliferation of multi-storey car-parks in the city centre in recent years has been caused by lucrative tax incentives designed to encourage their construction, ostensibly for short-term use. Yet there is ample evidence that many of the spaces, at least in facilities not directly linked to retail outlets, are being contracted out for commuter parking.
Commuters who drive into the centre of Dublin are treated with a level of indulgence which is quite extraordinary by European standards. Most cities on the Continent actively discourage car commuters by restricting the availability of long-term car-parking. In Dublin, however, commuters can store their cars virtually anywhere they like.
It is estimated that there are up to 50,000 parking spaces available in the city centre to accommodate car commuters. This ad lib provision of car-parking - in the basements of office blocks and the grounds of public buildings, on derelict sites turned into surface car-parks and even on the streets - explains why so many of them can drive into town.
Take a walk along the lane that links Fitzwilliam Street with Merrion Street. On the left is an ugly multi-storey car-park built for the ESB to store the cars of its headquarters staff. And all along the lane what were once the rear gardens of Georgian houses on Baggot Street and Merrion Square have been cannibalised to provide car-parking.
Or stand on Winetavern Street any weekday evening at 5 o'clock and watch the stream of cars coming out of the two-level basement car park under the Civic Offices at Wood Quay to join the metallic flood heading homeward in all directions. And bear in mind that most of those who form part of this flood have no need to use their cars during the day.
These motorists are caught up in a private world. They can make phone calls, play CDs or just listen to the radio, including those all-too-predictable AA Roadwatch reports on the build-up of traffic to virtual gridlock levels. They are insulated from the common mass of humanity by their own personalised cocoon on wheels. And they love it.
Many of these lemming-like commuters have been supplied with company cars as executive perks. The Irish Times is not exempt from this trend.
Brendan O'Donoghue, now Director of the National Library, once confessed that one of the toughest tasks he had to face during his seven years as Secretary of the Department of the Environment was to negotiate a reduction in the number of parking spaces around the Custom House with the trade unions representing its staff.
Free car-parking is as jealously guarded as the right to private property; indeed, for many commuters with marked spaces in the basement of the International Financial Services Centre and other office blocks around town, it is a property right. The usually too-generous car-parking arrangements go with the building.
The Government could tax parking space as a benefit-in-kind, just like company cars. It could also, as the ESRI has suggested, introduce a level of road-pricing which would make car commuters think again about their choice of travel mode. If they were charged a fee for entering the city, at least some might be prompted to leave their cars at home.
Meanwhile, Dublin Bus is expected to run the least-subsidised public transport service of any capital city in Europe. Last year it was required to meet 96 per cent of its running costs from revenue; this year it will be 100 per cent. That's the real reason it faces the invidious position of having to drop "unprofitable" services, such as the No 13 route.
If public transport was valued for the contribution it could make to relieving traffic congestion, the Government would subsidise it as most governments do elsewhere in Europe. According to the last league table, the level of subsidy runs to 66 per cent in Brussels, 75 per cent in Amsterdam and 90 per cent in Rome, compared to Dublin's zero.
There are other ways to measure the low priority we assign to public transport. By the end of 1997, all 11 of the "quality bus corridors" recommended by the Dublin Transportation Initiative three years earlier were supposed to be installed. Yet, despite the impressive results achieved by QBCs in speeding up bus services, only five are in place.
The Dublin Transportation Office, which was set up as a sort of guardian to oversee implementation of the DTI's strategy, is prevented from doing anything of significance. It has been turned into a toothless tiger by the various agencies which are largely responsible for getting us into the present mess, through the dogged pursuit of their own agendas.
It will be interesting, and instructive, to see what progress is made on the DTO's plan for a 180km network of cycleways in the city and county. Cycling offers a real alternative to commuting by car; just think how much road space would be freed if 5,000 motorists left their cars at home and got up on their bikes. The effect would be transforming.
But cycling in Dublin has become increasingly dangerous as road rage grips the city's frustrated motorists. What's more, the facilities required to make it safer do not exist. Mr Ciaran Cuffe, transport spokesman of the Green Party, complains that the only dedicated cycleway in the inner city consists of a derisory 100 metres at the Four Courts.
The Government simply hasn't got the guts to deal with Dublin's traffic crisis. Would it agree, for example, to implement the seriously stringent fines for illegal parking which apply in London? There, an offender is likely to have his or her car wheel-clamped and must then travel to Marble Arch to pay a £120 "on-the-spot" fine to have it released.
Operation Freeflow is a transient thing, lasting about as long as the Christmas campaign against drink driving. For the rest of the year, we revert to form, treating the traffic laws as merely a set of aspirational measures. And even when they are enforced, it doesn't really matter because only a third of parking fines are actually paid.
Meanwhile, we dither endlessly about Luas - the DTI's major public transport project - ignoring concrete evidence from other cities which convincingly demonstrates that on-street light rail is the way forward. This, too, shows a lack of political will to take what is arguably the most important strategic decision facing Dublin and just get on with it.
Diverting the £220 million earmarked for Luas into road projects would not only destroy the DTI's balanced programme of investment, it would also be the height of folly. For even Bertie Ahern must realise that building more and more roads will only make things worse because the traffic would inevitably expand to fill the available road space.
As it is, we're using the new motorways as spines for the development of shopping centres and business parks which are themselves major traffic generators. And we're still building vast, sprawling estates of low-density, car-dependent suburban housing, without any reference to the availability of public transport. All of this is deeply unsustainable.
The point about the present situation is that it doesn't work for anyone. Not for the shoppers who want to drop into town in their runabouts, not for the cyclists who must weave in and out of heavy traffic, not for the public transport users who have to wait wearily at bus stops, not even for the commuters who are married to their cars.
As Mary Harney would say, somebody somewhere should do something about it.
Tomorrow: Prof James Crowley on the need for radical solutions - and a coherent policy - for Dublin's traffic congestion
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/SJQTLMCMMRC2PLALXUKEWWS6HU.png)