Clampdown on traffic is welcome

Yesterday the lucky number was seven. It's a little game that I play on the way home from the office: how many vehicles will be parked in the clearway on Rathmines Road. Of those a few had the characteristic flashing hazard lights, presumably to tell the world that they have granted themselves permission to park for a few minutes.

Other features of the Dublin landscape include the abandoned skip in the bus lane, the empty tour bus double-parked while the driver yawns through his newspaper and a delivery truck disgorging goods from the back. While the commuters pile up in ever longer tailbacks behind these characters, a lone traffic warden wanders along placing tickets on any private car that has overstayed its time at a parking meter.

The most maddening aspect of these traffic delays is that they are totally unnecessary. The economic efficiency of the city, not to mention the sanity of its drivers, is being severely hampered by this complacent and uncaring attitude to road use coupled with haphazard enforcement. Since the demise of Operation Freeflow, which disappeared without trace soon after it was announced that it was a permanent initiative, this city has not made any serious effort to manage its traffic properly.

Dublin has a public transport deficit. It is this more than anything else that causes its traffic problems. We are too car dependent for commuting because the drivers of those cars cannot reliably reach their offices on time by using any other transport mode.

There are those who are determined to see the car as the enemy. "Four wheels bad, two wheels good" is a line of argument that one frequently comes across, not least in this newspaper. However, this is not an argument that offers any solution; it merely offers blame.

We must as a matter of urgency put a major investment into Dublin Bus. We must also finish the big infrastructure projects such as the Port Tunnel, the M50 and Luas. We must build the cycle lanes and the Quality Bus Corridors. But in the meantime we can have a major impact on the traffic delays just by running our affairs properly. It isn't difficult to do this. Freeflow could run all year round for £8 million.

Those of us who drive in Dublin do not have it easy. In the absence of a public transport alternative we come into the city in our hundreds of thousands by car. We endure the traffic delays that result and we also get scapegoated as being the source of the problem. We are not; we are just the most visible symptom.

From this week our situation should improve. Dublin Corporation has announced a series of new measures to control illegal parking. The most obvious of these is the new clamping service. This is something that the AA took a lot of convincing on because we have seen clamps work badly in other European cities, notably in Britain. We repeatedly urged Dublin Corporation to learn lessons from these mistakes and to make the new regime as user friendly as possible.

I have to acknowledge that Dublin Corporation listened to our concerns and we have ended up with a system that should work well and should enjoy the support of the motoring public. AA research last year showed that (excluding 8.2 per cent "don't knows") 66.7 per cent of Dublin motorists would support wheel clamping, which gives some indication of how annoyed people are about bad parking.

I am greatly encouraged by the promise of Owen Keegan, director of traffic, that the guiding ethos will be one of service and that the priority will not be to catch offenders but to keep Dublin moving.

A good feature is the new "yellow card" warnings. Teams of spotters will place stickers on vehicles warning that a clamping vehicle is on the way. This gives the offending driver an opportunity to move out of the way and should also guard against people being clamped because of an honest mistake.

The fee will be £65 and credit card payments will be accepted over the telephone. There is a commitment to declamp within an hour of receipt of payment.

Perhaps most satisfying of all for the honest drivers among us is the news that skips will be removed and that specially made large clamps will be used on trucks and buses.

Other measures like an enhanced tow-away system, computerised parking tickets and a reshaping of the traffic wardens service will be coming on line in the next few months.

The AA will be watching this new system develop. In the meantime it deserves to be given a chance. It is perhaps the first example of a constructive and co-operative approach to controlling the type of car use that can paralyse a city.

Well done, Dublin Corporation.

Conor Faughnan is public affairs manager of the AA.