Commuter Belt

Michael Smith, Chairman, An Taisce

How do you travel to work? On foot. I live in a battered pre-Georgian house on Ormond Quay in Dublin, where Bachelors Walk was filmed, and I can walk from there to An Taisce's headquarters, in Tailors Hall.

How long does it take? It's a five minute walk

What time do you leave? It varies. I work from home quit a lot, so I go into the office two or three times a week. Twice a week at 8.20 a.m., I take my four-year-old to her school in Ranelagh in my Mercedes, which runs on vegetable oil.

What time do you arrive home? It varies.

Do you travel the same route every day? No. As I work a lot from home and only go into the office two or three times a week, I set up meetings in local hotels. I am also within a few minutes' walk of the Civic Offices, the Four Courts, An Bord Pleanala and both Heuston and Connolly stations.

What do you enjoy about your commute? A walk through the city centre evokes all forms of human life and every variety and age of building. Thankfully, for both reasons, Dublin city retains a certain dynamic charm.

What bothers you most about your commute? The incessant port-bound lorries and half-filled cars, which make the quays one of the most polluted places in Europe - and so, for aficionados, crossing the Liffey is a single-minded race to avoid being trapped kerbside by an unsympathetic traffic light. Also, I have never overcome my aggravation that the Liffey remains an underused and inaccessible divider of the city rather than a beloved principal axis.

Would you change your mode of transport if you could? No.

How could your journey be improved? If Dublin Transportation Office pursued a shoot-to-kill policy for single-occupancy car drivers. Generally, though, I could not live anywhere more convenient. I save an hour and a half each day over the "competition".