Revamping our public transport system would mean end of congestion woes

Once again December has seen heavy traffic congestion in every town and city. The frenzy of commercial activity, added to the scrum of commuters, threatens to grind us to a halt.

The cause of traffic congestion is a deficient public transport system. This is at its most obvious in Dublin, but is just as true in Cork, Limerick and, to a lesser extent, Galway and Waterford. All measures that purport to solve the problem, but fail to address this deficiency, are doomed. It is wrong to blame the problem solely on car-users. In an outbreak of influenza do we blame "selfish patients" for clogging needed hospital beds? Do we suggest that charging them as much as possible and trying to make the beds uncomfortable is the way to improve things?

It is every bit as ridiculous to suggest that car-drivers are the problem in Dublin. They are the symptom. Heaping financial burdens on them is worse than useless. It will prevent people using Dublin city centre and will be a serious disincentive to businesses to locate there. Measures like road-pricing or additional taxes have no place in the debate in Dublin and will not have until public transport is vastly improved.

If a major business attempted to run its affairs in the way that Dublin runs its transport, it would collapse.

No leadership exists and no decision-making process exists. The number of agencies that contribute is huge. I can count over 20, including Dublin Corporation and another six regional authorities, the Garda and the Departments of Justice, the Environment and Public Enterprise, four CIE companies, the DTO, representatives of private bus operators, taxis and hackneys. Add to this the various utilities, developers and builders, and everyone from skip operators to traders' groups whose activities have an effect on how long it takes people to move around the streets.

There is a desperate need to provide clear lines of responsibility so that someone is actually in charge. That person should have the authority to ensure that Freeflow resources are properly used, that roadworks activities are co-ordinated and to enforce directives on parking.

This authority must be enforceable and must extend over every mode of transport entering or within the metropolitan area. It is this lack of leadership that allows such crazy situations as commercial deliveries and refuse collections to cause such chaos. We do have a Director of Traffic, Mr Owen Keegan. But while he has authority over his patch, this only relates to the corporation's activities. The DTO's brief encompasses all agencies, but only in an advisory role and with no teeth.

There are immediate measures which, notwithstanding the underlying problem of public transport, could make a difference.

We can allow multi-occupancy cars to use bus lanes. This would mean that these would become "efficient vehicle lanes" so that cars with two or more people would be able to use them. This would put an end to the situation where long lines of jammed cars sit alongside empty bus lanes on which buses come at intervals of up to 10 minutes, as happens regularly on the Malahide Road.

It would encourage car-owners to use their vehicles more efficiently and would free road space by reducing the number of single-occupant cars. This system operates very successfully in some American cities; it is also being tested in the British cities of Leeds and Bristol with promising early results.

We can provide Operation Freeflow all year round. The plans are well developed and understood from the experience of the last two years in the run-up to Christmas. This is a low-cost measure requiring an investment of £5 million, according to the DTO. There is a need to ensure this money is ring-fenced for traffic duties.

We can install commuter park-and-ride sites. This is an uncomplicated system that works in many cities. It has not been tried in Dublin, with the exception this year of two shoppers' park-and-ride sites for December only. Park-and-ride requires a level of subsidy to operate efficiently, which should be provided immediately and channelled via the DTO.

The city has no choice. If we wish to maintain economic competitiveness and quality of life for our citizens, we must accept that we need to pay for public transport. Dublin Bus, the most important arm of our public transport system, gets 96 per cent of its operating revenue from fares. By the standards of continental Europe, this is nothing short of ridiculous, as Mr Ciaran Cuffe correctly pointed out in The Irish Times recently. Expecting people to stand in the rain waiting for buses that are unreliable, uncomfortable and, more often than not, stuffed full, is crazy. Telling people that they are to blame when they choose to use a car instead is insulting.

Additional resources announced by Ms Mary O'Rourke to buy new buses are a welcome start, provided that the Government recognises that this is only a start. Other improvements need to be funded on a project-by-project basis. These include the installation of "real-time" information units at bus-stops and, crucially, integrated ticketing.

Dublin Bus must also acknowledge that, while poor funding is a serious handicap, there are other problems to address. Industrial relations difficulties need to be resolved. Better funding and a greater level of respect for their public transport role will enable them to make a fresh start. They will need to reinvent themselves, leave behind the ethos of the 1970s and become much more customer-focused.

The M50 completion, the Port Tunnel and the Luas light rail system have been delayed by the planning process. Each has the potential to make a major contribution to solving the traffic problem, especially now that Luas is to be underground in the city centre, but we cannot sit back and wait for them to arrive.

Providing no further delays occur, the M50 is due to be completed in 2003, the Port Tunnel also in 2003, the first of the Luas lines from Tallaght to Connolly by 2002 and the rest of the first phase of Luas lines from 2003.

The Eastern By-Pass should also be considered in order to finish the C-Ring. Mr Ciaran Cuffe is wrong on this issue: the Eastern By-Pass would be a boon to the city, precisely because it would pull traffic out of residential areas.

Delays in these projects have been a problem, but they are no excuse for not managing what we have more efficiently.

It is perfectly possible for Dublin to cope with its transport needs. Better management will help enormously in itself, but what is needed most of all is a change in attitude towards public transport. This means spending much more money on it.