It started off some 14 years back as a bit of crack, with a title that sounded like it was lifted straight out of some adventure film, The Eye in the Sky. Breakfast radio seemed very American all of a sudden, with traffic reports and jokey banter, courtesy of Electric Eddie from a helicopter every morning. Traffic, what traffic? The country laughed into its cornflakes and decided there were so few jobs around that someone had invented one by sending some lad up in a chopper of a morning to look at the empty roads of Dublin.
By the end of last year, traffic had become a hot topic. It was being photographed frequently for newspapers and popping up regularly on television, like some sort of air-headed media babe, simply famous for being famous. It arrived on the news pages, from where it has rarely strayed. It spawned a whole new vocabulary: gridlock, tail-back, road-rage. Tourists visiting the country were heard inquiring at newsagents for John Hinde postcards of those famous old scenic Irish routes: Lower Glamire Road, Firhouse Roundabout, and Rock Road.
Bob Conway took over as the inquiring eye in the sky seven years ago from Electric Eddie. There was scope for another nickname for the new incumbent, along the lines of Chopper Conway or some such tag, but a lot had changed on the roads since Electric Eddie first entertained us. It's probably not coincidental that a whacky nickname for the new reporter never stuck. Traffic was becoming a more serious topic.
When AA Roadwatch came in as sponsors three years ago, the morning traffic report was renamed as the stern-sounding Sky Patrol. By the time Conway was on the case for AA Roadwatch, there was no air-time left for jokes and there was a lot more traffic.
"When I first started going up, seven years ago," Conway says, "we were looking for things to report. The traffic was just sauntering along. The road system was always bad, but there weren't as many cars then to test how bad it was. Nowadays, there's always so much stuff I have to leave out of the report because there's so much happening."
Five mornings a week, weather conditions permitting, a Robinson R22 helicopter leaves the Weston Aerodrome near Leixlip. Conway and his pilot are there at 7.30 a.m. and usually take off at 8 a.m., returning 40 or 50 minutes later. The helicopter shuts down by 9 a.m. While in the air, Conway makes four reports. Two are for Morning Ireland, at 8.15 a.m. and 8.45 a.m., with 20 seconds maximum airtime. The other two are for 2FM, at 8.20 a.m. and 8.40 a.m., running for up to 45 seconds each time. By switching channels, it's possible to hear all four reports.
So, do the reports make any difference to commuters? The taxi driver bringing me to Weston Aerodrome snorts in derision. "All they do is read yesterday's script," he offers. "They just tell us about all the usual suspects day in, day out - Firhouse roundabout, Rock Road, Newland's Cross. It's always the same."
Since the Robinson R22 is a very wee helicopter, seating only pilot and one passenger, it's not possible to go up in the air with Conway while he is reporting - or should that be patrolling? We arrive at Weston Aerodrome just before Conway makes his first report to Morning Ireland, somewhere over the quays, where there has been a crash earlier that morning.
Apart from the light aircraft and assorted helicopters on the grass, there are other things with wings at Weston Aerodrome which you don't expect to see when you're thinking traffic. Peacocks. Loads of them. They run scuttling among the little planes, chasing each other, stopping briefly to preen those extraordinary feathers. Some of them let off those heart-stopping screeches. Peahens take shelter under the wing off a light aircraft. The taxi driver is greatly amused at the informal mascots of Weston. "Peacocks can't really fly," he points out.
The helicopter takes a different route across the city every day. Conway takes up a personal stereo radio with him, a mobile phone, a microphone and a portable transmitter. The helicopter does not fly on electronic controls, so none of this interferes with flight procedures. "I listen to the radio like everyone else and when the station calls me in, I just report straight in." His headphones are specially adapted, so that he can listen to the pilot with one ear and to his radio with the other.
On the morning we arrived, Conway's route over the city took him first to the quays, to report on the accident outside Heuston Station. Then he went on to Fairview, across to Dundrum, Ballinteer, Rathmines, Firhouse and the Clonee bypass. "The crash on the quays highlights how badly planned central city traffic routes are," he says. "Once traffic gets into town, it gets stuck in those arteries down the quays and if anything goes wrong there, that's another 20 or 30 minutes on to your journey."
Conway has had his share of people ragging him about the mantra-like quality of his morning reports - it seems as if nothing ever changes, so why bother reporting it? "People say to me that I say the same thing every day - and I do say a lot of the same things every day - but if I didn't say those things, then people would wonder what was happening in those areas. Basically, the general traffic situation doesn't change from day to day. But what we do is report on all the unusual things that happen, which add to the problems. And that does make a difference."
In November last year, Lansdowne Market Research surveyed how the Republic's motorists' listen to the AA Roadwatch reports: 43 per cent of all motorists surveyed listened to Sky Patrol on Radio One and 52 per cent listened to it on 2FM. In Dublin, 69 per cent of motorists were aware of the helicopter traffic reports, which means that whatever Dubliners think of the service, over two-thirds of them listen to it anyway.
When the helicopter comes into view at the end of the morning's run, tiny on the thin grey horizon, the peacocks leg it for cover. Conway gets out, clutching his transmitter and other broadcasting equipment. It is about as small as helicopters come outside Toymaster. I get in. The peacocks screech in solidarity from the edge of the field. The pilot is Barry O'Connor; there are two pilots on the team, each works every second week.
Dublin looks predictably strange from this height - the helicopter is flying lower than airplane flights that come in over Swords, and the glass wraparound cockpit gives the illusion of a levitating fish bowl. It's harder than you would imagine to identify the various roads and landmarks, but it certainly is possible to see for a wonderfully long way. The helicopter will only go up if there is a 1,000 feet cloud-base visibility and a horizontal visibility of five kilometres.
I'm supposed to be looking at the traffic, but it's just too beguiling not to be distracted by the perfectly symmetrical doll-house proportions of Collins Barracks, and the threadlike Bull Wall, and the triangle of D'Olier and Fleet Street, and practically everything else, except jammed roads. Then the helicopter tilts to one side in a gust of wind, so it's obviously time to concentrate.
The motorways with their twisting flyovers are like versions of Scalectrix. At 9.10 a.m. the West Link road is still full up, as is that big, bad, old Rock Road, and there's a backlog from Merrion Gates, but the Firhouse roundabout is clear! When you're watching the traffic patterns from the air, it does all take on a surreal, war-zone type aura. These are the familiar battlegrounds we hear of each day, with journeys to work there for the winning or losing. It's certainly a long way from Electric Eddie and his Empty Roads of the Eighties. Such a long way, you might as well call it a tail-back.
