The domino effect

This ranting and raving that I engage in takes a lot out of me. My heart is heavy with the burden of it all

This ranting and raving that I engage in takes a lot out of me. My heart is heavy with the burden of it all. I'm beaten down, writes Kilian Doyle.

Weary. Sometimes I'd like to be nice about somebody, something. It is Christmas after all. But there's little hope of that. There's always a bit of brazen gobshitery that cannot be allowed pass unremarked upon.

And what have we opening to the misfortunate public next week but possibly the greatest act of misplanning that I've had the misfortune to witness in my short, pitiful existence? I speak, of course, of Dublin's Port Tunnel.

Sure, 'tis a cracking idea in theory. In theory, it'll transform the city centre from a grimy, noisy truck-infested killing field into a breezy, sunlit meadow full of happy, smiling folk exuding waves of joy as they gambol in their new playground. Lovely. In theory.

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But I smell disaster. Rank clouds of it are wafting my way from the tunnel's gaping maw as I type. First, there's access. How anybody thought having the tunnel surface in the middle of the M1, forcing hundreds of trucks into the fast - and I use that term in the loosest possible sense - lane of said motorway to get in or out of it is beyond me. Perhaps someone neglected to tell whoever sanctioned this act of lunacy that we drive on the left in Ireland?

Maybe they weren't told it's a penalty point offence for heavy trucks to travel in the outside lane of a motorway. So truckers have the option of either breaking the law or engaging in the insanely dangerous act of weaving their way through traffic on entering or leaving the tunnel. Genius, you'll agree.

The solution? Traffic lights. On a motorway. Even more genius.

Worse still, it has emerged the tunnel's operators expect it to be shut down at least once every fortnight due to crashes and other incidents.

One shunt, one puncture, one empty fuel tank or one spilled load could create a domino effect, leaving traffic backed up through the tunnel, into Dublin Port, over to Holyhead and all the way to Birmingham.

I have nothing but sympathy for the unfortunate underling who'll have to explain to hundreds of angry, time-pressed truckers that they'll have to reverse back to a holding pen in Dublin Port because some hairdresser who didn't realise she needed to put petrol in her hybrid SUV has broken down. Unlike her head, these things don't run on air, despite what their smugger-than-thou tax-dodging owners would like us to think.

So who, pray tell, will have the guts to stand up and admit he's to blame for this aberration? (I'm not an unreasonable man. I'm not looking for the culprit to commit hari kiri on the plinth of Leinster House so we caall see his guts for ourselves. A bit of mea culpa, a fawning apology and a cast-in-reinforced-concrete promise to go away and never, ever touch a penny of taxpayers' money again will suffice.)

Not, evidently, Martin Cullen, who plumped-up his plumage and proudly told the Dáil last week hauliers will soon be able to get from the port to the M50 "in six minutes". He didn't explain how they were supposed to get their trucks on and off the helicopters. Or maybe he thinks there's another way to do it?

I predict it'll be such a disaster that not one trucker will use the thing, rendering it as obsolete as Cullen's other great triumph, electronic voting machines. Perhaps he'd see sense and cut his losses by using the tunnel to store the voting machines instead? Maybe he'd even be good enough to volunteer to venture underground and guard them himself.

As that would be a round-the-clock job, it'd mean we'd have to forego the pleasure of seeing him at the unveiling of every patch of tarmac in the land for the sake of saving a few quid. I, for one, am prepared to make that sacrifice.