The tsar's mode of transport

Emissions: "Only losers take the bus," sang Cathal Coughlan and his band Fatima Mansions all those years ago.

The video for this jaunty tune showed the wily Cathal on a bus surrounded by self-same underachievers, and pretty bleak it was too. He may have had his tongue shoved so far into his cheek it was threatening to burst through or he may have been making a serious socio-political point, you would have to ask him.

The pre-boom Ireland of which he spoke was, in truth, a miserable kip. We were - unless we were politicians or builders - by and large penniless and downtrodden, a dirty smudge on the world economic map. Those of us who didn't skive off to foreign shores in search of fame and fortune were left behind to nurture our cirrhosis and bitterness, riding smoky Dublin buses to stand in dole queues in a city resembling a grimier version of East Berlin. But that's all changed now. We're all rich, rich beyond our wildest dreams!! Ain't it grand?

One side effect of this new-found prosperity is the pathological need of the Irish nouveau riche to ostentatiously parade their wealth everywhere. And what better way than to buy a flash car?

So attached did people become to their four-wheeled bank-balance indicators that the mere thought of getting on a bus became abhorrent to them.

"Not use my car?" they protested, looking at you as if you had suggested they ditch their designer clothes and don bin liners instead. "I bought it, didn't I? How is anyone supposed to know how rich/sexy/powerful I am now, eh?"

As a result, Dublin has become little more than a massive car-park. But there is some hope. The tide could well be turning.

Figures released last week show more and more capital commuters are accepting defeat in the face of overwhelming traffic odds and are turning to the bus.

Dublin Bus passenger numbers were up almost 10 per cent in 2002 over the previous year. More and more motorists have swallowed their pride and had themselves surgically removed from their steering wheels, having come to realise, as they whizz past in the QBCs, that the multitudes stuck in interminable traffic jams are the real losers.

We in the meeja love whinging and moaning about the chaos surrounding Dublin's transport system.

I would be the first to admit it's a very soft target. But I have to hand it to Owen Keegan, the Dublin traffic tsar, who makes a valid point. The simple reality, he says, is there will always be traffic jams, it's the nature of a large city.

Whinging and moaning about it won't get you to work any quicker. Taking a bus will.

Me, I'm quite fond of the bus. You hand over your few grubby coins, ceding all responsibility to the driver as you space off out the window, grinning at motorists dug into their trenches. Then you alight at the other end, leaving someone else with all the hassles of parking and clamping and taxing and insuring and NCT testing and all the other trials of car-ownership. Easy.

Admittedly, I could do without being drooled on by semi-conscious junkies while having my shins split open by a youngwan shoving her pram up the aisle to escape the granny who's trying to get her to lance her boils for her. But, you takes yer chances . . .

It's life, innit? I would infinitely prefer that to being stuck in a car with nothing for company but the whinging drone of Joe "I care, honest, I really do" Duffy. The horror, the horror.

By the way, why does Keegan get to be a traffic tsar? What does that make aul' Mr Brennan? The transport emperor?

Now that I think of it, he does have the look of Napoleon about him at times. If the Luas becomes Brennan's Waterloo, the grassy area in the centre of the Red Cow roundabout can be his Elba. He can shelter under the flyover.

It's the least we can do for him. And, unlike the Corsican Casanova, he means well.