Vicious circles

It's a Friday morning and Motors is behind the wheel. We're on our way to meet a legend, a veritable colossus in Irish society, a figure ingrained in the psyche of those of you who hold all things motoring dear to heart.

No, we don't have an audience with Eddie Jordan or Eddie Irvine. We're not even on our way to have lunch with Minister Brennan or Transport Tsar Keegan. Indeed not, we're crawling down the M50 bound for the Holy Cow of Motoring . . . the Red Cow that is.

This genius in traffic management and roundabout design is to Ireland's road network what Roy Keane is to Irish soccer. You may love it, you may hate it, maybe you can't live with it, but you probably can't live without it either.

Red Cow is an innocent sod, but ambitious at the same time. It has a hard job and, if it wasn't for the insistence of you guys daring to drive to work or down the country, life would be easy. Be it Naas, Limerick, Cork, Crumlin or the City Centre you're after, Red Cow is willing, not necessarily able, to point you in the right direction.

Sporting three sets of lights and any number of exits this melting pot in roundabout design has a hard time of it. More than 80,000 cars, trucks, vans, motorbikes and buses trundle through each day, and for what thanks . . . AA Roadwatch warnings and impolite drivers bashing their way through anything that lies in the way to proceed an extra inch.

The day Motors chose to visit was like any other day - there was just enough time to finish the last chapter in Harry Potter by the time we reached the first set of lights, and we had the back broken on War and Peace by the time we reached the third exit.

There were one or two lost Eminem fans thrown into the mix, wandering hither and tither in their muppet mobiles looking for the way home. Note: this roundabout was not built for Eminem fans.

Having safely negotiated the Slim Shadies and other mad motorists, we left Ireland's answer to Paris's Arc de Triomphe interchange and zoomed off back to the toll plaza before finally finding a nice patch of hard shoulder to pull in on and call the National Roads Authority. Motors wanted a few things explained.

Roundabouts are democratic - and that's official

First things first. What is the point of roundabouts? "Roundabouts can deliver traffic flow and management benefits, depending on the volume of traffic, the size of the roundabout and the number of roads converging on it," a spokesman for the National Roads Authority explained.

"They are an alternative to the standard junction where through traffic dictates. Everybody gets their chance."

Fair enough. That makes sense. But why the hell are there traffic lights on this solution to traffic congestion. Why? Tell me why?

"We're dealing with a difficult situation. The volume of traffic has reached levels the experts at the time said would not be achieved for years to come. There was an expectation that we would have achieved a good lifespan out of it."

Okay, so nobody knew the Celtic Tiger would produce greedy, petrol guzzling consumers with no alternative than to negotiate the Red Cow roundabout. That's fair enough too, we're the victims of our own success.

Basically, when the Red Cow roundabout was built all those years ago the "experts" had no idea so many people would be able to afford cars in 2003. They probably expected a functioning public transport system to be in place by now.

But that's okay because Luas is on the way. So, we'll all jump out of our cars and onto public transport? Right?

Well, even if we do, and we might not, we will still have to negotiate the Red Cow Roundabout, as the trams are set to go through the junction. Luas use of the Red Cow Roundabout does fit in with stated Government policy, as set out in the Dublin Transportation Office's Platform for Change document which says growth should move away from private transport and towards public transport.

So, is the Red Cow Roundabout going to change in any way over the coming years? "Plans have been drawn up for this and other interchanges," says the NRA.

Great, what do they involve? "The plan involves adding an extra lane and taking the traffic lights out of these roundabouts, allowing a freeflow of traffic."

Excellent! That should make a big difference to motoring life. When will work start on this? "It will be very costly, about €700 million, and there will be difficulty fitting this in with other projects."

So, it ain't going to happen this side of Roy Keane and Eminem declaring their undying love for each other.