Monday is Car Free Day, when the car-owning public across Europe are encouraged to leave the car at home, and exercise both their initiative and their legs in thinking about alternative means of getting around, writes Rosita Boland
It's a day to focus attention on our obsession with cars and our ever-increasing dependence on them. One in three of us in the State now owns a car. That statistic includes children, so take a moment to count how many - or rather, how few - adults you know who don't have a car.
Car Free Day began in France in 1998 and was established as a European-wide initiative by the European Commissioner in 2000. Last year, almost 1,500 towns and cities participated in the day across Europe, by closing off city-centre streets, encouraging people to walk or cycle, and running free buses. In Ireland this year, the number of participating towns has increased from 10 to 18.
The designated date is September 22nd, which means that each year it falls on a different day of the week; last year it was a Sunday, a day without the extra challenges of commuting and school runs that this year's event brings.
Many Irish people now consider a car to be a necessity; a social and economic development which has occurred in less than a generation. The consensus of drivers is that no matter how many years it took you to get a car, once you have one, you don't want to go back to not having one. And, as of 2000, the year of the latest available figures from the Central Statistics Office, there were 1,319,250 car-owners in the State. If you consider that at least half of all cars are owned and run by a couple or a family, maning one or more people have access to a car in that household, the statistic leaves proportionally fewer homes in the State without a car.
So, what about those people who don't have cars? Is it down to economics, personal choice, political and environmental statements, or social circumstances? Ann Leyden (73) lives a steep and hilly mile or so from the village of Arigna in the part of rural Co Roscommon which is Co Leitrim in all but name, as it is so close to the Border. Now a widow, she raised a family here in the isolated farmhouse where she still lives, with its precious hard-won garden, huge skies and views out over Lough Allen far below. The Leyden family never had a car.
Her friend and neighbour from a few miles further distant, Maureen Daly (77), sits in the living-room with her, having tea. She also grew up in Arigna, and raised a family here. She is also now a widow and, like Leyden, never learned to drive.
"We never had the money for a car. Money went on essential things, like a tractor and then a mower," Leyden explains. "We all had bikes, or walked everywhere. A bike was great for putting two big heavy bags on either side of the handles. And the walking, you'd think nothing of it, you were always walking. Now I have relations coming to stay, and they ask me to go out for a walk with them. 'Where to?' says I. 'Nowhere, just around,' they say. 'Don't ask me to walk nowhere', says I, 'I'm walking long enough in my life to get somewhere!' "
They point out that public transport decades ago was much better. Until the 1950s, a narrow-gauge railway went to Arigna. Today, there is no public transport of any kind to link Arigna with the nearby towns of Drumshanbo, Carrick-on-Shannon and Boyle. There was a local hackney, which they rented cheaply for shopping trips or trips to the seaside at Bundoran. They cycled to dances and to Mass. Until 20 years ago, travelling shops came from Sligo, right to the door.
"Nothing was ever on time in those days," Daly explains. "So it never mattered if it took you a long time to get there."
They both recall Masses starting long after the designated hour.
Today, there is no public transport to Arigna, there are no travelling shops, no cheap local hackneys, and bikes have been replaced by cars.
A neighbour brings Leyden to Boyle once a week for the Active Age group, and which is mainly comprised of people from outlying areas, who all depend on lifts to get them there. The lack of local transport is the one big issue everyone talks about.
"There's lots of places people would go if they had more transport. Just because you're old doesn't mean you don't want to get out, but here you need a taxi to get you to a bus, and taxis rob you now," Leyden says.
"It's a big regret for me that I never learned to drive," Daly says wistfully, several times. Both women are pragmatic about the merits and drawbacks of cars.
"Cities are polluted. City people should be told to walk or get a bus," Leyden declares. "But out here, a car is a lifeline. We did suffer without one. I think people in rural areas really need cars. It's not fair to ask people to do without them."
Both women agree that without their attentive family members, who live nearby, and various helpful car-driving neighbours, who take them to Mass, out shopping and to social events, they would have left their rural homes long ago to move to a town. Cliché or not, community is everything.
Marketing manager Enda Saul (30) and IT consultant Eanna Cunnane (30) are a couple living in city-centre Dublin who don't have a car. Nor do they want one, not in the near future anyway. They both drive, but learned chiefly so that they could rent cars when on holiday abroad. They each have bikes, and use buses, taxis and the DART, and say that living close to where they work is the big freedom.
"I think people have very strong relationships with their cars," Saul says. "People have come to think of the car as being their own personal space, and that's part of the reason they want to be in their own little cube, rather than on a bus."
"To me, a car only makes economic sense in Ireland if you use it every day, and the problem is that then you're wasting a huge part of every day sitting in traffic. There is definitely a status thing attached to having a car," says Cunnane. Then he thinks for a while. "Most of our friends would have cars. Are we very weird?"