Talking the Green bus around town

IT was raining, the wind was from January and we were on a bus travelling through the capital's north side as Mr Ciaran Cuffe told us how Dublin could be heaven - and Cork and Sligo and the rest of this green and pleasant land.

He is the Green Party's transport spokesman and was presenting its transport policy document, "Access all Areas", while we experienced public transport along a "quality bus corridor".

As we squeezed through the car lined streets of Stoneybatter, with cars in front of us and cars behind us, he told us of the bias in favour of the car and conjured a vision of treelined Liffey quays with snazzy lightrail trams swishing along sassy boulevards.

The reality? People living along the quays have a higher rate of respiratory problems than those living elsewhere, which he attributed to cars. The Greens are not against cars, they are just more for public transport, cycling and walking.

"Walking is healthy, does not cause pollution . . . walking uses renewable energy, takes up little room and is an ideal exercise for most age groups," the document tells us. The reality? The air around Stephen's Green is more polluted than in most parts of Dublin, he told us.

Cycling was "an exhilarating mode of travel", the document said, as was light rail, buses and trains except buses with a Z in the registration, which were the worst polluters, Mr Cuffe told us.

A young man rode bareback on his horse past our non-Z bus. The Green Party also has a policy on the horse as transport.

While Mr Cuffe told us about traffic calming, kerbdishing, the evils of multistorey ear parks getting tax designation, the pedestrianisation of Dublin's city centre, we crawled slowly back to the civic offices from whence we came.