AND so yet another initiative to cope with the stark horrors of Dublin traffic has been announced. Excellent.
A question: will the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO) be as resoundingly successful as the second doors on Dublin buses, which have been in existence now for the best part of 20 years and which have never been used because of union objections? Or will it compare with the plans for pre paid tickets as the norm, introduced about 10 years ago, with people still fumbling for pennies while the entire bus waits?
Or will it be as successful as the DART bus feeder service, which seems to run at times unrelated to the DART timetable? Or will it be as swiftly successful as the Dublin traffic consultancy study announced by the Minister, Brendan Howlin, a year ago, but which has still not begun while an inter departmental wrangle between different government departments continues on its merry way?
And when one considers that one of the departments involved in this year long consultancy over a consultancy is the Department of Justice, the poor old heartthuds slowly to a sorry halt. It is a week since I risked the Department of Justice about what happened to Sean Kinsella, the murderer of Senator Billy Fox, the only member of the Oireachtas murdered in these "Troubles".
The department managed to lose him from one of its jails its press office has still not managed to come up with an answer. Does it care about these things? Is a week a reasonable length of time for any query in the weird and wonderful world of DOJ city? It's hardly surprising that consulting on a consultancy should take a year of valuable DOJ time.
Traffic Thrombosis
And, of course, with DOJ having a say in the future of Dublin traffic, is it any wonder that the city is now being strangled by immobile cars from dawn to dusk? Welcome to DOJ city. It is certainly not surprising to see that one element identified in the first report by the Dublin Transportation Office for the thrombosis killing DOJ city is the Department of Justice's failure to invest enough in tow away vehicles and pound space to remove illegally parked cars. In 1994 just over 7,300 cars were towed away, one of them mine last year, the figure was 4,204 - and this at a time when illegal parking had become endemic.
In any other area of Irish life, where improvement has become a norm, such failure would have caused reprimands, heads plopping into baskets; not in DOJ city. When one sees that one of the items the new Director of Traffic will take charge of is traffic wardens, on the spot parking fines and wheel clamping, one wonders: has DOJ done anything to prepare the legal ground for this?
Probably not, though the entire programme of car seizure is unconstitutional - which was not, of course, the reason for DOJ's dereliction of its duty over recent years - because it has involved non judicial mandatory fines. Had I won the National Lottery, I would by this time be suing the department in Strasbourg for its violation of my constitutional right to have a trial before a punishment.
The year is 1996, and the time to have attended to the problems of Dublin traffic was 10 years ago, when traffic was relatively light; not now, when it is impossible. Traffic management is like a roof: when the weather's good, you don't bother to mend it; when it's wet, you can't. Dublin traffic is a nightmare; any attempt to ease the nightmare by laying down light rail will only intensify the nightmare while construction is under way.
Shuffling Queues
What is the alternative to cars? Dublin Bus remains a tragedy for those dependent on it, people counting coins in shuffling queues on the bus platforms. I walk from one end of O'Connell Street to the other faster than a bus travels its modest length.
The DART serves the regions with the highest car ownership in the land; it has not moderated traffic flow from those areas, but merely given the most affluent alternative modes of transport. Julian can have the Beamer while Tarquin takes the DORT to heng aboat being kyool in Temple Bor, yew knyow what I myean, loike.
And there are bicycles, the most sensible transport of all - clean, efficient, non polluting, and held in such high regard by the traffic managers of the city that there are virtually no bike parks in Dublin. There was one at the bottom of Grafton Street, I recall; that made way for the kitsch statue of Molly Malone, as if Molly Malone had been a real Dublin character, rather - than what she actually was an invented person in a Scottish music hall song of the last century, which had originally run - In Glasgow's fair city...
But, no matter. In DOJ city we sacrificed expediency to convenient myth - and sacrificed a bike stand. And bikes are held in such high regard by the Garda Siochana that, though they are probably the most stolen object in Dublin, theft of bicycles and receiving stolen bicycles constitute uninvestigated crime.
Bike Authority
Perhaps the first step the DTO should undertake is a bike authority for DOJ city - bike lanes on all roads, with summary confiscation of any cars found trespassing in them; equally, summary confiscation and impounding (in one of DOJ city's nice new car pounds) of any bicycle on the roads at night time without working lights; bike parks under video surveillance; and, most vital of all, armed bike police who, by law, would be entitled to feed bicycle thieves to wild dogs.
And, in the meantime, what can be done about cars? Parking laws are interpreted as meaning "double yellow lines mean parking permitted". And parking fines are ludicrously low - they certainly are less than the cost of processing them. They should, in fact, be revenue raising. It might be tempting to bar cars from the city centre, but to do so would probably drive shoppers to suburban malls.
But this is all hypothesis. Chances are we'll still be talking about this in a year's time; two years' time; three years' time - right here, in good old DOJ city.