Dublin Corporation's Director of Traffic, Mr Owen Keegan, yesterday announced plans to impose further restrictions on private motorists travelling through the city centre, with the objective of freeing up the streets up for pedestrians, public transport and cyclists. It is hoped to halve the southbound flow of traffic through O'Connell St. More clearways will be created, narrowing the time available for commercial deliveries, and the number of cycle lanes is to be increased.
These plans build on earlier proposals to reduce north bound traffic and more generally to bring down the number of cars coming through the city centre. They form part of the wider and more long-term traffic plan for the Greater Dublin area directed by the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO). The city's rapidly growing population and greater prosperity in the last six years means that city officials have been chasing rapidly moving targets. But there is ample evidence that gradually these objectives are being achieved, even if some of them have been delayed and better co-ordination between different authorities could have been achieved.
Those criticisms were made of the DTO yesterday in the Comptroller and Auditor General's annual report. Delays in planning procedures are mostly to blame, holding up work on new bridges across the Liffey designed to cater for traffic diverted from the city centre. The DTO defends itself by pointing out that many of the figures are targets rather than precise objectives and that most of them have anyway been achieved. Standing back from the often chaotic traffic congestion it is possible to look forward to a more efficient transport system once the Luas scheme comes into operation in 2003 (it is on time and being implemented with much less disruption than many assumed).
That is the bigger picture. Yesterday's announcements are on a more micro scale; but on the evidence of previous initiatives they can definitely improve traffic flow and therefore the quality of life for the majority of city dwellers and users. This concerns not only Dubliners but all who come to the capital city.