Madam, - Philip Mahony (May 30th) calls for the services of independent consultants to carry out an assessment of the height of the Dublin Port Tunnel. Such a study has already been carried out.
The Dublin Port Authority carried out an assessment of more than 500,000 vehicles travelling through the port and found that fewer than 1 per cent of heavy goods vehicles (0.69 per cent, to be exact) were too large to fit in the Port Tunnel.
The Port Tunnel is designed to best international standards. Its height exceeds that of most European tunnels. The trend in Europe is towards limiting the height of trucks and virtually all of our EU partners are operating to a maximum of 4 meters.
Besides, where could these oversize trucks travel within this country? Most roads would be inaccessible because of the height restrictions of existing bridges.
Iarnród Éireann recently reported that 350 of its bridges were too low for these trucks. We cannot replace all our existing infrastructure to facilitate a tiny percentage of vehicles. - Yours, etc.,
TIM BRICK, Project Manager, Dublin Port Tunnel, East Wall Road, Dublin 3.