Madam, - On Tuesday evening my daughter and I were waiting for the no. 4 bus outside the Merrion Shopping Centre in Dublin. We met a man in a wheelchair who was trying to get back to UCD after a visit to St Vincent's Hospital.
We saw a no. 3 bus approaching which indicated that it was going to Belfield, so he raced around the corner to Nutley Lane to catch it.
From the slow pace of southbound traffic it seemed he would have no problem getting to the stop in time. Imagine my surprise when he came back a few minutes later and said the driver had sailed right past him even though he had easily reached the bus stop.
What's worse is that the man wasn't even surprised: he told me that in the five months he has been in Dublin this has happened to him many times - and with taxi- drivers as well. He said, philosophically, that drivers think people in wheelchairs are a pain.
He decided it would be easier to get a bus into the city centre and another back out to UCD than to try for another (infrequent) no. 3. Luckily, the next bus stopped for him. My daughter and I continued to wait at that same bus stop for almost an hour before we gave up and took a taxi home, at an additional cost of €14.
The reason for this letter is that I can no longer shrug my shoulders or find excuses for the abysmal level of service provided by public transport in this city. For mainly environmental reasons, I don't own or drive a car and am a frequent user of buses and the Dart.
But now, when other people say that it is not feasible, or just too difficult, for them to give up using their cars, I have little argument for them. On days like today, and there are many of them, my own decision not to add another car to the madness on our roads feels stubborn almost to the point of perversity. - Yours, etc,
MORAG FRIEL, Munster Street, Phibsboro, Dublin 7.