Transport strategy takes toll on drivers

REARVIEW:I'M ASSUMING you all submitted views on the National Transport Authority's draft transport strategy for Greater Dublin before the deadline expired on Monday.

If you are a motorist and you did not, you may regret not speaking up.

The document notes, with justification, that the capital’s transport model is unsustainable and pledges to cut the number of car trips by promoting alternatives. Laudable stuff, you’ll agree.

But it unashamedly adopts a clear hierarchy, with pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users at the top, followed by commercial vehicles and finally, on the naughty step, private motorists.

One gets the feeling there are a gaggle of mandarins in an office – along a Dart line, presumably – who’d love to ban cars from Dublin altogether. If it weren’t for the huge amount of revenue that motorists generate, they probably would.

Predictably, the contents of motorists’ wallets are of great interest to the strategy’s draftees. How else are they going to pay for all the cycle paths and pedestrian amenities, not to mention subvent the cost of public transport?

Among the proposals are “carefully targeted fiscal measures to discourage unnecessary use of the car”. In layman’s terms, motorists are to be lumbered with even more tolls. And congestion charges. And windscreen taxes. Alright, so I made the last one up. But you get the picture.

I’d hate to think that you might be deluded into believing that paying motor tax, parking charges, fuel excise taxes, tolls, VRT, motor insurance and a levy on that insurance confers motorists with any special rights. Or, indeed, with any rights at all.

Your car is nothing to them but a big metal piggy bank on wheels. Enjoy it while you still can.