A new traffic management plan, which will close Dublin city centre to traffic,depends on alternative routes being available, writes Tim O'Brien.
At first sight, the effective closure of Dublin city centre to north-south traffic appears to be another attack on motorists by Dublin City Council, determined to make their life difficult.
Access to the airport, for example, is to be achieved, for those living on the city's southside, along the M50, via the east link or along the "inner" or "outer orbital" roads.
The difficulty is that the M50 is not yet complete and as a by-pass for the city it is frequently congested. The "inner" and "outer" orbitals recommended by the city council along with the East Link are also frequently congested and in a very tight situation it hardly makes sense to close some of the major thoroughfares.
Other relief measures to be put in place in Dublin, which could facilitate the movement of traffic away from O'Connell Street, have been delayed. These include the opening of the new Blackhall Place bridge and the proposed Macken Street bridge across the Liffey. The Dublin Port Tunnel and that final leg of the M50 will not be open until 2004 at the earliest. For the motorist this is not the same as being forced to use public transport, as was the option with the introduction of the quality bus corridor. For there are few cross-city buses, there is no rail link to the airport, and there is as yet no Luas to the city centre.
The introduction of new colour-coded routes and a new system of numbering junctions, particularly with the exclusion of English language translations of the direction for the city centre, offers the sceptic the chance to deride the new arrangements.
Yet the city council were clearly left with little alternative. Last year the launch of Operation Freeflow, the annual Christmas effort to get traffic moving, was met within a hour of its launch by a city in gridlock.
The pressure on the council for a "living city", safe for cyclists and pedestrians and accessible for shoppers and business people, was, according to the council, intense. Dublin City Centre Business Association has been involved in the development of the proposals for years and it has professed itself happy. Spokesman Mr Tom Coffey notes that through traffic, which has no business in the city, is bringing congestion with no benefit.
Mr Keegan stresses that traffic between all points of provincial Ireland and Dublin frequently travels to O'Connell Street to begin the journey. This move will have the effect of deflecting that traffic to a more orbital route. Tellingly too, that old critic of the office of the director of traffic, the AA, has issued a statement broadly supporting the changes. It supports the initiative "as part of a programme to improve the transport infrastructure and city centre environment".
The Irish Road Haulage Association said the changes would not affect it greatly as the area concerned is served more by smaller vans than lorries.