Dublin Chamber of Commerce calls for action on traffic crisis

Dublin Chamber of Commerce called yesterday on the Taoiseach to tackle the city's traffic crisis, "by introducing the type of emergency legislation which tackled the drugs and crime situation in the wake of the Veronica Guerin murder".

The chamber used a horse and cart to deliver a copy of its report Action Now to Government Buildings to emphasise that average traffic speed in the capital slowed from 13.75 m.p.h. in 1991 to 8.75 m.p.h. in 1997.

Chamber president Mr Hugh Governey said infrastructural investment would cost more than £2.5 billion to get the city moving. The chamber's plan includes proposals for a central railway station, and a single authority to integrate a transport system across the eight local authorities in Dublin and surrounding counties.

It also calls for a £400-million investment in suburban rail, the liberalisation of the taxi system within three years, the fast-tracking of public-private partnerships to tackle the infrastructural bottleknecks, the city-wide implementation of quality bus corridors and all-year-round Operation Freeflow.

Mr Jerry Kiersey, Ballyfermot Chamber of Commerce, said his group was opposed to the planned quality bus corridors for Ballyfermot. He considered they basically served other areas, although he was not opposed to bus corridors in principle.

Responding to questions, Mr Governey acknowledged that traders had objected to sections of the quality bus corridor network in north Dublin. He also said that commercial traffic to and from Dublin Port was having an effect on the city that "you wouldn't see anywhere in the civilised world". And he acknowledged that his members' deliveries to businesses at peak times were not helping the situation.

However, Mr Governey, accompanied at the publication of Action Now by Mr Jim Miley, chief executive of the chamber, and Mr Clive Brownlee, chairman of the chamber's transport committee, said businesses in the city were effectively given no alternatives to reach the port or deliver to traders. "We have a situation where the lorries are going down the main street of the capital to get to the port at peak times, you wouldn't see it anywhere in the civilised world."

He said the chamber had a committee working on the problem of port opening times and ferry sailing schedules, but this was only part of the problem.

Questioned about possible restricted delivery hours to avoid peak hours, Mr Governey said his members would probably argue that other traffic should be restricted to allow deliveries to go ahead.

The situation was not of his members' making, he maintained. Because of an infrastructural bottlekneck, "a cumulative 20year delay in key projects such as the port tunnel, the C-Ring motorway and QBCs is simply unacceptable".

Summing up the chamber's stance, Mr Governey said: "The city now has a transport infrastructure emergency on its hands."

He recalled that two years ago Dublin had been voted as a most desirable city in which to do business, but now it was embarrassing when a foreign visitor could not get a taxi to the airport.