Transport planners say Dubliners will see dramatic changes by 2005

Dublin's  transport planners admit they have failed to persuade the public that any progress has being made in the city, but say dramatic improvements will be obvious by 2005.

The Dublin Transportation Office (DTO) told a Dáil committee yesterday the success of its plans would become clear once the Luas, the Port Tunnel and the M50 were all complete.

In the meantime, however, its officials agreed with the chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport, Mr Eoin Ryan of Fianna Fáil, that all the average Dubliner could see was "chaos" .

DTO chief executive Mr John Henry accepted the criticism was fair: "We haven't got the message out. We'll have to try again."

But referring to the office's 2001 plan - "A Platform for Change" - Mr Henry insisted that all the city's transport needs until 2016 were contained within it. "It's all in there. We don't need any more planning. We just need to deliver it."

Some "good news" was already evident in recent surveys, he added. Dublin Bus passengers were up 40 per cent since 1997; the numbers cycling to work had doubled; and public transport had increased its share relative to the private car by 2 per cent.

But planners were still struggling to cope with the massive changes that had taken place in Dublin during the economic boom years, an example of which was the number of morning rush-hour journeys - rising from 172,000 in 1991 to 428,000 in 2001.

The number of cars in the greater Dublin area was now 600,000 but had yet to peak, Mr Henry added.

By the standards of the rest of Europe, it could reach 700,000 within the next four years.

The DTO chairman, Mr Conor McCarthy, said the "fundamental issue" facing planners was the quality of life for commuters, many of whom were spending three hours a day getting to and from the office, "more than half the time they spend at work".