THANK God for Garret FitzGerald. He has said about Luas what I feared to say; that we have the makings of an urban, calamity that will cost us and our generous German friends millions and might well cause more problems than it solves. Even if his arguments are faulty, he has at least enabled us to discuss a project which has been protected from analysis by its relative "cheapness", by the piety that surrounds anything which purports to be a public utility, by the alleged need to get our hands on the deutschmarks pronto, and finally by the extra cladding of an Irish name, Luas.
Luas, as we all know in this great Irish speaking nation of ours, means speed. To judge from Garret's forecasts, it might well mean Limiting or Urban Arresting System; because the streets of Dublin are too narrow to permit both Luas trains and reasonable traffic flow, and perhaps more compellingly, the very density of buildings in the city centre does not permit many route options for cars or trams.
That is the legacy of the Wide Streets Commission, which chose to insert an extraordinary number of important buildings and squares into a very small area. There is no way of pushing a new road through that heart of the city without killing it. And instead of recognising that reality, and committing ourselves to a transport policy which would, take the expensive but realistic long term option of going underground, we did what we have done, repeatedly in transport policy, we compromised.
Have we not Learned?
Have we not learned by this time that structural compromises with traffic do not work? Have we not learned that policy has to be created and implemented with clear goals? And that in all traffic problems, there cannot be shared primacy between public and private traffic and pedestrians? And most of all, will we never face up to the hideous truth, that there are no cut price solutions to dealing with problems which require strategic planning?
No. There is no area in public life which reflects the culture and competence of political planning than road construction. In 1994, the Netherlands, which is the size of Munster built 800 kilometres of motorway. We built 40. The main road between the capitals of Ireland remains a national disgrace south of the order.
Travellers must still pass through numerous pretty villages like Balbriggan, plus the suburbs of Drogheda and the suburbs of Dundalk. A journey which should last an hour and a half takes a good hour longer than that, with a disproportionate amount of stress involved too.
Astonishingly, for part of that route, a motorway exists, unused and unusable, because it has been built over bog, and our bright planners are not sure whether there is going to be subsidence on the road; so they are waiting to see if the road which has cost millions is going to vanish in the bog.
We react to the crisis when it is upon us. The urgency of the Luas scheme is in part because the European finding is only available by a certain time - though Garret convincingly points out that the proponents of Luas have exaggerated the need for quick decision making here. What is not in doubt is that Dublin traffic is in crisis.
As it is in Drogheda, Cork, Galway. These cities need action not soon, but now.
But there is no now in planning. The present tense does not exist, only the future. And that is the tense we have most difficulty with in Ireland, especially at Government level. No doubt we have the fastest growing economy in Europe, but that is almost solely due to the energies of the private sector and an IDA which has absorbed the culture of the private sector. Roads, are not built by private commission. They are planned and built by Government, and it shows.
Deficient Response
Apart from the enduring blight of unemployment, no area in Irish life is as deficient, as our response to traffic. The quality of that response is indicated as the new arrivals leaving Dublin, airport in their hired cars, with a sign indicating that the general maximum speed through Ireland is 100 kilometres an hour. And that is the time they will see a speed sign in metric. All other speed signs are in imperial measurements, which co exist with distance signposts which are in metric. And this is not the confusion which results from changing systems, when there is bound to be cross over of old band new. This is policy being implemented. New signs still record speed in imperial, distance in metric.
I can't imagine what the reason is for this. I do know the reason for much other poor traffic engineering. It is the c word, compromise. We wanted a cheap intersection at the bottom of the Naas dual carriage way, not an effective one; so our politicians told our engineers to build a roundabout, and not an expensive cloverleaf.
The roundabout did not work, simply because traffic flows were too vast and fast for drivers to be able confidently to enter the system. Thrombosis. Cure? Traffic lights.
Contradictory Systems
So we have two systems controlling traffic flow, and far from being complementary, they are contradictory, and dangerous; because the green light which permits you onto the roundabout can be, followed mid system by a red light round a bend on which cars are following you at, speed. Do not blame the engineers for this.
They respond to, the specifications of our political leaders.
The same is true of the roundabout outside Dublin Air port, and the roundabouts on the National Travesty leading to Belfast, born of cheap compromises; but traffic management is expensive and requires political will - the central span of the newest bridge being built for Paris is taller than the Eiffel Tower.
We should be grateful our problems are small in comparison, and grateful to Garret FitzGerald for warnings where our short term solutions might lead us. Luas is a cheap compromise which could turn out to be hideously expensive.