NATURALLY, the plans to alleviate traffic chaos in Dublin - are being examined and discussed only now, after traffic chaos has arrived. No doubt we, can look forward to aeons of intensifying chaos as the roads are dug and re dug for Luas.
By which time, one could probably walk around Dublin, entirely on the roofs and bonnets of stalled cars, with the drivers dead inside and marauding packs of stranded passengers killing and eating tourists around St Stephen's Green, with the general consensus being that Spaniards taste, the best (though some develop a marked weakness for Italians: I myself suspect that Eskimo would be delicious - prawn flavoured, probably - and only Bord Failte's deplorable failure to lure tourists from the Arctic has prevented us from discovering how delectable an Innuit shinbone really is).
Stalled Pedestrians
But in the meantime, must we do nothing to spare Dublin the deepening horrors of traffic congestion? The God is good and the day is long philosophy might have stood our forefathers in good stead when the bailiffs arrived, unroofed the cabin and walked away, the family pig tucked under their arm; but it does not run cities.
It does not enforce laws. It does not ease traffic jams. It does not generate efficiency. But perhaps it does explain why Dublin traffic regulation is as it is.
What other explanation can there be for the pedestrian crossing signs across a junction at the top of a one way street, and which only offer the green man when somebody has pressed the button before traffic is halted? Irish people, of course, know how to ignore the presence or absence of green or red men and will walk over anyway. But tourists don't.
So they stand at such pedestrian crossings, solemnly and vainly thumbing the pedestrian button and obediently not walking, even though the traffic has halted.
The lights will not change because the button was not pressed earlier. The drivers stare obligingly at the stalled pedestrians. The pedestrians stare back at the stationary drivers, thumbing industriously. Nothing moves. Until finally the cars get the green light and, they move off, leaving our foreigners gaping forlornly.
That is one kind of button. There is another kind. The placebo button, which has no effect on the lights at all. The green man will appear at set intervals - every three months, to judge - by the traffic island bearing the statue of Tom Moore - regardless of what we do with the buttons. The wise individuals who spend public money thought it right to squander such money on the appearance that pedestrians can influence the habits of the lights.
Is there a sentient intelligence behind such idiocy? Does some really bright spark in the Corporation say: My job is to make things as difficult as possible for visitors?
Yes, of course, the intelligent thing would be for a green man to come on automatically when traffic is stopped at a junction with a one way street; it is not necessary to have a pedestrian button to call it up. But who is interested in the application of intelligence to Dublin traffic? We are public servants. Our job is to confuse, complicate, mystify. Therefore we will install pedestrian crossing systems which can only baffle our visitors.
Baffling the Tourist
Why do we compulsively design systems which do not work? Why do we issue far too few taxi driver plates, so that by within an hour after midnight, it is near enough to impossible to get a taxi in Dublin? Why, each night of the week, are there huge crowds milling around for taxis at 2 a.m.? Why do we tolerate a system which prohibits hackneys from plying for public hire and forces people to walk home in a city in which crimes against the person have been steadily growing?
Why is there no outcry that women have to walk home at all hours and risk being raped by the increasingly unlovely young men who abound in the capital, merely so that the monopoly on taxi plates be protected? And why does the law compel hackney drivers, whom one can only hire privately, not to have meters, so that fares are based on the driver's estimate of mileage done? And who is to argue his calculations?
The heart of the problem lies where all such cardial organs repose: Dail Eireann, which this year, after decades of rising crime, finally decided to remove the obligation on members of the Garda Siochana to be present in court for every single remand hearing of an accused person. This blatantly, and this squandering of public resources and Gardahours, could only have been tolerated within a political culture of near tropical inertia.
Of course the gardai are the ones who face the criticism for whatever goes wrong - and sometimes rightly. But if gardai do become demoralised, who can blame them? If, for example, a garda prosecutes one of those container lorry drivers who specialise in easing their way into yellow boxes at rush hour just as traffic lights change to red, causing complete paralysis in all directions, what will happen?
Garda Incentive
The garda can take down details of the driver, causing more traffic confusion, and the driver will then be summonsed; but to effect the lawful delivery of a summons can often take weeks or months, and there is no guarantee that the case will be proceeded with on the first court hearing. When it finally comes to trial, the fine will probably be no more than £30, though the case has certainly cost the state several hundred pounds.
What incentive is there for any garda to go to so much trouble and spend so much time on vast amounts of paperwork, when the outcome is so derisory? Do you wonder, then, that gardai in their patrol cars normally avert their eyes - Oh begob Gerry, oh will you look, a space shuttle full of nude women's landing on Liberty Hall - whenever one of these delightful lorry drivers slides into a yellow box, and then sits there picking his nose as if there are fine diamonds in the region of his adenoids? Would you go to such trouble for so little return?
And now the Grand Panjandrums of Dublin are now going to give us the Luas programme, assuring us that all will be well. We hope they are right; is there any reason to believe they will be?