Sir, - You reported recently that the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO) said that traffic congestion was being caused by parents taking their children to school by car. The DTO suggested that the children be told to go by foot or by bicycle instead.This suggestion might have merit, but the DTO seems to have forgotten the following: it rains in Ireland; it can rain every day; it has rained for the last 1,000 years and nothing is surer than that it will rain for the next 1,000.Linked to this is the high incidence of arthritis and related diseases in Ireland. The Irish climate makes arthritis largely incurable and very painful. Much of it is caused by being drenched as a child when walking or cycling. It is true there are some who cycle in the rain but normal Dubliners travel by car or bus.The role of the Dublin Transportation Office is to provide the road infrastructure for the city, not to tell parents what to do with their children.It is true that the DTO has a massive job. Thirty years of neglect have left the city without the underground railway system, the urban freeways, the flyovers, the tunnels, the urban motorways and the ring-roads that other cities have. No wonder we have gridlock.As everybody knows, Ireland has a peasant level of car ownership. We need to nearly double the number of cars on Irish roads to get up to the EU average.The DTO has only to visit the universities and RTCs to realise that this doubling is on its way as the first purchase on most students' minds is the car.A quick start for the DTO in preparing for this is tunnels. A tunnel from Donnybrook Church to Whitehall Church and one from Merrion Gates under the sand to Whitehall Church, with underground links to a tunnel from Tallaght to the port would get most of the through traffic out of the city and give the DTO room to address other problems.No one wants to see cars (or trains) in the narrow Georgian and Victorian streets of Dublin.
Let's get them underground as other cities have done. -Yours, etc.,(Dr) D. Keegan,Distance Education International,Blackrock,Co Dublin.