Sir,- I can understand the motives of Cllr Dermot Lacey in trying to take the traffic out of his own electoral ward, but I feel his arguments for a motorway under Sandymount Strand are terribly flawed and that the proposal would add to rather than subtract from our traffic problems. He accuses those opposed to the Eastern Bypass as being Luddites, but, given his passionate advocacy of yet more roads, I suggest that he is the one clinging to the most dated technological solution.
While the residents of Sandymount and Ringsend are undoubtedly under siege from ever-increasing through traffic, the bypass will do nothing to relieve their problem. It seems Cllr Lacey will be the last person to accept the axiom of traffic management that new roads inevitably lead to an equivalent increase in traffic demand which swamps both the new and existing road networks.
There is a particular problem in his area with port traffic, but we have an easier and already agreed solution. When the Northern Port access route opens in a few years' time, all heavy goods vehicles going to or from the port should be diverted along it to the C-Ring motorway, which would allow them access to every part of the city. To facilitate this strategic traffic, a lane of the C-Ring could be dedicated as a truck and bus route which would free it from the shopping and local traffic, which is blocking it at present. This solution would also save the residents of Dun Laoghaire from the huge new roads that would have to take the traffic spewing out of the bypass tunnel in Booterstown.
Having abjectly failed to invest in public transport to cater for our economic development, it seems that our main political parties are in a state of panic over the inevitable traffic congestion. How can they be returning to road solutions when we still don't have a public transport link to the airport? Why spend countless millions on a tunnel, when a simple new rail bridge over the Liffey could double our suburban and DART rail capacity? Why provide for the long-distance car commuters, when the citizens to the west and north of the city are unlikely ever to get a light rail service?
Perhaps the lucrative financial return that would come from a tolled tunnel is a more attractive option than the provision of public funding that would be required to pay for a clean, efficient and equitable public transport system. Has the Labour Party forgotten about the 45 per cent of Dublin Corporation households without a car, where people are unfortunately also less likely to vote? - Yours, etc.,Cllr Eamon Ryan,
Chairman, Dublin Corporation Strategic Policy Committee on Traffic and Transportation, City Hall, Dublin 2.