Dublin's Director of Traffic, Owen Keegan, has recently described measures that are being taken, or are about to be taken, to improve the traffic flow in Dublin.
These measures include some positive steps to assist motorists, including greater co-ordination of traffic signals in response to variations in traffic demand, the erection of additional signs carrying traffic and parking information, the halting of non-emergency roadworks during peak times in December and January, and access on the Internet to the Corporation's TV cameras.
But many other steps being taken are negative. These include the introduction of wheel-clamping; an extended tow-away service to be introduced early in the new year; the elimination of free on-street parking; and arrangements to direct motorcycle gardai to points where illegal parking has been observed by the corporation's TV cameras.
Another recent measure taken by the corporation, to which Owen Keegan did not refer, is the introduction on suburban roads of a new kind of ramp with sharp edges, apparently designed to damage the tyres of cars rather than just to slow traffic, and which is also dangerous to cyclists. Moreover, signs are being erected to force cars off side roads at peak periods, which seems designed to increase congestion on main access roads to the city.
This negative approach has also been evident in the thinking behind the present version of the Luas scheme - an approach which involves the blocking off of city-centre streets and a reduction of the number of traffic lanes - measures seen as desirable consequences rather than unfortunate by-products of an overground light-rail scheme.
The basic thinking behind many of these measures appears to be that the additional congestion created by reducing road space in the inner suburbs and city-centre area - measures curiously described as "traffic calming" - will make motorists sufficiently frustrated to leave their cars at home and use public transport instead.
I understand the theory, but I am highly sceptical about its practicality. All the evidence that I can see suggests that unless measures are taken that discourage motorists at the start of their journey, they will continue, optimistically, to attempt to reach their city-centre destination in their own private vehicle. They have, of course, been encouraged in this optimism by the corporation's policy of favouring - even insisting upon - the provision of off-street parking on an extensive scale.
Frankly, the attempt to reduce congestion by making it worse appears to me to be futile. Why are such measures being taken? They seem to reflect deep frustration among traffic managers at the absence of any political will to tackle the problem at its root - by removing the distortion created through providing an extremely scarce commodity - urban road space - at an artificially low price.
We can, I think, detect this sense of frustration in Owen Keegan's comment that we should not "lose sight of the fact that ultimately the solution to traffic congestion in the city lies in achieving a significant change in the travel pattern of commuting motorists". For, as an economist, Owen Keegan knows that such a change cannot come about so long as in relation to the real costs involved in private vehicle commuting there is gross under-pricing, combined with significant over-pricing of public transport.
And in a city with a uniquely constricted city-centre road network, the cost of such a price distortion is inevitably an intolerable degree of traffic congestion, currently aggravated by a delayed reaction to a phenomenally rapid rise in employment and car ownership in our capital city. For since 1990 employment in the Dublin region has risen by one-quarter and car ownership by over one-half: there are now over 375,000 private cars in the Dublin region as against 250,000 seven years ago.
I have already written in another context about the constricted nature of Dublin's city-centre road network. Because of the juxtaposition of Trinity College, Temple Bar and Dublin Castle, there is only one street, limited to four lanes of traffic, running north to south through the 1.2-kilometre stretch between Westland Row Station and Parliament Street. For traffic running from south to north this is the case in respect of the 1.5-kilometre stretch right across to Christ Church Cathedral.
Moreover, for east-west traffic south of the Liffey there are only minor streets through the .75-kilometre stretch from Dame Street south to Cuffe Street. By the standards of most European cities of over one million people, this is a very limited centre-city street network indeed.
Given that this area contains such a large proportion of the retail centre, and provides direct access from the south side of the city to the northern part of this retail area, this geography poses a quite exceptional obstacle to access by private car for city-centre shoppers and commuters.
Logically it imposes a requirement for efficient public transport, both to and within the area, including underground transport, a greater requirement, in fact, than in most other cities of Dublin's size. And the value of city-centre road space is high because of the severity of this shortage. Consequently the effect on traffic congestion of offering to private motorists free access to it is bound to be disastrous.
Dublin has another unusual feature: concentric rings of rivers and canals, both north and south of the city. On the one hand by limiting the number of access routes the congestion on these routes, especially at the bridges, is increased. But, on the other hand, these bridges provide eminently suitable points at which to operate a road-pricing system.
How would such a system work? Alternatives were set out as early as 1963 in the Smeed Report on road pricing, upon which I recall lecturing 30 years ago. One system would utilise cameras, which would record the registrations of all cars passing over the bridges, car-owners being sent monthly bills based on charges that could vary during the day, higher charges being required for entering the city at peak hours.
An alternative would require road vehicles to be fitted with a device similar to a taxi-meter, utilising cards like phone cards, purchased at garages and activated by crossing the various bridges to enter the city at different times. Failure to have a card in the vehicle would be an offence.
The revenue from such a system could be set against petrol duty which could accordingly be reduced. Thus the cost of non-commuter motoring would be cut - properly so.
By thus using the price mechanism to equate the huge demand for urban road space, especially at commuter hours, with the very limited volume of such space available, the necessary road capacity would be released to enable the existing bus services to operate efficiently. Moreover, new and more frequent bus services could then be introduced.
The greater efficiency of bus operations in these conditions and the higher loads carried would reduce bus transport costs substantially and thus make possible lower fare levels - closer to the level of many European cities.
Why has this rational approach to what is primarily a problem of price distortion not been adopted long ago? The answer lies in the curious but almost universal belief of urban motorists that they have a right to free urban road space at all times, despite the fact that by so insisting they make their own lives hell. Each individual motorist seems to believe that the problem is created by all the others when the simple fact is that all are equally responsible.
Of course the hardship argument will be posed, and any change in pricing is bound to affect some people more than others. There are bound to be some who have been led by the present price distortion to develop a way of life that would be more difficult to sustain in the new circumstances, and there will no doubt be a case for exempting certain limited groups such as disabled people.
The real problem is the political fear that any party initiating the action needed to resolve our traffic problem would suffer at the hands of motorists when the next election is held. This is pre-eminently the kind of problem which can be resolved only by common action across the political spectrum. Until all parties get together to agree such common action, our traffic problem will persist despite the best efforts of our traffic planners, operating with their hands politically tied behind their backs.
In last Saturday's article the word "pregnancies" should of course have read "births" in the statement that in a number of countries "low figures for non-marital pregnancies could be accounted for by the availability of abortion"