A FEW weeks ago, the Irish Film Institute (IFI) released a treasure trove of archive television ads from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, all meticulously restored and digitised for posterity.
You could easily lose yourself for days exploring the ads that time forgot, featuring everyone from Terry Wogan to The Dubliners, with many depicting a more innocent (and less politically correct) Ireland.
One ad in particular really stood out for me. Dating back to the ‘60s, it was titled ‘What Dubliners Think of Their Traffic’. The CIE ad was a vox pop featuring a range of ordinary people voicing their opinions on the city’s traffic congestion.
“You’d need a helicopter to get through the traffic in Dublin,” stated one young man.
A woman bemoaned the lack of buses, while another commuter noted that Dublin was a city designed for the horse and cart. A man driving an actual horse and cart complained that it was impossible to find parking.
One talking head said that everyone in Dublin affected by the traffic nightmare needed to get together to “thrash the whole thing out”.
The voiceover concluded that Dubliners wanted a solution to the traffic problem – as did CIE.
I thought about the sentiments expressed in that old black and white television commercial as I sat stuck in traffic along the quays last week. Five decades on, it’s ‘Carmageddon’ – and the chaos is no longer just restricted to rush hour(s).
While the problem is currently compounded by the necessary Luas Cross City works, the motorist is gradually being pushed out of the city, with measures proposed to further restrict cars along parts of the quays.
I still don’t fully understand what rules are in place in and around College Green and I always get confused when driving in the vicinity of St Stephen’s Green.
When you factor in punitive car parking rates in the city centre, it makes you wonder why you’d bother driving in Dublin at all.
Incentivising motorists to opt for trains, trams and buses instead of clogging up the streets of the capital is a worthy aspiration. But until such a time that we have a connected, efficient public transport network, we really are putting the cart before the horse by making the city such an inhospitable environment for cars.
This means investing in proper park and ride facilities in the suburbs, where the price of leaving your car is included in your rail or bus ticket. A dedicated transport police should also be established to combat the scourge of anti-social behaviour on bus and Luas services. Public transport in Dublin not only needs to be cost-effective and efficient – it has to be safe.
It would be unfair to say that there haven’t been improvements, with real-time information at many bus stops and complimentary wi-fi. We’re getting there – but not quickly enough to make us want to ditch our cars just yet.