A few weeks ago, I spent 40 minutes at a bus stop in the rain before finally accepting I was wasting my time. Five others stood close by. One by one we came to terms with the fact that the bus was not turning up, and sloped away.
I was travelling in to Dublin city centre to review a concert. And now I had no choice but take the car. Driving into town, I spent 20 minutes idling along the north quays from Heuston Station – a central artery into Dublin from the unglamorous and often forgotten west of the city – gazing at an empty cycle line.
Welcome to Ireland in microcosm: a country that punishes you if you try to use public transport and a country that punishes you even more if you are required to drive.
Watching Róisín Murphy's Big City Plan (RTÉ One, 10.15 pm ) I can't help wondering, then, if one of us lives in a parallel dimension. It is a well-intentioned exploration of the decline – as she sees it – of Irish cities and towns. But it feels in denial about the reality that, for better or worse, ours has for decades been a commuter and car-based society and that changing this can be achieved only through long-term planning.
It cannot be wished away with a splash of cycle lanes and enthusiastic talk about a “15 minute city”. For many Irish people, 15 minutes is the average time by which their bus or train is late – even on weekends and especially bank holidays, when you can’t blame traffic – and it is frustrating the film does not grapple with that reality.
Murphy, according to an October 2020 newspaper feature in which she participated, lives in a Victorian house in a gentrifying inner suburb of Dublin, though this is not revealed. The architect is a likeable presenter and sincere in her desire to heal urban Ireland.
Nonetheless, some of the arguments come across as superficial. “Our centres don’t seem to be family friendly – designed with tourists, commuters and students in mind,” she says. “To the detriment for those who would like to live where they work”. In other words, to the detriment of the well-off who can afford central Dublin prices and do not need a car.
The prohibition of cars from central Paris is presented as an example to follow – but the fact that Paris has a functioning transport system, while Dublin and its vast commuter belt do, not is glossed over.
An architecture graduate in Cork outlines her vision to turn city-centre car-parks into apartments – with no mention of the fact that public transport in Cork is not fit for purpose and that people use their cars to travel in to town because they have no other option.
There are also some confusing messages here. Murphy talks, one moment, about repurposing derelict buildings and the next about a working car-park on North Main Street – which she describes as “looking well past its sell-by date”. Tell that to the people who park there for work.
We are told the construction of single-resident apartments in Dublin is a bad thing – because it is aimed at “high income tech workers” and a “transient population”. Heaven forbid they shoudl have somewhere to rent, or that Dublin should be more like New York or London.
Murphy is passionate about the subject but her arguments will strike some as a grab-bag of chattering-class talking points that really make sense only if you live within a quick trot of the city centre. It’s hard not to conclude that if the change advocated in the film were ever to come to pass, it would make life much better for that minority, and far worse for those waiting in the rain for buses that never arrive.
