We're all part of the problem, says Patrick Logue. Car pooling might just become part of the solution.
If you are unlucky enough to be driving to or from work today, take a minute or two to examine the inside of your car.
Check to the left on the passenger seat. It could be home to a briefcase, a pile of papers or perhaps a coat and umbrella. When you're stopped at the lights look behind you into the rear compartment and take note of what you see. An empty baby seat? A pile of toys perhaps, or the newspapers you didn't have time to finish on Sunday?
Now hang your head in shame. You are, in part, responsible for the M50 turning into a car park and for a one-hour journey time between Whitehall and Drumcondra. Even though you may have little choice but to drive to and from work, you are contributing to noise and air pollution, congestion, and a whole lot of personal stress to boot.
An RAC Ireland survey last year of cars entering Dublin during peak times found that 75 per cent had only one occupant. The results showed that 80 per cent of cars coming from the south, more than 75 per cent of cars entering Dublin from the west and 70 per cent of cars coming into the city from northbound routes carried lone drivers.
Now take a look at the cars directly either side of you, in front and behind and imagine they are gone. This is the aim of a new scheme which began in Dublin last week. It is hoped that where once five cars delivered five people to work in Eastpoint Business Park, only one car carrying five people will do so in the future.
It would mean radical change for commuters to the business park in Dublin's north inner-city but the idea is simple, says Jonathan Daly of Vipre, the company charged with setting up the system for UK firm Liftshare.com
"There is a dedicated website - eastpoint.liftshare.org - that develops a profile of you and your journey," he says. Users who register can enter a large amount of information - where they live, what time they go to work at and what time they come home, whether they want to travel with smokers or not, or even if you prefer to travel with men or women only.
"The website will match you to other people in the database, then you get an email with a list of people. You can then make contact and set up a meeting," Daly adds.
He says the new system at Eastpoint is different than other systems tried before in Ireland. "There is more to it than just setting up a website", says Daly. The Vipre system, he says, also has a number of other features that are critical for it to work well.
Besides the software that matches individuals with similar profiles, the scheme also has an "emergency ride home" facility in the form of a taxi rank and an on-call taxi company.
To encourage the use of the scheme, priority parking spaces will be put in place, only for use by those who are sharing the space in their cars.
"We have in the region of 250 who have signed up so far," Daly says. "The initial target is for nine per cent of the employees out there in Eastpoint". Some 4,000 workers travel to and from the area every day.
While car sharing is something new to Irish commuters, elsewhere it is well established. The concept first surfaced in Switzerland and Germany in the late 1980s and has been in place in many US cities since the early 1990s. In the UK there are more than 100,000 people registered with the Liftshare website in 25 cities.
There are 80,000 journeys registered on the site, equating to nearly 20 million individual trips, taking, according to the company, an estimated 5,000 cars off the road every day. A number of high-profile companies use Liftshare in the UK, including British Gas and the British Aviation Authority in Heathrow, London.
"It is early days in Ireland," Daly admits, "but we are confident it will work. There is nothing so different about Ireland that it won't work here."
The Acting Director of Traffic in Dublin, Tim O'Sullivan, is not so sure. "We supported a project a number of years ago that used a computer system to match people up who were travelling in the same general direction from Bray.
"But unfortunately it really didn't take off." O'Sullivan believes people "like having their own private car because it is private. They can go where they want and can listen to what they want on the radio."
With car sharing, he says, "you are tied to a timetable. You would have to agree a timetable with other car-poolers. Say I have a splitting headache and I want to go home at 2pm?"
O'Sullivan believes a form of ad hoc car pooling is already taking place but wonders if matching software will work.
"At the moment it tends to be work-based arrangements. Pooling with guys you work with is one thing but pooling with perfect strangers is another."
Indeed, the Eastpoint system advises users of the service to take a number of precautions before making arrangements with people they have been matched with by the website.
Users are advised to avoid exchanging home addresses, arrange to meet in a public place, exchange passport or driving licence details and tell somebody who you are travelling with.