Profile Margaret O'Mahony: It's as hands-on as jobs come. Can the academically-minded Margaret O'Mahony succeed in turning around Dublin transport, asks Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
Some 95 per cent of the audience in Dublin Castle at the Government's launch of its Transport 21 investment programme on November 1st were men in suits, so there's some irony and not a little surprise that a petite academic was chosen this week to start getting it off the ground.
Dr Margaret O'Mahony, of Trinity College Dublin, may look like an ingenue, but she has a DPhil from Oxford University and more letters after her name than you could easily count - CEng, FIDE, FIHT, FCIT, FTCD, MIEI, MICE, MIAT. And she has already declared that she's ready to "knock heads together".
This won't be an easy task, because the transport sector is not only full of "boys with toys" but also a plethora of agencies with different agendas. Indeed, that's been the bugbear of transport planning in Dublin ever since the government decided in 1987 not to set up a transport authority for the capital.
Now we're promised a "powerful, executive-driven body with a wide remit", to be established by a team headed by O'Mahony, who will ultimately chair it. The other members are all insiders: Pat Mangan and John Lumsden, both assistant secretaries at the Department of Transport, and Colin Hunt, the Minister's adviser.
The view of some in transport circles is that O'Mahony's appointment is an exercise in window dressing, with a nod towards gender equality. As head of the department of civil, structural and environmental engineering at TCD and director of its centre for transport research, she is an academic rather than a mover and shaker.
As a board member of the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA), she could often be "petulant about small things, like a dog with a bone", according to one source. She also championed the naming of the Luas bridge over the Grand Canal in honour of her predecessor, the late Prof Simon Perry, who was her mentor in TCD.
Perry was a tremendous enthusiast for public transport in Dublin, particularly the Luas project, and he relished escaping from the ivory tower to get involved in campaigns. O'Mahony, on the other hand, is a very private person and sources wonder how she will square up to the rough and tumble of what is, essentially, a public post.
Her own CV doesn't even say how long she has held the post of associate professor in TCD. Contacted by The Irish Times for this profile, she referred queries to the Department of Transport, which said she would "prefer to leave things for a bit, if you don't mind".
What's known is that she got her Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree from NUI Galway and went on to the University of Oxford to do a doctorate in engineering science.
"She is very much a technical engineer, with a narrow focus of interest," one colleague said. "But you never know. People grow into things, and she might well do that."
ACCORDING TO HER CV, she has "20 years' experience in the areas of network modelling, optimisation of public transport, demand management, transport pricing, quality of service of public transport, urban freight solutions, vehicle instrumentation and innovative road materials", and her work has been widely published.
She is a chartered civil engineer, a Fellow of TCD and also a Fellow of the Institution of Highway and Transportation Engineers, the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and the Institute of Demolition Engineers - though not many people would know that even the demolition sector has its own institute.
O'Mahony is also well plugged-in to the EU circuit, having taken part in such research projects as Trenen, which developed computer modelling to evaluate urban transport policies on the basis of congestion, pollution, accident costs and energy savings, and a follow-up project looking at transport scenarios.
Her work has taken her abroad, too. She was technical adviser on an EU-funded programme to introduce new technology to the civil engineering department of the Yerevan Institute of Architecture and Construction in Armenia and she also co-ordinated short courses for the institute's staff at TCD and the University of Birmingham.
Other EU-funded work included a project to observe the behaviour of drivers when they are made aware of the full costs of their travel by having meters displayed in their cars. Another project looked at the potential energy savings and traffic management benefits from imposing congestion charges.
At home, O'Mahony was a consultant to Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell on his office's "value for money" examination of the Government's roads programme. The report it produced showed that the cost of the programme had risen from €9 billion to €16 billion in just a few years because of massive over-runs.
IN AN RTÉ radio interview last Sunday after her appointment was announced, O'Mahony said she would "head-hunt key transport executives who deliver projects on time and on budget". What she wanted was "people who will bring innovation, who have clear ideas about how to deliver in tight budgetary frameworks".
She denied that Dublin city centre would be "shut down" for years by the construction of new Luas and metro lines, as well as a Grand Central Station-style transport hub at St Stephen's Green.
"It's the little things that bother people. We need much more focus on the day-to-day management of construction on the street," she said.
That's what the RPA says, too. As the agency that oversaw construction of the Sandyford and Tallaght Luas lines, it learned "a lot of lessons" during their construction, says a spokesman, so future work on the relocation of under-street utilities and laying new lines would be phased to "minimise disruption to businesses and the public generally".
DR JAMES WICKHAM, director of the employment research centre at TCD, says Dublin needs a transport authority that does much more than ensure the delivery of projects on time and within budget. "Most of what's in Transport 21 for Dublin are rail projects and that's what the RPA was set up to do," he says.
Nobody seems to know where the RPA will fit into whatever structure emerges from the deliberations of O'Mahony and her team. If the new agency were to be a greater Dublin authority, with overarching responsibility for land use and transport, the lines would be clearer. But it apparently won't have any role in determining land use.
So it could end up as another duplicating agency, overseeing major projects being built by others. Its only new role, it would appear, will be to act as a regulator for bus services in the city after Minister for Tranport Martin Cullen achieves his goal of having up to 15 per cent of the network opened up to competition from private operators.
O'Mahony has said her interim group could deliver an embryonic Dublin Transport Authority "within months", which seems like a long shot.
"Time is of the essence, and I have been told we have got to get this right," she told RTÉ. "We have the plan, and the finance is there. . . there is a sheer determination to get things done.
"I don't see anything wrong with changing a plan, or improving a plan, or adding to a plan or adding further infrastructure if it is needed, and that is how Transport 21 has come about. It is basically about building on previous plans changing them where necessary because we have got a different economic climate now."
But if O'Mahony has a clear view of what the transport investment priorities for Dublin should be, she has kept it to herself. And although Senator David Norris quoted her last month as saying she favoured implementing "relatively low-cost" strategies, that's not what Transport 21, with its €34.4 billion price-tag, is about.
Buses, after all, get little or nothing from the package - even though they carry far more passengers in Dublin every day than Dart, Luas and suburban rail services combined. But then, buses hold very limited appeal for the "boys with toys" - and they include the authors of Transport 21.Who is she? Associate professor and head of the department of civil, structural and environmental engineering at Trinity College Dublin.
The O'Mahony File
Why is she in the news? Martin Cullen has just appointed her to head a team that should deliver a Dublin Transport Authority.
Most appealing characteristic? She's a woman engineer in a sector populated by boys with toys.
Least appealing characteristic? She can be petulant about small things, "like a dog with a bone".
Most likely to say? "I don't see anything wrong with changing a plan, or improving a plan, or adding to a plan."
Least likely to say: "Hold the front page - I want to be on it."