NO ONE there will ever forget the drama of the day in Dublin Castle when a porter sidled into a meeting in the European Hall with an important message from the Minister. What he was carrying was a bombshell statement by Michael Smith announcing that the Eastern Bypass had been scrapped.
It was in December 1992, and the Consultative Panel of the Government-sponsored Dublin Transportation Initiative had just spent most of the morning in heated debate about whether the controversial motorway should be included in the DTI's final package. Now, suddenly, it was off the agenda.
The decision to drop the Eastern Bypass was widely seen as a piece of political opportunism aimed at securing an extra Dail seat for Fianna Fail in Dublin South-East. Since the motorway had been such a hot potato since it was first mooted in 1971, party managers believed that getting rid of it could be a vote-winner.
But even then, public opinion in Sandymount, Ringsend and Irishtown was shifting. Local residents were - still are - driven demented by the ever-increasing volume of traffic trundling through the area. Ever since the East Link bridge opened in 1984, it's been getting worse; now they want some relief.
The most intriguing feature of the current plan to reinstate the Eastern Bypass as a major element of Dublin's transportation mix is that it was jointly sponsored by a cross-party group of three local councillors - the Lord Mayor, Senator Joe Doyle (FG), together with Mr Eoin Ryan TD (FF) and Mr Dermot Lacey (Labour).
At last Monday's City Council meeting, every Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour member present supported the proposal. Traditionally, most Labour councillors opposed plans for a motorway across Sandymount Strand.
Now they are in favour of it, provided that the road is put in a bored tunnel beneath the famous strand.
The three parties have obviously calculated that any one of them could win an extra council seat in the forthcoming local elections - and in any surprise general election - at the expense of the Green Party. Given that the Greens oppose an Eastern Bypass, they can be boxed into a corner and trounced on the issue, they believe.
"We've been well aware for some time that they're playing politics," said Mr John Gormley, the Green Party TD for Dublin South East. "But are they prepared to support our proposal to stop heavy goods vehicles at Merrion Gates once the C-ring is completed? That's what the people really want; they're not stupid."
The C-ring, as the M50 is known to transport planners, will be completed a lot sooner than the Eastern Bypass. Work is well advanced on the Southern Cross Route and the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, has approved plans for the South Eastern Motorway, which will link the M50 with the N11.
The Dublin Port Tunnel, long seen as the first phase of the Eastern Bypass, is currently the subject of a public inquiry into continuing objections from residents of Marino and Santry, among others. It is intended primarily to cater for port-related traffic and will be tolled to deter commuters.
Mr Owen Keegan, Dublin Corporation's director of traffic, said the proposed toll - £3 per car at peak periods - would have to be increased if it became evident that the port tunnel was being used by numerous commuters. The same would apply to a full Eastern Bypass to prevent it becoming a fast-track commuter route.
"It is only with proper tolling that we can provide an effective bypass east of the city," Mr Keegan said. "But it's not as if we're pulling a fast one. All the City Council has done is to express support in principle; any scheme will have to go through a full evaluation and public consultation process." There was "nothing immediate" about the proposal, he stressed. "The experience of recent years shows that significant public opposition can be anticipated to any major infrastructural project. We must accept that the timescales for implementation . . . are going to be very long" - probably seven years or more. Tim Brick, deputy chief engineer in charge of roads, agreed with this assessment. He also said the form of words inserted in the city development plan by last Monday's 25-7 vote "renders it [the Eastern Bypass] aspirational and conditional on further analysis and an EIS [environmental impact statement]".
ASKED what priority he would assign to it, Mr Brick said that if he was given £500 million - which is what the motorway is likely to cost - he doesn't think he would "invest it in a hole in Sandymount". What Dubliners needed, in the first instance, was a public transport system "second to none".
This view is shared, believe it or not, by the Automobile Association. Its spokesman, Conor Faughnan, told a meeting at the Institution of Engineers this week that while the AA favours the Eastern Bypass, the immediate priority should be public transport - "there is no question about that".
According to Mr Brick, the most important strategic objective should be to provide an eastern rail bypass. This would involve linking the new station planned for Barrow Street, on the southside, with the railyards at Spencer Dock on the North Wall, site of the proposed National Conference Centre.
The aim, he explained, would be to overcome a serious capacity constraint on the existing Loop Line between Pearse and Connolly stations whereby every mainline train "punches a hole of 15 minutes in DART and other suburban rail schedules. No amount of fiddling with signals will sort that out". However, there is a major obstacle - plans to redevelop the Spencer Dock site, lodged last week, envisage that a railway station will form part of the huge complex of 6 million square feet. But though it would be underground, the level is not deep enough for a future extension beneath the Liffey.
THE master plan for Ireland's largest development might have provided for an overground station with the potential for a rail link southwards to Barrow Street. But CIE, which owns the 51-acre site, now sees it as such a cash cow that its property department was not prepared to sacrifice the extra space.
Iarnrod Eireann engineers are known to be very unhappy about this decision because they believe it closes off the option of providing a second loop line, with effects that would be felt for 100 years. It is all the more extraordinary given that CIE is primarily in the business of providing public transport.
As for the other Eastern Bypass, there is "no doubt that it would bring relief to the Sandymount area", according to Mr Brick. "But anyone who thinks that it will remove a solitary vehicle from St Stephen's Green is living in cloud-cuckoo land." It would also assist southsiders going to and from Dublin Airport.
The Dublin Transportation Office is currently engaged in a major review of the 1994 DTI strategy and will be examining the Eastern Bypass proposal in that context. Strategic planning guidelines for the Dublin and Mid-East regions, due out on March 24th, are also believed to assign a high priority to public transport.