Cars choke many summer holiday towns, such as Dingle and Kinsale. What's the solution, asks Frank McDonald
Seán Brosnan, who runs a thriving craft shop in Dingle, Co Kerry, travelled up to Dublin for the horse show on Friday last - taking "a break to get away from the traffic" that snarls up his home town every summer.
The August bank holiday weekend was "the worst ever for traffic in Dingle", he says. "The whole town was choc-a-bloc. There was so many cars and tour buses that it was nearly at a standstill on the Friday. People here had never seen it so bad."
Part of the problem was delivery vans delivering for the weekend "gumming up the place", says Brosnan, who is chairman of the Dingle Sustainable Development Group (DSDG). "Obviously, the vans should be restricted to doing deliveries before 10am."
Then, there are the tour buses negotiating their way through already thronged streets to the town's only public car park, beside its marina. There would usually be 10 to 15 buses in the middle of the day and they cause tailbacks turning onto the main road.
Traffic is a problem that's not unique to Dingle. Kinsale in Co Cork suffers dreadfully from far too many cars trundling through its narrow streets in the peak tourist season, and the same is true of many other harbour towns and seaside resorts throughout Ireland.
"Visitors are experiencing the traffic rather than the town, which is a terrible shame", says Brosnan, whose shop, Leac a Ré, is on Strand Street, right in the heart of Dingle. "Even in Greece, where they're pretty crazy on the open road, it's not as bad as here."
There isn't a single pedestrians-only street in Dingle and, if there is a traffic plan for the town, he hasn't seen it. Unlike Kinsale, there isn't even a car park on the outskirts where visitors could park and then take a leisurely stroll into the town centre.
Apart from a few streets that have double-yellow lines, motorists park everywhere, particularly along the main approach road from an area known locally as "The Tracks" to the quays. As a result, Dingle is dominated by cars, whether parked or moving.
"We made a few submissions to Kerry County Council suggesting that an empty site called The Mart could be laid out as a car park. But although it's 200 yards from the centre - at most - the response we got was that it was too far for people to walk!".
BROSNAN'S GINGER-GROUP has also suggested that another site on the N86, opposite Dingle's GAA pitch, would make a good car park as it would be just five minutes' walk from the town centre. Here again, there has been no movement from the council.
But Brosnan insists that creating new car parks won't in itself solve the problem. "The other issue we have to face is the way we build houses all over the place, which is totally car-dependant. As long as we continue doing that, we'll never get the traffic right."
There has been talk of building a bypass to cater for traffic going to Ventry, Slea Head and Ballyferriter, but no designs have yet been drawn up.
"What we'd like to see first of all is a bit of traffic management, to give the town back to the people."
It isn't "all doom and gloom for Dingle", according to Frank Hartnett, senior engineer with Kerry County Council. A traffic management plan is being finalised and its focus will be on providing more off-street parking and a new relief road.
Hartnett says most of the new parking will be located in backland areas in the town with the aim of removing as much on-street parking as possible, while the new relief road will take through-traffic from the N86 to the Milltown roundabout, to the west of Dingle.
MEANWHILE, IN THE neighbouring county, local people and visitors alike must dodge cars being driven in both directions along the medieval streets of Kinsale. Cars are also parked all along Pier Road, fronting the picturesque harbour - so tightly that it can be difficult to find a gap to get to the water's edge.
The car park on the main approach from Cork is barely used because there is little or no control of traffic in the centre. As in Dingle, there are no pedestrians-only streets, so most of Kinsale's gourmet restaurants have no space for outdoor tables, even in high summer.
Ironically, Kinsale aims to become Ireland's first "transition town" with a comprehensive programme to wean itself off dependency on fossil fuels and aim for a more environmentally sustainable future. That's what the town council agreed to support last December.
But Louise Rooney, who is co-ordinating this ambitious project for Transition Design, concedes that "all attempts at a 'greener' future for Kinsale are thwarted by our hold on the car-centred lifestyle - and the cars are just getting bigger and bigger".
Becci Neal and Bridget Hannan, who drew up the transport element of the project, point out that the town's narrow streets are ideal for pedestrians and cyclists, but the two-way traffic system and the sheer number of cars make them "very unfriendly and unsafe".
Because the town becomes "extremely congested" in the summer months, it has "a stressful and polluted atmosphere which is hardly attractive".
Although there are bike-hire facilities, "there isn't actually anywhere to park your bike or safe routes for them to travel on".
Neal and Hannon advocate a step-by-step approach to relieving the problem, starting with traffic calming measures and moving on to create easy and safe ways to get around by bicycle, car-sharing clubs, improved public transport and more efficient short-distance vehicles.
They also propose a one-way traffic system around the town as well as the removal of Eilis O'Connell's controversial "Wave" installation on Pier Road to make way for a bus parking bay and a shelter to accommodate waiting passengers for buses to Cork.
"Begin horse-and-cart taxi giving tours of Kinsale," Neal and Hannan add.
Pádraig O'Mahony, senior staff officer with Kinsale Town Council, says there is currently no traffic management plan for the town, but the council will be looking at the issue again at its September meeting. A proposal to pedestrianise Short Quay was thrown out in June.
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