Not very long ago, going out at weekends in Dublin was referred to as "going into town". Now it feels more like entering some sort of volatile bear-pit, rather than the homely place previously called town.
As for getting home - the cartoons of skeletons propped against a taxi-rank sign long ago wore thin - the public has been finding nothing amusing about waiting hours for taxis in the hours of darkness.
After a year of paralysis, the taxi situation in Dublin looks as if it is finally about to change for the public's benefit. Hackney drivers yesterday won their case in the High Court against Robert Molloy's proposal to double the number of taxi licences.
The judgment found that the Minister did not have the power to regulate the number of taxi licences. Yesterday's judgment was long and complex, and the findings are still being studied, but the implications point at deregulation, because, in future, anyone will be able to apply for a taxi licence.
As of now, there are 2,724 taxi licences in Dublin - some drivers have paid £80,000 for their licences; and some 5,000 hackney licences. Hackneys, by definition, cannot pick up on the street or at ranks: they must be booked by phone. Anyone looking at these figures can see that trying to fit into taxis even a proportion of those thousands of people who come into town at the weekend has been akin to expecting the biblical camel to trot through the eye of the needle.
Hackneys, who pay £1,000 for a licence, are available for hire in theory, but generally not in practice, something which is unlikely to change. Why? Most hackney companies have several corporate account holders, and the majority of their cars go to those jobs, leaving few over for the average punter. Even if you are not travelling for work and paying cash, your employer's hackney cab company will prioritise taking you rather than someone with no links to them; it is widespread loyalty policy.
Unlike other European cities, public transport in our capital remains very limited at night. The Nitelink buses, which serve 17 routes hourly between 12.30 a.m. and 4.30 a.m., carried 14,813 people last weekend. It's something, but the service could be vastly improved, no matter how many more taxis we get.
Passengers still have to walk quite a distance at their drop-off point, and there is no member of Dublin Bus on board for the journey to act as deterrent to loutish behaviour, which intimidates many people, particularly women, from using the service.
Joe Collins of Dublin Bus said this week that the company would shortly be announcing details of an enhancement of the service.
Up to now, in the wake of such unsatisfactory service, people have been finding their own ways of adjusting to the problems. There is increasing anecdotal evidence that parents are frequently acting as an unofficial taxi service for their children who are stuck in town; happier to respond to a call from a mobile and get up in the small hours to fetch them than to lie at home worrying. But can there be anyone who actually likes doing this, or who does not resent the fact they have felt compelled to do it?
Ken Johnstone has been driving a taxi for six years. Ever thought there weren't as many taxis on the road, even during the week? You're right. "A lot of drivers go home at 4 p.m. and come back at 7 p.m. They just hate the traffic," he reports. "Apart from the fact that it's frustrating, it's not worth their while being on the road at that time, since the meter only goes up 10p every 40 seconds of stationary time."
He tries to avoid working weekend nights, even though he doesn't share his car with a second driver, because "it's got so dangerous".
There are just two taxi-sharing ranks, at College Green and Abbey Street, which are monitored by marshals. "They are working beautifully, and the big van-taxis tend to go to those," Johnstone says. "There should be more." He points out that taxi-drivers are not legally permitted to shout down a queue of people at a rank to try to see if anyone else is going the same way. "So you have a crazy situation like a cab going to Bray with one passenger, and out of action for at least an hour."
John Lynch is a hackney driver who used to work nights, but "I don't like the city at night. There's a menacing kind of atmosphere now, which has evolved over the last five years. I wouldn't want to drive a taxi in this city. I prefer account work - you know who you're picking up, and you have an address and a contact number."
Like Johnstone, he cites traffic as the prime reason why it is so hard to get a car in peak hours, with fewer journeys being completed. He, too, reports that hackney drivers try to avoid the city in rush hour - so more taxi licences may not bring instant solutions to the problems of finding a taxi during the week.
Denise Kinahan is one of Dublin's 500 women taxi-drivers. There are probably lots of women would-be passengers travelling home alone who would like to have a woman driver, but you'll be hard-pushed to find one at night. "I know for a fact most women don't work nights, and certainly not weekends. It's too dangerous."
When even the taxi-drivers and hackneys don't like working weekends, there is a serious problem, which cannot be explained simply by the shortage of cars. The traffic has soured everyone's trust in getting from A to B at any time of day, the lack of policing, and a woefully inadequate public transport service are all part of the problem.
Public transport at night should be much more frequent, and certain key services should serve the same route they serve by day, as happens with the very popular night bus service in London, thus dropping people much closer to home. This would need an input of serious money - and who would not want to see the Government allocating funding to this in the forthcoming Budget?
Taxi-sharing ranks should be vastly increased, and implemented straight away in locations such as the airport, Busarus, and the railway stations. The hackneys should be allowed to use bus lanes. People want to see a much more visible Garda presence on the streets. And, of course, everyone wants to see lots more taxis.
Something has to give. Christmas is approaching, now only a marginally more miserable time of year than any other to get home after a night out. The public no longer cares about hearing excuses or reasons: it wants action, and results.