Driving through Dublin these days is rather like arriving in New Delhi. To be sure, some of the roads are familiar enough: I know you! You're O'Connell Street! But a street which is one-way on Sunday is one-way in the other direction by Wednesday, apart from buses, and by Friday is a bus lane only, NO RIGHT TURNS. By Sunday, it is pedestrianised, and by Tuesday it is a new runway for Dublin Airport. By Wednesday, the street looks like Tiananmen Square, dead bodies everywhere, the corpses of commuters who have taken the only honourable course open within their exacting code of conduct and impaled themselves on their car-jacks.
Traffic paradise
We all know that when Luas comes there will be traffic paradise in Dublin - though whether Luas arrives before the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or maybe even with them on it, most of us are unlikely to live long enough to find out. In the meantime, we must get into Dublin as best we may. I have contemplated lashing together a raft and launching it into the Liffey at Poulaphouca, which gets me there, slap bang into the central pillar on O'Connell Bridge, minus a tooth or two; but it doesn't get me back. There is an Arrow service from Naas, which works on the principle that there are seldom enough buses at Heuston for the passengers who have alighted. And of course there is the 65A from Blessington, which enters the Black Hole of Templeogue, never to be seen again. . .
Which leaves the car. From this week, we may not turn right onto Dame Street from South Great George's Street. People have been making that right turn for 400 years. When Augustine Birrell attempted to make it a left-only turn, the IRB, Irish Roads Brotherhood, in conjunction with their gallant allies, the Irish Vehiclers and the Irish Carriers Army, marched in protest down South Great George's Street, turned rebelliously right at the bottom, and marched to the GPO. The rest is history.
No doubt to forestall a repeat of this unfortunate episode, Dublin Corporation is introducing special measures to enable people to go to O'Connell street from South Great George's Street. Instead of turning right, you turn left, take the Galway Road as far as the Blanchardstown roundabout, take the third exit marked Dublin, and head back the eight miles into the city. Before Heuston Station, turn right towards the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, and keep on going to Thomas Street. Turn right onto Francis Street, left at the end, and left then behind St Patrick's Cathedral. You are now on South Great George's Street: when you get to Dame Street, turn left. . .
Parallel lines
This an interesting way of spending the rest of your life. Another one is try to get from St Stephen's Green to Parnell Square. It is rather like those little glass-topped mazes containing a little ball that you get in Christmas crackers. You can't do it. You can get to Mullingar and Belmullet from St Stephen's Green. You can get to Holyhead, Dover and Calais, and even, with a bit of patience, Vladivostok. But Parnell Square, no, never. It is strictly X-Files: parallel lines meet at the point in space which cars must enter to reach Parnell Square from the Green. Dublin's hospitals are full of wailing demons, the shattered remnants of motorists who thought the journey would be possible.
Of course, you can abandon your car in a multi-storey carpark and walk. What an investment opportunity I missed by not putting my life's savings into Irish Car Parks, which essentially have a monopoly in Dublin; and by God, the splendid fellows that they are, they certainly know how to use it.
Car-parking fees recently rose from £1.70 an hour to £2.20 - that's a 30 per cent increase, related not to cost, but what the market will bear - exactly the same sort of gouging mentality that many of Dublin's similarly protected publicans have been displaying recently. But you can go to another pub. You can't go to another car-park: once you're on the ramp, you're committed, twice over. Because unlike the road meters, ICP multi-storeys admit of no unit of time under an hour. If you get back to the car-park a minute late, you're charged for the full hour, and ICP are rolling on the ground, slapping their cellulite-filled thighs, and choking with laughter.
So what do you do if you realise you're going to be late back to the car-park but decide to get the full value for your money, and stay to do some extra shopping? Instead of giving your space for another motorist, you're using it up, even though you don't actually want to.
Market monopoly
Monopolistic pricing thereby creates an inflexible market-place which benefits the monopoly only, for either way, the ICP fatties win every time. At worst, they get the full hourly value of the parking space. Better still, they get it twice over: once from the driver who has left at one minute past the hour, and once from the driver who has taken his place. Best of all, three short-term users might pay for the space thrice over in the single hour.
It's technologically possible to charge only for the time actually spent parked, thereby freeing more spaces and creating a more flexible parking system. But it would require some political will both to protect the unloved, much-loathed motorist and to hit ICP's easy profits. Of course that won't happen. Instead, we must wait for Luas. And wait. And wait.