It is grimly appropriate that the announcement of Operation Freeflow 1998, which aims to persuade private car users in Dublin to switch to public transport over the Christmas period, should be overshadowed by today's unofficial strike by train drivers. The chaos caused by the "choo-choo flu" will hardly help to convince frustrated commuters of the advantages of public transport; but it will underline the fact that the capital's transport problems cannot be solved by short-term measures.
And the measures announced yesterday, welcome as they are, are just that. They include a ban on all non-emergency road works from December 1st; restrictions on city-centre deliveries; the allocation of 160 extra gardai to traffic duties; an extra 20 buses at morning and evening peak times; extra NiteLink services; and park-and-ride facilities based at the RDS in Ballsbridge and Whitehall Church on the north side. Since the latter scheme will operate only between 10 a.m and 6.30 p.m. from Monday to Saturday, with an extension on late-night shopping days, it is clearly designed merely to reduce the number of city-centre shoppers, rather than workers, using their cars. But its effectiveness will be reduced by the fact that the car park at Whitehall will not be available on Sundays for the good, parochial reason that it is used by Massgoers. It may also prove to be the case, as the AA is warning, that traffic congestion will be worse around suburban shopping centres than in the heart of the city.
Everyone working, shopping, travelling to school, college, hospital, pub or party in the next few weeks will wish the plan well, whatever its shortcomings. But its very existence is an admission of the pathetic inadequacy of the city's public transport and traffic management. Obvious questions spring to mind. The ban on non-emergency road works is welcome, but why do the various authorities - Corporation, Telecom, ESB, Bord Gais - seem incapable of co-ordinating their operations all year round so as to avoid serial excavations of the roadways? The "DART into town - NiteLink home" ticket, priced at £3.50, is sensible - but why are combined bus and rail tickets not available all the time? The promise of assiduous traffic policing is welcome - but why is this on offer only at Christmas, as if it were some kind of a seasonal bonus rather than a civil entitlement?
The Budget estimates announced earlier this month earmarked £56 million for public transport, much of it to be spent on extra buses and DART carriages. But these amount to only a part of the short-term action plan announced eight weeks ago to cope with the city's deepening traffic crisis. And there is no sign that the subsidy to Dublin Bus will be raised above its current pitiful level.
The city's chronic congestion has two main causes. The first is the explosive surge in car numbers as a result of the economic boom of recent years. The second is what the Dublin Transportation Office calls the "slippage" in the strategy, devised in the early 1990s, to achieve a significant switch away from the use of private cars. For slippage, read political vacillation, short-termism and lack of vision.
If the latest version of Operation Freeflow succeeds in making the pre-Christmas traffic somewhat less stressful than it might otherwise have been, commuters and shoppers will be grateful. But what will the New Year bring?