Sir, - On seeing Conor Faughnan's recent article on LUAS in The Irish Times, I fully expected a somewhat biased opinion in favour of the roads lobby to be expressed, but nothing quite prepared me for the barrage of contradictions, misconceptions and jumbled thinking that it held.
The reason the underground section of LUAS cannot be considered is quite simple: it is too expensive. The EU is providing most of the funding for the project and its budget has been firmly fixed. As we cannot afford the considerable difference in price between the on-street system and an underground system it is simply a non-starter. There is no "debate". In fact, if we dally much longer we run the very real risk of losing the funds altogether; but perhaps that is what the motoring lobby are hoping for?
No one is suggesting that cars are being "used wilfully to the detriment of the city", as Mr Faughnan puts it, but the damage is still being done, the effect is the same, whether wilful or not and this fact must be recognised. Mr. Faughnan writes that "people use cars because they need the mobility that they provide", but that is the crux of the problem. In Dublin there is no mobility and that is precisely why we need a more comprehensive public transport system; the private motor car has patently failed in this respect.
Your correspondent accused the opponents of the underground "solution" as declaring "ideological opposition" to the underground, yet it is plainly obvious from his article (and others on the same subject by other authors) that it is he who has some sort of mental block if not actual ideological opposition to other forms of transport.
There is nothing new in LUAS; tram systems like it are running successfully in most other European cities. In fact, Dublin was one of the pioneers of the tram as a means of mass transport and had an extensive tram system second to none. This fact has apparently been forgotten in this debate; a casual reader might be forgiven for thinking this was new and untried technology. It would be a supreme irony indeed if further delays by this Government resulted in the loss of the EU funding for the LUAS as it was a Fianna Fail Government which closed much of our public transport system back in the 1950s; Todd Andrews, father of Niall and David, particularly comes to mind.
Public transport users, pedestrians and cyclists are "ordinary people with real lives and real needs" which have been largely ignored in the past while the road lobby got its own way. It is time now for change. - Yours, etc.,
Riversdale Park, Dublin 20.