Sir, - I am in the enviable posit ion of working in Dundrum and living only five minutes' walk away from the office. Every morning I stroll by ridiculously long queues of cars at Dundrum village. The suggestion that the Luas or the Dundrum bypass will solve Dublin's traffic problem is crazy. Wake up and smell the car fumes! They are just expensive, ways of shifting the problem elsewhere.
Car sharing is the quick, cheap answer. Regularly, out of 50 cars in a queue in Dundrum more than 30 have only one driver. If there was a two passenger minimum limit, we could reduce the 50 cars to 35, giving a 30 per cent reduction.
The next step would be to set up a system where on the spot (say) £10 fines would be collected from drivers with no passengers. (Exceptions could be made in some cases, e.g. doctors.) The collection of these fines could be random, with squads of collectors checking Dundrum one day, Phibsboro the next, and so on. This would be a self financing operation which could be run under license by the private sector.
So, where's the problem? Put your Luas underground and leave it there, with all the reports, estimates and articles about it. Use the Luas money to provide a proper school bus service. (We all know how light the traffic is during school holidays, when there aren't hundreds of cars driving kids to school every morning.) Car sharing works in numerous American cities; why shouldn't it work in Dublin? - Yours, etc.,
Laurel Road,
Churchtown,
Dublin 14.