I must be mistaken. Since it is not proper to imagine that a public company might actually be doing a reasonable job, it can't really be that Dublin Bus is getting better. Yet as a non-driver and a frequent user of the bus service, I can't rid myself of the improper thought that actually Dublin Bus isn't bad.
My senses tell me that getting from my home to The Irish Times office in the centre now takes me on average 10 minutes less than it did two years ago. But maybe there's a warp in the time-space continuum somewhere around Dorset Street, and the sensation of things speeding up is just an illusion.
Or maybe the service from my part of town has actually improved. The new buses are pleasant and fairly clean. The Quality Bus Corridors really work. The drivers are mostly courteous, amiable and helpful.
Except when some traffic catastrophe is fouling everything up, there is a discernible relationship between the timetable and the arrival of the bus. Substantial public investment and the decision to give priority to buses over cars are resulting in the gradual emergence of a pretty decent service.
I know that some people still have terrible experiences with public transport in Ireland. The combination of decades of underinvestment, the astonishingly rapid growth of many satellite towns in the east and midlands and the chaotic nature of spatial planning makes for a pretty lethal cocktail. But given half a chance, as it has been in the last few years, CIE has done a fair job, and the fact that it is now carrying 320 million passengers a year speaks for itself.
The spectacular disasters in public transport policy, on the other hand, have been connected to privatisation. The problems for the rail network caused by the fiasco of the mini-CTC signalling system arose out of the determination that the contract should go a private company. The construction and operation of the Luas system in Dublin was deliberately kept out of CIE's hands, and we can all see what a great success that has been.
The delusion that private operators are necessarily more efficient than public companies is exposed, indeed, by the awarding of the Luas contract to the French-owned conglomerate Connex. This is the company that last week had its franchise to operate train services in south-eastern England withdrawn.
Announcing the move, the chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority, accused Connex of "botched management" and explained: "I was worried that they did not understand enough to be able to predict and manage for the future with the kind of competence we had every right to expect."
The first steps on the road to the privatisation of public transport in Ireland have thus resulted in (a) the scandal of the mini-CTC system and (b) a Luas system that will be managed by a company judged too incompetent and clueless to run trains in England.
So, of course, Seamus Brennan seems determined to march blithely onwards. CIE is to be broken up and, for starters, a quarter of the Dublin bus market is to be opened up to private franchises next year.
Where is the evidence that this privatisation policy actually does what it says on the tin: pushing up standards, driving down costs and benefiting both the public and employees? In Britain, public subsidies to British Rail in 1989-1990 were £885 million (in real prices). Total state support to the privatised rail industry is expected to hit £3.8 billion in 2003-4. Ticket prices are among the most expensive in the world. Delays can be terrible, and safety has been fatally compromised.
The result of bus privatisation is little better. Even the World Bank, which has pushed privatisation programmes in many parts of the world, acknowledges that the policy just doesn't live up to the claims made for it. A 1999 World Bank report, Buses in Great Britain: Privatisation, Deregulation and Competition, makes grim reading for those who see private ownership as a solution to public transport problems.
Reductions in the levels of public subsidy after privatisation in the mid-1980s were largely offset by a substantial fall in the number of passengers, making each journey actually more expensive to the taxpayer. The number of buses did increase on the already well-served routes, but fell by 11 per cent in areas where the commercial return was unattractive.
Bus fares increased in real terms in all parts of Britain after the mid 1980s. Investment in the industry declined significantly, and, as a result, the average age of the buses on the road rose by 30 per cent. The number of jobs in the industry declined, and the real wages of bus-drivers declined relative to other manual workers. Even the promise of competition was not really fulfilled, as smaller operators sold out to big conglomerates and ownership was gradually concentrated in the hands of just three companies.
Why, just when Dublin Bus is showing real improvements, should these failed policies be followed here? Why should we hop off a public transport system that is at last going somewhere and climb on to a decrepit ideological bandwagon on the road to nowhere?