A Long Look at Ireland: 3. Getting Around
Getting Around - Transport & Travel in Ireland
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In the years between the 1950s and the 1980s Ireland was not a particularly car dependant country. The major cities had stayed small enough to make what rudimentary public transport systems as existed more or less enough when combined with the ability to walk or cycle to most places anyway.
Few families had more than one car, kids walked or cycled to school and people who lived in rural areas tended to work there also. Young people were emigrating at such a rate that local populations throughout most of Ireland were both declining and ageing.
So no roads to speak of were built, train routes were closed, indeed whole lines were decommissioned, an action which now seems short-sighted to say the least.
Then came the rise in prosperity of the 1990s, which was rapid and considerable. We were left with the legacy of poor infrastructure and are now struggling with the consequences of a rapidly growing, much younger, population who are practically welded to their cars.
There are major moves afoot presently to tackle what is generally agreed to be a crisis in transport.
Outside the Cities
Yes, you will find roads like this....
...but many are like this
Dublin at a not very busy time
LUAS Tram in DublinWhile narrow winding roads through picturesque locations are charming and pleasant to drive when you are a visitor, the same standard of road is a monumental pain to someone travelling it twice daily to get to work. Both have a place - just not always the same place.
Motorways [freeways] are still a relative rarity in Ireland, though additional motorway miles are being added pretty rapidly.
In many cases traffic is still decanted half way though a journey from a state of the art road to an old and narrow one - there are still no two major urban centres connected entirely by motorway.
Town bypasses exist, with more urgently needed but only slowly being provided, to take the pressure off towns with narrow streets overburdened with through traffic, curtailing development and making them pretty unpleasant places to live and work. Motorists, gazing out from their stationery cars in the inevitable bottlenecks that result, grow, unfairly, to hate these beleaguered towns.
Intercity train services are patchy, essentially radiating out from Dublin with a much poorer service between the regions, in many cases none at all.
Transport & Travel in Dublin
Dublin is a city in the midst of a true population explosion - indeed the entire city has burst its boundaries and spread to essentially include a vast commuter belt stretching 50 miles or more into the surrounding counties of Kildare, Wicklow, Louth and Meath. Every morning and evening a slow moving snake of cars connects the expanding outer towns to the city proper, with twice daily commutes of 2 hours or more quite common.
The M50, a motorway ring road around Dublin which was started in 1990 with the aim of relieving congestion but which has yet to be completed, resembles a car park [parking lot] at busy times and its main interchange, at the Red Cow, is more popularly known as the Mad Cow. To add to the merriment this is a toll road, with a toll plaza completely inadequate for the job adding considerably to delays.
See a photo diary of a typical rush hour in Dublin.
There are efforts to tackle congestion within the city and make commuting easier. Many are aimed at taking commuters out of cars and into public transport. The LUAS light rail system, a tramway opened in 2004 which reaches into two of the largest suburban areas in south Dublin, has helped the areas it reaches considerably. A complex traffic control system, which makes commuting short distances within the city by car difficult and time consuming, and severe curtailment of parking other than in paid car parks further discourages the use of cars where public transport is available.
But the hard pressed commuter from the far flung commuter towns with little choice but to drive is still waiting the provision of adequate roads and can see little light ahead in the immediate future.
So who would choose to live so far away, and why do they not just move into the city? For that we need to have a look at Ireland's current favourite topic of conversation, housing or more to the point, the price of it.
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