Dublin City planners have annouced plans to alleviate Dublin's traffic
problems. The main cause of the Capital's traffic congestion is the huge
volume of commuter vehicles which leave satellite communities each morning
for the city, returning by evening, and bringing city traffic to a standstill.
The latest bold plan involves moving Dublin city centre outward and into the capital's suburbs. This should dramatically reduce the number of workers travelling to and from work on clogged roads. Challenged with the possibility that land prices in the new city suburbs will rocket, those responsible for the plan argue that the privtate sector will quickly take advantage of the now unnoccpied former city centre to develop affordable housing, providing ample accomodation for those now working in the former suburbs.
It has been argued in government circles that the radical plan will cause
unprecedented levels of disruption and inconvenience for commuters. The
Office of Public Works have made it clear though that all that is required
from an infrastructure point of view to to turn the roads connecting the
city with it's hinterland around, so that main thoroughfares which used
to bring commuters from the suburbs to the city and from the city to the
suburbs now bring them from the city in what was the suburbs, to the suburbs
in the former city. The project manager descibed the plan as turning convetional
city planning 'on it's head'.
Earlier intiatives like the mini-car , which would have occupied 1/10th of the space of a regular car and the heli-bus , have failed to get off the ground due to technical problems. The mini-car initiative floundered because of a lack of 1/10th normal size citizens while the heli-bus proved to be a conventional bus and could not therefore be made air-worthy on the planet earth.
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