Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Our Useless Politician's

I left Dublin City Centre by car at 17.25 to drive to the Airport to pick up a friend who was flying from London. Her flight departed Stansted 10 minutes earlier at 17.15.
The rush-hour traffic through Dorset Street, Drumcondra and Whitehall was unbelievably bad, at times I would only move 20 metres at a change of traffic lights, and would then be at a complete standstill for 3 or 4 minutes.
As I passed the infamous St. Luke's in Drumcondra - Bertie Ahern's centre of corruption, I could not help but feel angry at the sheer mess Ahern and his useless Government colleagues had made of the Celtic Tiger years. They squandered away our wealth and left us with these disastrous traffic chaos, causing misery to thousands of people every day.
My friend texted me when I was in Whitehall - she had already arrived in Dublin Airport from London. I eventually got on to the M1 a few minutes later and managed to reach the airport within 10 minutes.
So - it took the same amount of time to fly from London to Dublin Airport as to drive from Dublin City Centre to the Airport!
BLOODY GREAT COUNTRY WE LIVE IN!

2 comments:

Tomasz said...

If everyone just left their cars and hop onto some public transport (your friend had chosen an aircraft, with probably more than 100 people onboard, instead of going on his/her own by car&ferry) you would be there in no-time.
But hey, everyone thinks theyre so smart and comfy in their cars... not a bad idea unless you try it during rush hours.
It was said in 1999 that number of cars is 270 per 1000 people. And I read in 2007 "the number of cars per person in Ireland has more than doubled in the past 10 years", I am pretty sure it is still growing. I am also sure that the street network in that time didnt double its capacity, so- you try changing you habits or keep on jamming in a constantly increasing rate.

Blogaire said...

I think most people would leave their cars at home if there was an alternative. Luas is great,but very limited(and some genius forgot to connect up the 2 lines), but we have no metro system like a lot of other cities.
And I think Dublin is the only capital city in Europe that does not have a rail link to the airport. As I said - our Politicians squandered our wealth instead of building decent infrastructure.