Dublin will never be free of traffic gridlock

I don’t believe that Dublin will ever be free of traffic chaos. In the age of technology, people are simply too attached to the experience that being in a car brings them.

    The government’s transport policy is based on the assumption that when an adequate transport infrastructure is created for the greater Dublin area, people will switch from their cars in droves. This is one big assumption. Transport bureaucrats assume that people slowly go out of their minds sitting in traffic. Do they? I don’t see it. What the transport anoraks don’t understand is that many people derive emotional security from driving. They are in control in this shell. Outside they often feel they have no control. They have power in the shell, a refuge from feeling powerless elsewhere. In an era in which personal space is ever more aggressively defended, the car provides the perfect, controlled refuge. We can talk or sing away to ourselves and there’s no one there to judge us as mad. We can be ourselves. Outside we don’t have the confidence to be ourselves.

The love affair with the car represents our headlong rush to integrate with technology, despite the fact that its cold and lifeless and despite the fact that in doing so we become more isolated from our fellow human beings. We have our laptop, our iPod, our mobile and our car. None of them talk back. They do whatever we ask of them. They don’t make us feel uncomfortable or inadequate.

So sit back and relax. Stick on your favourite CD and drown out the noise outside. Switch on the heated seat. You are in splendid isolation and no one can touch you.

Tags: cars, chaos, Dublin, emotional security, gridlock, infrastructure, shell, technology, traffic, transport