THE DAY THE TOLL BARRIERS CAME DOWN

Mark this day, August 29^th 2008. This is the day that the notorious M50 toll bridge lowers its barriers for the last time. Dubliners and commuters should be celebrating as Berliners did in 1989 when the infamous Berlin Wall dividing East and West Berlin was knocked. They should go around to the booths and pull them apart and derive some glee from ripping out equipment that made their daily lives hell.

Not that it is going to make any material difference to the unfortunate motorist from an economic point of view. In fact, with the new e-tolling system billing you from cyberspace, you are likely to be worse off in that regard.

What is new? Screwing the motorist has been a hobby of all governments since the state was formed. Nothing really changes at all.

Do not expect that the demolition of this monstrosity will mean quicker travelling times ahead for unfortunate commuters. Ongoing works on the M50 to upgrade it to three lanes will not be completed until 2010. Inevitably, that will be 2011 or 2012 by which time the capacity of the road will be exceeded just like the original M50.

What is with the public servants we employ in this country? Do they not have some training in forecasting trends? They have a raft of data at their disposal, yet they continually fail to forecast our infrastructure needs in an accurate manner.

The M50 is now effectively an inner relief road for the city of Dublin. Just look at the residential and industrial development outside its boundaries. Despite economic downturns, progress will continue on this type development. Can planners not consult other cities with similar demographics to assess our needs for the future? There has been a suggestion that a new M50 style motorway should start at Drogheda and link to the new M7 at Portlaoise. This makes sense and should be done now, but going on past performance, by the time they get around to it further remedial action will be required.

There are scientific models out there for estimating our requirements for all forms of infrastructure. Those in authority appear to ignore those tools that will provide them with the necessary information to predict future requirements.

Ireland is a past master at reactive remedies to infrastructure problems. You only have to see the devastation that the recent floods caused to realize that none of the meteorology warnings of changing climate had any effect on planners. Against all advice, they allowed residential development on flood plains despite being told over ten years ago that the weather patterns were going to change to what we are now seeing. Sub-standard drainage systems were installed based on existing geological data and not future estimates. A five-year old child familiar with Lego would do better at design and build than the clowns in the public service.

Anyway, back to the Westlink toll bridge. During its existence, it made fortune for its owners, NTR. Not alone was the bridge paid for many times over during its lifetime, but the Government actually paid NTR €650 million to close the tolls. What an absolute farce. NTR continue to operate other tolls throughout the country so their income stream from the hard-pressed motorist will not dry up. Shed no tears for them.

Instead, why don’t motorists take the pleasure of saving NTR demolishing the tollbooths on the M50 by going up over the weekend and burning the lot. It will not change things very much but by God, it would feel good!