‘Buses are for losers’: A short history of traffic congestion in Dublin

One hundred years ago, the chief of the Dublin Metropolitan Police proposed a solution to the city’s burgeoning traffic congestion problem: get rid of Nelson’s Pillar. Better yet, get rid of all the statues on Sackville Street.
As Gen WRE Murphy saw it, Dublin’s traffic trouble was caused by congestion at College Green. By denuding what is now O’Connell Street of monuments, you would create space through which cars could flow freely and, thus, finally solve the city’s traffic problems.
Murphy made his proposal at an October 1924 commission of inquiry into Dublin’s traffic issues.
Over the next century, the finger of blame for the city’s traffic woes would point in many directions: trams, buses, horses, cyclists, pedestrians, mothers, schools, slow drivers, fast drivers, lack of parking, too much parking, Trinity College, narrow streets, bus lanes, traffic lights, and so on.
In the early 1900s, Dublin had an extensive tram network, a high proportion of horse-drawn traffic and, according to a report in The Irish Times, was “the cyclingist city in the world”. This would all give way for cars.
It started in the late 1890s when a Dubliner named John Colohan imported the first petrol car into Ireland, a Benz Velo. By 1911, more than 5,000 cars, buses and lorries had been registered in the country. By 1914 they had caught the attention of Irish Times letters writers, who started to complain about the parking on Grafton Street. “Visitors all remark upon the utterly hopeless and careless way in which the traffic is managed in Dublin,” one claimed.
As motoring caught on, the authorities felt the need to clear the way for cars. By 1930 they concluded the “manner in which the trams now run across [O’Connell] bridge is a cause of serious congestion”.
The June 1932 opening of Butt Bridge provided a temporary laxative for the city’s congestion, but the problem soon returned. To fix the issue, city authorities in 1937 set out various one-way systems, crossing areas and restricted streets.
The new scheme received an unenthusiastic reception from businesses, not least the Irish Master Hairdressers’ Guild who complained that ladies and gentlemen would now be unable to complete their “hairdressing requirements”.
Nevertheless, congestion continued to dog the city until second World War-era driving restrictions provided a reprieve and bicycles returned to the streets en masse.
After the war, about 15,000 private cars emerged from hibernation and things soon returned to normal: a May 1947 Irish Times editorial complained about the sound of excessive beeping in the capital.
In the 1960s Dublin’s trams were a fading memory but traffic congestion remained a reality. It was time for an expert to compile a study. The authorities sent for Europe’s only professor of traffic engineering, Stuttgart’s Max Erich Feuchtinger. Dr Feuchtinger’s job was to study the traffic and advise Dublin Corporation on whether more surveys were needed. The professor would die before he could complete his work, but the torch of his endeavour was carried forward by Karl-Heinz Schaechterle, whose 1965 report proposed a futuristic roadscape of divided carriageways, flyovers, underpasses and specially designed access points to shepherd drivers away from the city centre.
The following year, the IRA struck for the cause of urban traffic management by blowing up Nelson’s Pillar. But by this point, the problem had expanded beyond what Gen Murphy could have imagined. In 1971, there were more than 158,000 vehicles registered in Dublin while the number of cyclists in the “cyclingist city in the world” had declined by 80 per cent.
Bus services also felt the effect. In 1971, an experimental bus lane opened in Fairview for five days. In response, an organisation called the Motorists Protection Branch threatened to start a campaign of civil disobedience.
By the mid-1990s, the Dublin Transport Office predicted a “chaotic future” if drivers couldn’t be convinced to leave their cars at home. But convincing them would be a hard task. “The perception that ‘buses are for losers’ still holds sway in a society which, more than ever, seems to assign such a high premium to company cars and slim-line mobile phones,” wrote Frank McDonald in 1999.
Dublin Corporation’s then director of traffic Owen Keegan agreed. “Even if Dublin Bus was to collect these people from their houses every morning, drop the kids off to school and then serve them a champagne breakfast in club class conditions on the way into town, they still wouldn’t get the bus,” he said.
In the intervening years, trams would return to the streets of Dublin and the new M50 would become Ireland’s most traffic-clogged road.
Recent weeks have seen the introduction of a new traffic scheme, the latest attempt by the authorities to alleviate Dublin’s congestion. Will it work? Who knows? But if it doesn’t, the council could always remove the Spire and see if that helps. It’s an idea.