We need to start confronting the environmental factors that denigrate public health in Dublin city
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Una cleaning house here. I never thought I'd find myself saying that.
Most cars have to go. People can fight this all they want, but it has to happen. The first part of that vision needs to be about how people navigate the city centre. That means removing as many cars as possible. Fossil-fuelled SUVs, in particular, should be taxed into oblivion, or just banned outright. This does not mean penalising people who need to drive commercial vehicles for work, electric taxis, or obviously people with mobility issues. It also means a lot of thinking needs to be done around how people on lower incomes aren’t excessively penalised. Multiple new public – and free – transport options have to be provided simultaneously. That is essential.
Multi-story car parks should be removed from the city centre and placed on the outskirts with free electric transport into the city. Most car-parking spaces should also be removed. As car use decreases, we are going to need a car amnesty, where families can swap their car for bikes and scooters.
Cars are parked 95 per cent of the time. They clutter streets, paths and roads. Get rid of them. The bad faith, hairsplitting arguments and selfish hysteria of middle-class drivers in particular carries no weight in a climate emergency. Of course, there should be exceptions for those who genuinely need their cars on the road. Positive change needs to be logical change. But if you want to keep your car in the city centre out of personal convenience, that simply does not, should not and cannot override public health, or Ireland’s embarrassing languishing on emissions targets. We need to skip the phoney, predictable, cynical “debates”, radio phone-in outrage and populist “push back”, and just do it.
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