[article] Dublin workers totally car dependent says researcher

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David Labanyi, Irish Times, Wed, Apr 26, 06

Access to a car is seen as essential to secure employment for people living in working-class suburbs in Dublin, according to a leading Trinity College Dublin social researcher.

Dr James Wickham, director of the Employment Research Centre at TCD, said a lack of public transport options in suburbs around the capital obliges people to own a car to secure a job.

"This isn't such an issue in middle-class areas, because people in these areas have access to cars. Also, it appears that, overall, middle-class areas may be better served by public transport. But if you are living in a working-class area and you don't have a car, you lose out. This places people under huge pressure to have a car."

This is one of the key conclusions in Dr Wickham's book, Next Stop Bangkok, due for publication this summer. His conclusions are drawn from an EU-wide study that examined the transport systems of four European cities - including Dublin - to assess the level of car dependency. Dr Wickham was part of the SceneSusTech research team which examined transport networks available to residents of Jobstown, Clonskeagh and the Docklands. These were used as examples of a working class, middle class and developing area and compared with similar demographic estates in Athens, Bologna and Helsinki.

"We found that Dublin is totally car dependent. The whole city is designed on the assumption that people have cars. Everyone needs a car. It is not a choice, but it is unsustainable."

Researchers found that the Jobstown area of Tallaght had one of the lowest levels of car ownership in the study, but one of the highest ratios of people using a car to get to work.

"If you are living in Jobstown and have a job in Lucan, you are not geographically too far away. But without a car you have to use radial public transport routes into town and then another link out. It takes hours. No one in Helsinki mentioned car-ownership as a barrier to employment. In Tallaght everybody did."

As part of the EU study, researchers examined political decisions behind housing and transport planning in the four cities.

"We found cities with very high car usage, such as Dublin and Athens, were institutionally weak. No Irish politician has built his or her career on what he or she did for the city that elected them at local level," he said.

As an example of this, Dr Wickham criticised the "political inertia" that had starved Dublin Bus of the resources required to allow it to build on the success of the quality bus corridors (QBCs).

"It is clear that QBCs had an impact but the improvement hasn't been maintained because investment in Dublin Bus was held up over the absurd issue of privatisation."

Without radical policy changes, Dr Wickham says a wry Bangkok joke will apply to Dublin in 10 years: "A guy is driving his S-Class Mercedes in Bangkok. He sees a friend walking and offers him a lift. His friend replies 'No thanks', he's in a hurry."

Dr Wickham will address the transport problems facing Dublin at the Engineers Ireland conference tomorrow.

© The Irish Times