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The proposed city centre car ban, and its opposition, are examples of the adversarial thinking that is becoming out of date. People need to drive into the city, and businesses need them to do so. The problem isn’t the number of people coming in, or that they need to drive: the problem is that they’re driving alone. Facilitating carpooling would solve the problem: the park-and-ride facilities at the Red Cow roundabout and Sandyford industrial estate could easily handle carpoolers as well as Luas users, and there are plenty of industrial estates that could handle a little more parking now that less employees are coming to work. The same conditions exist at most cities across Ireland. Why don’t businesses and city councils cooperate to promote carpooling? Shoppers and workers could save on petrol and parking, as well as sharing information on good deals…Who knows, maybe someone would even carry your shopping!

At first glance, the idea of everyone in Ireland driving electric cars sounds great.  But when looking at Minister Eamon Ryan’s announcement of his ambition to have 10% of the cars in Ireland electric by 2010, one has to notice his collaborators: ESB, Nissan and Renault.  None of these parties can or should be expected to serve anything other than their own interests.  The minister provides very little detail on how this new demand for electricity is to be met.  If this announcement were linked to new wind or sea-power farms, or animal methane, or the dairy by-products and cooking oils that are already fuelling cars around the world, that might be something to get excited about.  But hoping that electric cars will be the magic bullet for our climate change problems, and that an electricity company and car manufacturers are going to be the saviours, sounds at best naïve.  The roads are already overcrowded and making the shift from oil to electricity is like a heroin addict switching to smoking instead of shooting: the greater problem remains.  Is the minister going to require all civil servants to carpool by 2010?  Or offer free tolls, discounted insurance and/or motor tax to carpoolers? That would make a big difference to the energy usage and carbon footprint of this country, but no profits for ESB, Nissan and Renault.  Who’s running this government, anyway?