If you’re like me and have managed to reach adulthood without getting a driving licence, you’ll probably be able to relate to the contents of this article.
Heck, even if you’re one of those people who can drive but feels concerned about car exhaust emissions or just wants to avoid the cost of petrol or parking where possible, you’ve likely ran into the issues we’ll discuss below.
Having lived in Tokyo and South Korea, I never felt the need to have a licence. Having said that, as someone who is fond of cars from an aesthetic point of view, I never made a conscious choice not to become a driver: I just didn’t get around to it, as they say.
Well here I am now, all but for the good graces of drivers among my loved ones, reliant on public transport, as I have been since I moved back to Ireland full time a few years ago. To explain why I am not at my wits end, I thought it might be useful to outline some photos of journeys I have recently attempted to make, and their duration in a car compared to public transport.
Brace yourself.
Greystones to Dublin Airport.
This should be easy enough, you might think. Greystones is, after all, a town that has exploded in size since the 90s and the surrounding towns of Newcastle, and Newtownmountkennnedy have also gained significant weight over the years.
The airport is somewhere lots of people need to go all year round, so you’d expect there would be a swift route available to us here in leafy suburbia.
You can see that this image was taken at a time of day that isn’t typically prone to traffic congestion, but it is notable that it still takes almost a full hour longer to get to the airport on public transport than it does to drive. We can safely assume that very few people would be foolish enough to try that journey at peak hours anyway – either by car or on the lottery ticket that the Dart can be.
Needless to say an hour is a HUGE amount of time to lose when one is traveling, and an extra 60 minutes of sleep or prep time are worth their weight in gold to many a traveller.
Oh, and if I was to travel from exactly where I live (concealed for security reasons) it would take 2 hrs 26 mins on public transport or 46 minutes in the car. Note the 1 min difference in the car versus the 34 extra minutes this adds onto the public transport journey. Grim.
Need to do some court reporting at short notice? Not on our watch!
This is the one that probably grinds my gears most. I really enjoy court reporting even though it’s stressful, or can have you waiting around from 10:30 am to 4pm to catch a story.
Maybe you hop into a taxi to get to Cloverhill District Court in the morning only to discover the only sustenance available is from a vending machine selling crisps and chocolate and the nearest shop is a 15 minute walk away (apparently).
I just ended up eating a bag of crisps that day while jealousy eyeing the homemade sandwich of one of my colleagues from a rival outlet..
Let’s say I want to go to Comedy Unleashed in Lucan to catch up with some friends and colleagues, or do some interviews at Dunboyne Castle. Cars are king here again.
Breaking news situation in Coolock? It’ll probably be over by the time you’d get there on public transport. I’m not expecting a teleportation machine, but 46 mins in the car compared to over 2 hours driving seems a bit much. We haven’t been cheeky enough to stray outside of the Dublin area yet folks.
Let’s get naughty and attempt to go further afield.
Let’s say I want to visit some friends in Charleville. Well as you can see it takes more than twice as long on public transport than it does in the car. 2hrs 40min compared to 5 hrs and 15 mins.
We can probably forget about Belfast too since it’s almost twice the journey at 2 hrs 23 mins versus 4 hrs and 7 minutes.
The Golden Window and why I feel happy just seeing an 84x
The 84x (and her sister of the night the 84n- although the routes differ somewhat) is a bus that the mere sight of – even if I’m not getting it – fills me with joy.
If I’m going into town (only the city centre mind, not one of those side areas like Dublin 8 or anywhere like that) I can get there in about an hour (fingers crossed) if I’m going during the short morning window of the 84x, in other words: 06:30 06:50 07:00 07:10 07:20 07:35 07:40.
The same glorious chariot will convey me straight home from the city centre at 12:00 15:50 16:15t (the ‘t’ means during term) 16:50 17:10 17:30 17:50 18:30, while the sultry 84n will take me home at 12am, 2am, or 4am on Friday and Saturday nights. There was one on Thursdays when I was a teenager, but that’s gone now.
I think it’s important to remember that I live in one of the main towns of the Dublin commuter belt – I’m hardly up a mountain or in the middle of some remote filed (although sometimes I wish I was) – so perhaps it’s slightly unreasonable for a government that hasn’t put in place a transport infrastructure that can deliver even reasonably comparable journey times on public transport to encourage us to ditch cars.
This is all the more true when we are told that public transport is the future for people of my generation.
Well, it’s not the future for me! Wish me luck with my driving test!
