How it feels to bang your head against the brick wall of officialdom
IDID something a couple of weeks ago that I never thought I’d ever do – not in a million years. I sent a strongly worded email. But in my defence, I really was at the end of my tether. Every weekday for seven weeks I need to drive my husband to appointments at Beaumont Hospital. We live just north of Dublin city centre and we’re hugely fortunate to be so close to the place where he gets treatment.
Our home’s location has been one of the few silver linings we’ve had throughout his ongoing health issues.
Four days into this latest round of appointments, we set off at the usual 40 minutes before he was due to be seen. It’s a journey that in light traffic should take under 20 minutes. And up to then we’d been making it in time, but given it was just after lunchtime on a Friday, I knew we might be cutting it a bit fine.
After sitting in standstill traffic at the end of our road for more than ten minutes, I did a U-turn to go in the opposite direction and follow a far more circuitous route, one that I thought might give us half a chance of getting there near to the allotted time.
We got less than 1km before coming to a standstill again. Neither of us spoke for the ten minutes we were stuck there. My husband has infinite patience, and I’ve been trying to keep my negativity in check during this pandemic – it’s exhausting giving out and painful for others to listen to.
Eventually, we figured the only thing we could do was give up. We rang the hospital, explained the situation and pushed the appointment out, then drove back to our house where my husband got on his bike to cycle to Beaumont.
It’s not an ideal solution, he’s ill. And as the treatment goes on, he’ll be getting more fatigued and cycling won’t be an option.
It’s discombobulating and feels slightly claustrophobic not being able to get out of the area where you live, when you really need to.
And the thing is, I don’t believe the traffic issues in Dublin over the last couple of months have anything to do with extra volume or Garda checkpoints. I believe it’s down to traffic-light sequences.
I am aware that I’m starting to sound like a slightly crazed and ranty middle-aged woman right about now. But hear me out.
They changed the sequences in Dublin during lockdown to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists, which absolutely made sense. We weren’t allowed 5km beyond our homes and were only supposed to leave them to get some exercise. There was very little traffic on the roads. In one way it was paradise.
Then things started to loosen up and the schools went back. But the lights stayed the same.
This possibly happened in all of our cities and towns and I’d be interested to know how people outside the capital have found things traffic-wise.
Because here it affected journeys at the most random times of day. It’s not just me who’s noticed it. Meeting friends of ours with their kids in a park at 10am on a Sunday recently, we had to endure a fairly long and intense rant about how it had taken them twice the length it should to get there because ‘of the bloody lights’.
My mother lives on the south side and I’ve been stuck on various roads in the suburbs at the weekend while trying to get over to her. More often than not, when I’ve finally made it near the top of the queue at a set of lights, I’ve watched in dismay as just four or five cars get through at a time. It’s led to some pretty harrowing scenes of red-light breaking.
Perhaps most frustrating of all is when you get past a particular set of lights to discover there’s very little traffic beyond them.
I explained all of this in my email to the council, asking them if they were monitoring the situation, and if so, had they noticed that the city is regularly in chaos, and if there were any plans to change the sequences back.
I won’t lie, I may have been a little emotional in my delivery. But that’s how I felt – emotional and anxious. I forwarded it to one local TD and four local councillors, asking them to look into the matter – another first for me.
I got a reply back from Dublin City Council four days later. It was almost as long as my own email. As well as informing me that breaking red lights ‘contravenes the road traffic laws and poses a risk to vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists,’ they explained how the council had ‘reduced traffic signal cycle times across the city from a maximum of 120 seconds to a maximum of 80 seconds which reduces the amount of vehicle green signal time available each cycle of the signals.’
They also told me they were ‘constantly monitoring junctions and reviewing areas with high levels of congestion with a view to making targeted interventions to improve the efficiency of junctions for all road users’.
I decided not to engage with them. From their tone, it felt like there was no point. And besides, I’d got my answer. Nothing is going to change, not any time soon. In the same way, I’ve never heard a decent explanation as to why I can buy a pack of ibuprofen in the North for 60p, while the cheapest here is about €4, or why we pay such high mortgage interest rates here compared to most other European countries, or why our car insurance charges are through the roof – it’s just one more thing to feel completely helpless about.
Two of the councillors got back to me, one emailed the council traffic department and was told there were no plans to change the sequences. The other said they’d bring it up at the next council meeting, but warned me it was unlikely anything would happen during my husband’s treatment.
The TD’s secretarial assistant got back to me 11 days later to say they’d email the council about my concerns.
We now set off at l e ast an hour before the appointments each day. Sometimes we’re 40 minutes early, others we’re just in time. It can then take another 50 minutes to get home. I make the time up for work in the evenings, after our young son goes to bed.
In one way, for us, the move to Level 5 may be a blessing in disguise, the volume of traffic on the roads may ease off even further now. What a thing to be grateful for, a second lockdown. In the meantime, although not religious, I’ve decided to adopt the Serenity Prayer approach; God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…
Because things right now really are hard enough. And I’ve done what I can. Besides there was something quite cathartic about sending my first strongly worded email. It may have come to nothing, but in a strange way it brought me a little peace.