MetroLink won’t cut the price of a pint but it will ease urban burden

WE got badly ripped off on the last day of a recent holiday in the Canary Islands. Lunch and a few drinks cost no more than it would here in Ireland, and at least we’d been sitting in blazing sunshine looking out at a twinkling Atlantic Ocean.

But still, it was easily more than twice the price we’d paid anywhere else in the previous week. The menu we’d been handed didn’t list drinks, only food, and we didn’t think to ask how much they were charging for a beer.

When I queried it, the surly owner, clearly well-used to pesky tourists asking about their scrawly handwritten bills, waved a dismissive hand towards the sea view and muttered something about the premium location. There was nothing premium about the food or service.

It’s a horrible feeling, the energy-zapping anger at being taken for a mug just because it’s assumed you’re a one-time visitor, unlikely to return so they might as well try to extract as much of your cash as possible.

Mind you, waiting in the airport the next day, we read how Ireland’s first pint that cost more than a tenner had just been found – in Temple Bar of course.

An intrepid newspaper journalist had tracked down a pint of Rockshore cider selling for €10.45 in the upstairs restaurant of the Merchants Arch pub.

The others will follow, if they haven’t already.

The Dublin city centre tourist trap is renowned for sky-high prices, and in fairness their overheads are immense, and many of the hostelries have live music and shows aimed at visitors more than happy to fork out top dollar for our famed ‘craic agus ceol’. Besides, no one has ever come to Ireland in search of a budget holiday.

But there is a certain contemptuousness we serve up to our guests, whose wallets we are more than happy to delve into, from the moment they touch down on our shore – specifically at Dublin Airport, where they must then negotiate the confusing array of buses that may, or may not, get them into the city centre in a timely fashion. Or, of course, they can start as they probably mean to go on and shell out for a taxi.

Some don’t believe the airport has an accessibility issue. At the MetroLink hearings this week, where details about the longproposed train link – estimated to cost €9.5billion and due to be completed in 11 years’ time – are being teased out, revered economist Colm McCarthy said he believed the benefits of the ‘colossally expensive’ project ‘look to me to be insecure’.

‘Is accessibility of Dublin Airport a big problem? No, it isn’t,’ he said, adding that ‘Metro, it seems to me, is a solution in search of a problem’.

But this new train line won’t just offer a decent public transport option for the close to 30million people who use the airport each year.

It will also link some of Dublin’s most rapidly expanding suburbs to the city centre, which should help alleviate the traffic currently clogging up absurdly ineffective main roads.

As a resident in Phibsboro, just north of the city and where much of the disruption would take place if this proposed plan actually gets started, I can’t fully explain how much of a basket case the place already is because of the chronic traffic situation.

Not even bus lanes can save commuters from the hellscape of travelling in and out of work each day. Ancient thoroughfares, never built with any kind of large volumes in mind, simply can’t deal with the numbers that now use them.

And there are thousands more badly needed new homes in the pipeline along the proposed route, which will run for almost 19km from north of Swords to the outskirts of Ranelagh on the southside.

Building a brand-new public system with 16 stations, which will carry new and existing residents around the place, is a no-brainer, and something that really should have been done years ago.

The original ‘Metro West’ plan was announced in 2005, back when it seemed we had oodles of cash to play with. Since then, the dithering and dawdling has become a national joke and the project costs have spiralled up to a breathtaking figure that will undoubtedly rise again before the first track is ever laid. But it needs to be done. Of course, the construction process, currently estimated to last four years, will be a nightmare, no matter what assurances are given about noise, natural light and traffic issues by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), the State body with responsibility for MetroLink.

And there are going to be casualties. Structures slated for demolition include the beloved Brian Boru pub in Phibsboro, a Smyths toy store in Swords and the long-derelict Carlton Cinema on O’Connell Street.

BUT much like how there were howls of complaint about the Luas works, there will come a time, almost immediately after construction is completed, when commuters will wonder what they ever did before the MetroLink.

Also, there are the environmental benefits to consider.

Taking cars off the roads will improve the air quality, which I’ll admit is a personal concern of mine as my family toddles around Phibsboro with long lines of cars stalled with their engines running in all four directions of the main crossroads.

None of the concerns raised at the MetroLink hearings so far has outweighed the advantages such a transport system will bring to our capital city.

Not least, it will give visitors to our city a smooth, not to mention cost-effective, start to their stay here. Leaving even more money in their wallets for them to buy a pint – and God knows how much they’ll get charged for that in 2035.