Michael Moynihan: They’re moving a few bus bays, not knocking the Arc de Triomphe

“But I couldn’t get out,” he said. “There were no rules, no law. Cars everywhere, zooming in and out. I was terrified.

“Eventually I just gave up. I parked the car and put on the hazard lights until a gendarme came along and steered us out of it.”

There are a few places around Cork which are reminiscent of the seething mass of metal soundtracked by car horns you see eddying around the Arc de Triomphe, but one particular favourite is the stretch of St Patrick’s Quay which leads up to the intersection of Bridge St and St Patrick’s Bridge itself.

If you spin along this couple of hundred metres behind the Metropole Hotel you’re treated to the full panoply of lunatic driving behaviour.

The unexpected swerve, and the unprompted lane-jump. The dawdling tourist peering across the river at Merchant’s Quay, and the simmering local leaning on the horn right behind them. 

The unilateral parking decisions and the nonchalant re-emergence into traffic after those decisions. The exciting possibilities offered by not one but two car parks on the quay and the occasional stranger to the city who doesn’t realise it’s one way when they parp-parp across the bridge from St Patrick’s Street and head right.

Recently Brian Boru St, at the bottom of the quay, had a northward lane added to it, which means a better-than-even chance that someone will decide to vary their route and peel off that way, encouraging others to speed up and start jockeying for position where the roadworks narrow two lanes into one on St Patrick’s Quay itself.

The complicating factor on the quay, however, is the presence, for many years, of bus bays on the river side. 

This means that not only are there huge buses pulling out into the traffic, they often have to try to get across two separate lanes in order to head up Bridge St and on to eastern routes.

Then you have the associated complications which arise with people getting lifts in to catch those buses. I am not going to detail the behaviour of those drivers: The blood pressure just won’t take it. Suffice to say it sometimes surprises me that someone can squeeze a car into the exact space which separates two of those buses and can then sit there, delighted with themselves, no matter how loudly the driver of the bus behind them blows the horn.

Hence my delight at the prospect of those bus bays being moved. 

Cork City Council recently issued the following statement on this proposal: “As part of the wider MacCurtain St Public Transport Improvement Scheme, a number of bus operators will be moving to new locations in the city centre at the end of this month (week commencing May 23).

“A public information scheme, including temporary signage, is being rolled out in the coming weeks so that intending passengers are fully aware of the new locations...

“One of several benefits of the MacCurtain St scheme is that it will deliver shorter bus journey times for all bus passengers in Cork City due to an increased network of dedicated bus lanes.

“Secondly, for the first time, it will provide bus shelters in the city for private bus and coach operators and safe setdown areas for people dropping off and picking up passengers — facilities which have been sought by their passengers.

“Also, bus passengers should note that all of the new locations are less than five minutes from St Patrick’s Quay and their connections. Clear maps will be displayed on St Patrick’s Quay.”

Win-win, no?

St Patrick’s Quay gets tidied up, risky driving practices get phased out, better bus lanes, bus shelters for private bus operators ... good news everywhere.

Well, not quite. The reaction was swift and negative. There were issues with the new bus locations. There were issues with the timing of departures. There were issues with moving the bus bays because people knew where they were and now they’d have to find them wherever they were gone to.

Where to begin?

First, the bus bays are not Newgrange. They’re not the Cliffs of Moher. They weren’t appointed by the Tuatha de Danann and consecrated with the blood of a sacrificial deer. The Brehons didn’t designate the area for us as bus bays in perpetuity, with a thousand curses being called down on the heads of those seeking to profane the quay by... painting over the bay lines.

Second, people will know where the new bus bays are. They’ll find out.

There’s a sweet irony in suggesting, however obliquely, that people who are going into town to get the Aircoach may not be able to locate it. That means the foreign excursion that awaits bus passengers once they reach Dublin Airport, the exotic cities they’ve never visited before, will present no problem to these intrepid travellers. But finding a bus stop because it’s a couple of hundred yards away from the old location in their own native place — that could be too much for them. The vagaries of the Paris Metro or the souks of Morocco can be enjoyed, but getting from St Patrick’s Quay to Anderson’s Quay is too challenging a journey for any reasonable person.

The syncing of the bus arrivals and departures is a reasonable point to make, particularly when it comes to the Dublin-bound buses. But if passengers find it taxing to get from one stop to the other when the new system is up and running, is it really beyond the companies involved to delay those departure times by five minutes across the board?

Finally, the area has to be tidied up because it’s dangerous.

The traffic is too heavy there for safe travel, and a significant part of that traffic is generated by people coming and going for those buses, as well as the buses themselves. Relocating those bus bays is a commonsense solution.

There may be validity in asking why those private bus operators can’t be facilitated in some way at the bus station visible across the river. It’d be a truly imaginative solution to have the bus lines converge at that point, but that doesn’t cancel out the safety concerns and traffic congestion aspect of the current arrangement on St Patrick’s Quay.

Granted, this is the kind of issue that seems specifically engineered to be revisited in six months’ time under the heading ‘what was all the fuss about?’ As soon as people get accustomed to the new arrangement, which is usually quicker than you might think, then everyone can get on with their lives. And get offended by something else.

We’re talking about moving a few bus bays. Not knocking the Arc de Triomphe.