In the short term, however, that has led to serious issues in the vicinity of the MacCurtain St public transport scheme in particular, and improvements expected in September will do little for the blood pressure of drivers in the coming eight months or so.

When other factors come into play, the picture becomes more problematic.

The controversial Bus Connects plan continues to lurk in the background, for instance, and if that goes ahead in its current form then the resulting works have the potential to cause chaos within the city for much longer than the next eight months, and on a far wider scale than the MacCurtain St area.

On a related note, at that Cork City Council meeting, councillors disagreed on whether bus fares within the city should be abolished as part of a trial project — one of the councillors pointed out that, even if buses were free, many of them would still be stuck in gridlock.

There is a pressing need for leadership to be shown on this matter, because gaining notoriety for gridlock is not a badge of honour for any city.

This is a problem which reaches far beyond discommoding a traveller by adding a few minutes to a journey.

It has the power to damage the city’s reputation when outsiders consider it as a place to do business, it has an impact on people’s ability to commute to work reliably, and it can be life-threatening if emergency vehicles cannot find their way around the city because of the volume of traffic.

Right now, September seems very far away.