A big welcome… October 16, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
…for some reason seeing this photo…
captioned: Taoiseach Brian Cowen shares a laugh with local children as he rides a tram after officially opening the Luas Green Line extension from Cherrywood this morning. Photo: Eric Luke/IT.
… the following words from Len Deighton’s ‘Yesterday’s Spy’ came to my mind…
Champion looked back to where I was standing. The snow was beating about my ears. Champion raised his gloved hand in a regal salute. But when only three of your fingers are able to wave, such a gesture can look awfully like a very rude Anglo-Saxon sign.
As the poet said –
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play …
Wonder if he paid for a ticket? Wonder how many of his ‘helpers’ were there too. Hopefully he will use it and cut down on the use of retired polict men.
Tickets were free today: best bit about the new line is that two of the stations won’t be opening yet – or ever? – because the estates they were meant to service are empty.
Why bother servicing the existing working class communities when you can service imaginary upwardly mobile ones.
You gotta love the sheer unadulterated disgusting arrogance of the free state bourgeoisie.
Heve to say, the other line – the red one – has hugely improved my access to all sorts of things: and people I know who I imagined were wedded to their cars from out to the west of the city have become its most enthusiastic users. The existing lines have proved their worth – imagine what 3 more and a metro would do?
@Garibaldy,
Not necessarily defending the RPA decision to do Cherrywood, but it was a relatively cheap, and undisruptive extension to the existing system whereas starting any of the other projected lines will be as big a project as the original undertaking. As long as it’s not the last line for a while, I’m not hugely bothered. In the light of this, Gilmore’s opposition to the Metro is short-sighted – now is exactly the time to be building useful and labour intensive things we need.
The new line extends the existing line to service some of the less well off (Working Class) areas on the Southside, its existing route would have covered few, if any.
Interesting that SofS knows people who’ve abandoned their cars in favour of the Luas. I remember reading after a couple of years of operation that there was good news and bad news: the good being that passenger numbers were on target; the bad that the passengers were almost all former bus users – hardly anyone had changed from car to public transport.