THE desire for instant gratification is an entirely human trait – and one of our least attractive. And it’s that trait that lies behind the current round of whingeing and lecturing we’re witnessing about traffic gridlock in Belfast.
There’s more than one reason for the rush-hour chaos in the city at present, but all the spokes on that wheel of misfortune lead to the centre: the new Grand Central Station and associated works.
We can argue all day about whether Translink’s hugely expensive new hub was what the city required in answer to its long-standing traffic and transport woes. But that argument is a redundant one now that the thing is done. That argument – like that of unionist politicians arguing for the retention of the Boyne Bridge even as it’s taken down – was an argument that should have been had a long time ago and wasn’t.
Fixing Belfast’s sclerotic traffic system is not a weekend job. Integrating Grand Central into the life of the city will take time and it will take patience – none of which are on offer from the loudest voices in the current conversation. The Durham Street/Sandy Row/Glengall Street area was built to serve the horse and cart and ripping out the Victorian transport roads structure was a sine qua non of the entire Grand Central project.
A primary school class doing a traffic project would have learned in double-quick time that closing down that square on the transport grid was going to have a huge and lengthy negative effect on vehicle movement in the city. But that inevitable and necessary work and its related problems seem to have come as a massive surprise to those politicians and business representatives who are roaring their disapproval and sharing hot takes on optimal town planning and structural engineering practice.
The blunt truth is that motorists currently experiencing significant delays in their commute are simply going to have to suck it up. Or figure out other ways of getting in and out of the city centre. A new and improved traffic system for Belfast can’t be had without a sustained period of serious inconvenience and upheaval. That’s been true of every major infrastructure project ever undertaken. And when we’re talking about an infrastructure project in the middle of a city with a chronic traffic problem and a roads structure almost comically unfit for purpose, it’s going to be true in spades.
And it’s not even as if the ongoing work is the radical work that’s required of clearing the city centre of traffic and getting people out of their cars. The work will make Belfast a more efficient car city when the vision should be a Belfast that’s a non-car city. Rather than remove the car from its throne, we polish its crown.
The work in the Durham Street area is scheduled to continue until next autumn. In large-scale infrastructure terms that’s the blink of an eye, but for those of us forced to listen for the guts of another year to furious self-declared experts proffering fantasy fixes, it’s going to seem like an eternity.
