Dublin Commuting Nightmare
For anyone who lives in Dublin, or who has spent any time in and around the city, they will know that the city is plagued by traffic problems, and that Irish people love to complain (quite rightly) about the nightmare that is commuting around the city! I’m not going to gripe (yet) about the failings of the M50 toll road, the ever delayed Dublin Port Tunnel (due to take thousands of trucks out of the city centre every week, and due for completion 2 years ago) or the sorry (though improving) state of our public transport infrastructure.
Nope, I’m going to let off steam about what has become probably the worst part of my daily commute of 40 or so miles, and which involves driving, getting a train, and a walk of about 12 minutes from the train station to the office in Temple Bar. Starting about three months ago, a new phenomenon has begun…that of the free morning newspaper. Until this week, there were two main papers competing for commuters attention. There has been intense competition between them, which has resulted in the entrances and exits to every train station, every street corner, and every footpath being swamped with employees of each of these news organisations, armed with satchels overloaded with their product, trying to literally force them into your hand.
Now, getting a freebie on the way into work was always a nice treat, be it the latest fruit drink / snack / deodrant, but, now these people are clogging up all the major commuter walkways, exits to train stations etc, and generally being a nuisance to people rushing to get to work. Add to that the fact that the streets and trains etc are now littered with discarded free newspapers, I really hope this is only a passing trend that will soon expire!
I did also say that until this week there were two ‘free’ daily’s competing, I have been completely baffled to see that another newspaper has joined the masses this week in blocking up our streets, but, this time they are trying to sell (!!) their newspaper to the passing public! Aside from anything else, that just doesn’t make sense to me!
In fairness, I don’t see a lot of discarded newspapers. The odd one that I do see in the middle of a path I pick up and put in a bin. There are less of the distributors around now than there were at the beginning and I would say the numbers will gradually decrease.
My own personal opinion is that Metro won’t last. I just don’t think the Irish market has enough advertisers willing to stump up and pay for ads in a newspaper that gets a cursory glance in the morning – 20 minutes max. I would be hard pressed to name any advertiser I’ve seen in Metro – apart from Today FM who are hard to miss because of the distinctive yellow.
new paper for sale… missed that one!
so what’s it called?
just saw the new irish daily mail recently…..
Personally I think chuggers are a far worse phenomenon.
Agreed on the thoughts that the Metro won’t last, I’ve said this from the outset!
The Daily Mail is the paper being sold on the streets that I was talking about.
And as for chuggers, well, there’s a whole other topic for discussion at some stage! :)
The only good thing about these free papers are that they make people talk to each other. I commute out of the city centre and so get on a train that has papers scattered all around. Now when people get of they feel free to go up to total strangers and ask them if they are reading a paper beside them. I usually bring mine to work and leave it on the coffee table for those that live outside Dublin.
But the publishers of the free papers should be made contribute to the clean up bills. It’s sort of like the way the Anna Livia fountain got moved because off too many fast food garbage, why wasn’t the fast food outlets of O’Connell street be made clean the fountain. I miss it, she was the only female statue on the street and so cool. Why can’t they bring it back?
Nothing worse than being with a charitable soul who doesn’t want to disappoint the people who hand out the papers and so takes 2 just to be extra nice… They’re still in the boot of her car….
R