Fergus Cassidy

Luas canon

OF all the things I had planned to do with two weeks R&R, time travelling was not one of them.

Being from roughly the same neck of the woods, a maiden spin on the Luas from Sandyford to St Stephen's Green was something I could no longer resist.

As a child, I had often looked up at the nine-arched stone monument which was the bridge over the river Dodder at Milltown and imagined great steam engines rattling precariously over its span.

When the Luas moved across the bridge all the memories came flooding back and it seemed like it was yesterday minus the snotty nose and the Macaroon bar. Further down the line and joining the cars on the streets brought me back even further in time. To stories about my grandfather and how he drove a tram to and from Terenure village in the suburbs of Dublin.

Yet almost one hundred years later, there I was being transported by a technology from my grandfather's era. The combustion engine may have ended his tram driving days but revenge will soon be at hand. A lot of car-choked cities are turning to an old technology to solve a modern malaise.

On arrival at Stephen's Green my nostalgia gave way to utter delight at the speed, style and comfort of the journey from Sandyford. The Jerry Lee is here to stay and hopefully the slang along with it.

As more lines are added to Dublin (and maybe other cities), the use of tram technology will mean more efficient access for everybody. If the service is ill-thought out and useless no amount of marketing or branding will rescue it from ridicule. Old or new technology doesn't matter a damn, so long as it does the job it's supposed to do.

European cities are now becoming so populated that public transport, of one form or another, will begin to push private cars down the pecking order for space on the roads. From now on it's all about access. For the greater number, for the greater good.

And the same goes for another type of transport, that highway which information is carried on.

Judging by the amount of prime time television advertising and the heavy marketing, it would appear that broadband is having its day in the sun at the moment. In the blink of an eye the situation has gone from 'no demand for broadband' to having no stomach for the ads.

The promotion of broadband, welcome though it is, comes dripping with hype and hubris. Broadband is now being marketed like a new car. Free test run, speed, convenience and, most of all, the in-car entertainment. Trouble is the roads are crap and appear to be deteriorating daily.

Somewhere along the way, broadband became the internet when in fact the two are very separate matters altogether. The broadband marketing concentrates on all the bells and whistles available, when in reality it is just another access technology. And an ageing one at that.

Connecting to the internet is about freedom of access. Nothing more, nothing less. What happens after that is only an issue for the marketers and branders, for whom content and access are joined at the hip.

The inability of so many people who have tried to get broadband and failed is first and foremost an issue of access. Internet content was used heavily in the past to drum up support during the dotcom daze and is now being trundled out again in a new flavour. Don't get fooled again.

Getting on the internet should be as painless and uncomplicated as getting from Sandyford to Stephen's Green. My ticket for the Luas didn't require me to sign up for a year and pay charges in advance as a condition of travel. Nor did the journey take 23 minutes one day and 63 the next. It doesn't show up one day and disappear the next. There isn't a speed charge either.

Quality of service for internet access wasn't so much of an issue when using dial-up, the two bean tins and string of its day. Modems weren't the only things screeching then.

But quality of service is certainly the issue now. Biggest of all is how the expensive charges for broadband can be squared against there being NO guarantees or obligations whatsoever by Eircom to carry the internet over its telephone lines.

If that also applied to the Jerry Lee, it would be the end of the line for sure.