Editorial: Cities such as Belfast need to have easy access for cars as they come back to life

Motoring in and around Belfast has been made more complicated than it needed to be.

​Now in recent days we have seen the outworkings of that in the congestion in Northern Ireland’s capital.

Some scolds tell people to use the car less. It is true that the traffic is in part caused by high usage of private vehicles in the festive season, with a return to physical shopping and restaurants not been seen since the lockdowns of 2020. This is a welcome boost to retail and hospitality. It suggests cities are roaring back to life. Humans have enjoyed urban life for millennia but it declined when covid changed living patterns.

There are other explanations for the congestion, such as the diversion of traffic near the dismantling of the Boyne Bridge. The post-covid closing of parts of roads for cyclists and the forbidding of certain turns is a factor too. But pre-covid new bus lanes and other restrictions had turned the glorious four-lane highways on either side of City Hall down, at points, to one lane in one direction.

It is fair to give bus users an advantage by putting such lanes on some narrow city roads but they weren’t needed in the wide centre.

We are told you can’t build your way out of congestion, which is true in a city of 10 million people like London but not in small Belfast. Sadly, a Stormont minister Nicola Mallon effectively scrapped the York Street upgrade which would have helped remove through traffic from the city centre.

Other voices talk up buses and cycling, which sounds noble but elderly people can’t easily cycle and others a single mum who drives her kids one way to school and herself the other to work cannot easily use public transport.

People who live in and around Belfast should be able either to drive or take buses with ease. People who live far outside the city typically want on occasion to take their car into the heart of it. They should be helped do so.