Dublin was once covered with a network of tram lines, so that no one ever had to walk far. Some of the tram cars --- streetcars or trolleys to Americans -- even had two floors, as Irish buses do today. They took holidaying families to the lovely cliffs of the Howth peninsula by the sea, they stretched south to Terenure, and they reached west to the nearby village of Lucan. All with a fraction of the energy we would use to travel the same distances today.
Streetcars seem slow to modern eyes only because we compare them to a
car on the motorway; compare them to a car in the city and they may have
been faster. One of the Dublin lines ran out to the suburb of Lucan a
hundred years ago, and passed through town at 25 miles an hour -- a
goodly speed in Lucan's modern traffic jams.
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