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TRAFFIC IS RUINING Dublin city centre – and we now have a bold plan to fix it. Decades of poor planning and a lack of joined-up thinking have left the city centre a place of transport misery.
Drivers are frustrated in gridlock. Buses are trapped with them on the narrow quays. Cyclists aren’t safe. Pedestrians are hemmed in on small footpaths, forced to scurry across the road, picking their way through cars that barely seem to move.
It leads to a core city centre that looks grubby, congested and noisy. And for all the appearance of massive traffic, only around 270 private cars an hour go along Bachelor’s Walk in the morning rush hour – that’s less than five cars a minute.
I was born and raised in Dublin, but the Liffey has never been a destination. You would rarely aim to meet or walk along the quays – they are instead a place to move through as quickly as possible.
Dublin deserves more respect than we give it: it is a thriving, creative, prosperous capital – not just an extension of a dual carriageway.
Dublin City Council has launched a plan to end this congestion. They studied traffic patterns and found that three in five cars in the core city centre were “through” traffic. In other words, cars that weren’t coming from or going to the city centre – just using it as a through route.
With this in mind, the new plan aims to cut that off and make space for buses, cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers who actually have a destination in town.
The plan has two main elements that are new. They will turn parts of the north and south quays by O’Connell Bridge into bus lanes only and traffic going north on Westland Row will now be right-turn only, instead of the current left-turn only.
Relatively easy changes to make, but combined with some existing plans like a traffic-free College Green and Parliament Street, they should have big benefits for the city centre.
However, these fairly localised changes have caused some media and online uproar. Breathless headlines described two short bus lanes on the quays as “a ban on cars”. Joe Duffy spoke in exasperation about nobody being able to access the city, dismissing a man with a visual impairment who called up to say that the plan would improve his bus route.
Pat Kenny accused me on Newstalk of trying to make Dublin like Venice or Paris (heaven forbid!), while Miriam O’Callaghan put it to Eamon Ryan that people will only be able to access Dublin by bike or bus.
But this was all just bluster.
The clear principle of the plan is this: any street in Dublin you can currently drive to, you will still be able to. With all the fearmongering headlines or broadcasters, this simple fact is ignored.
Since yesterday’s media coverage, I have received 24 emails and social media messages from people concerned about how to make a regular journey.
In 22 of the cases, the plan won’t make any difference to their route. In one case, the alternative route took the same time according to Google Maps. In another case, the alternative route took two minutes less than their current one.
Even once this plan is fully implemented, there will be cars on virtually every street in Dublin. If this is a “war on cars”, then it’s one of the least successful wars in history.
Regardless, the plan is necessary. The current arrangements don’t work for anyone and leave Dublin worse off. In most cities, the river is an attractive space — the jewel of the city. In Dublin, we treat it as a rat run – a space that is held hostage by a small number of cars to save a few minutes off a journey.
And for the tens of thousands of people getting the bus, their daily journey will be much faster and more predictable.
There are always going to be cars in the city centre – they’re necessary for some people and many journeys. But we cannot allow that necessity to pretend that through traffic is doing our city centre any favours. We need access for all people and modes of travel coming to the city: alternative routes for those who going elsewhere.
Dublin City Council is often accused of being slow to act and lacking a clear vision for the city. Often, that’s an assessment I sadly agree with.
But in this plan, they are advancing a meaningful vision of how Dublin should be: a place to go to, not just to drive through. Let’s get on with it.
Michael Pidgeon is a Green Party councillor for Dublin’s South West Inner City.
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Fantastic news hopefully they will succeed and makes this awful disease disappear.
Apologies a few phone typos made above.
Great news. There weren’t any typos above.
God I hope they come up with a cure quick. My family obviously carry this gene and it’s a tough illness to leave with. I’m probably a carrier of the gene so any developments are welcomed by me and my family even though it may be too little to late for some of them.
Bit self involved there. The breakthroughs are welcomed by your family cos you’ve a chance of getting it. Right… I welcome all breakthroughs in finding cures for horrible diseases, even if I’ve no chance of getting said disease.
Not at all I’d happily welcome a cure for idiocy I just don’t see it coming anytime soon. Do you Tom?
Ouch
Thomas you’re a great man, so full of humanity. Good on ya for welcoming all such breakthroughs equally. Feck pat and his family who could be living with a death sentence and the chance of living in misery for years because his first reaction would be how much this could help them because that’s just selfish and self serving. What a b*stard that he should first think of his loved ones when news of a possible breakthrough that could lead to help for them is released.
Tom who said you have no chance of getting it. My in law got it in his 80s. So never say never. And why would you begruge any famiy the chance of a cure. I am disgusted by your small mindlessness.
Thomas some families are predisposed towards certain illnesses, someday you’ll grow up and be less of an uncontrollable knob and though you’ll probably never be a man you may mature enough to regret making such ignorant comments in public and letting yourself down so badly….
Brilliant news…my almost 90 yrs old mum has Parkinson’s, lives alone, out everyday….won’t be any use to her poor love, but hopefully to others in the future….you are brilliant people and all the wonderful research you do.
Its news when there is a cure.This is just a PR exercise for more funding.
I find these articles incredibly frustrating,ten years from now there will still be no cure for this awful affliction.
Probably best that they don’t publicise this and any other break through’s cause they don’t need the funding to continue research
Ten years from now they would definitely be no closer to a cute if they don’t get any funding, as far as i am concerned they can run down the street naked shouting eureka if it gets them the funding they need to research this further and hopefully make a breakthrough
*cute = cure
What have you ever done for society butter bean?
- If I was gambling man I’d bet you take a whole pile more than you give…..
If their work is good enough they will get funding without the publicity stunts, getting peoples hopes up and then nothing is pretty low.
They published it in a research journal and the media have picked up on it. Publishing in journals is an essential part of scientific research and enables their work to be built upon by other scientists who may use it to follow other avenues of enquiry. Should they just keep it to themselves so the scientific community don’t know what they’re doing, can’t verify what they’re doing and may waste money doing the exact same research not knowing it’s already been done? And if a media outlet should pick up on this study and ask for comment by the scientists in question should they just refuse? And so what if they make comments about funding being essential, it is! It’s not as if these guys earn fat paycheques doing this work. It’s often quite low paid stuff for the expertise involved. Scientists carrying out research are constantly fighting for funding from wherever they can get it so why shouldn’t he take a pop at the availability of funding? And who’s hope are they getting up? They explicitly state it won’t directly lead to a cure but perhaps enable advancements towards a cure. If he hadn’t made the comment about needing continued funding would your boxers still be twisted or what? If these guys were to turn around and win a Nobel prize for this would you be b*tching about it then or be congratulating them for being the pride of the country? Some people’s default setting is to moan. It’s ridiculous.
If it is a greater understand of how aggregates of misfolded proteins occur and proves to be right that is significant. I believe the theory up to now was that misfolded proteins acted on neighbouring protein which were correctly folded to misfolded. That would be much more difficult to control than a damaged gene producing the mutated protein. It at least gives a starting point for a cure.
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