FG unveils traffic plan to beat the gridlock in capital

The vast majority of truckers are set to continue to boycott the new €751m Port Tunnel to avoid the notorious M50 and the toll charge at the West Link - they won't be banned from the city centre and forced onto the M50 until next month.

I've seen the signs for this ban, and they all say 5 axle trucks... Only the big arctics are 5 axle.. Nearly all rigids are 3-4 axel at most and hauliers can easily use 4 axle arctics to get around the ban Only trucks carrying very heavy loads use 5 axles. Don't know if its been brought up before or if they're staggering the introduction of a full ban... Just thought id mention it...

Radar Control probably inadvertently raises yet another issue where CIE were already well advanced when some Civil Servant got the wobblies.......

"Segergate QBC from all traffic and give bus drivers ability to give themselves Green light at each junction on corridor for 15 seconds, then lights revert back to normal sequence (Not hard to do London Fire Brigade has them installed in some of the appliances.)"

CIE`s then Dublin City Bus services had already got a system up and running in conjunction with Dublin Corporation and County Council.
It was known as Selective Bus Detection as utilized an on-bus transponder which transmitted data via RF to a receiver/switching unit located on the approach to certain junctions.
From Memory there was one at Tempelogue Bridge (Outbound) and another at Cookstown Lane/Belgard Road (Inbound).

Interestingly this was at the same time that Dublin City Bus Services was featured on BBC`s Tomorrows World for being the leader at the time in the implimentation of Automatic Vehicle Monitoring across a large fleet of urban buses.

When operated together AVM and SBD could offer real-time Bus Flow management whereby buses running late could be prioritized at major Signal Controlled junctions and also those running AHEAD of schedule could be held to regulate the gap.

Now the questions have never been asked as to WHY CIE were not allowed to proceed with the development of these complimentary systems.
Requests for development funding were I understand with the Dept for many years but no decision ever was forthcoming until the company decided to cease the development of SBD in order to focus on a more basic AVM system which worked very well for many years.

Remember this was all in the pre-GPRS days and so was a very far sighted and innovative set of systems for any typically staid Bus Company to be considering.

So far-sighted it seems that it frightened the pants off the senior Civil Sevants in Kildare St who had a natural preference for Men with Caps blowing whistles and the odd Time Clock dotted throughout the system........Traditional You see...!!!! :rolleyes:

kbannon wrote:

maybe the author should have said it!
Would a garda escort benefit an ambulance? An ambulance is exempt from the same road traffic laws as a garda driver. If a car won't get out of the way of an ambulance, will they for a garda?

One or two garda outsiders can race ahead of an ambulance and clear the junctions before the ambulance gets there.

Macy wrote:

I would've thought that park and ride's on the main routes into the city was a great idea. Have them non-stop until they get into the centre (eg inside the canals) using all the under utilised QBC's. For example, no reason that they couldn't open a park and ride facility now in Cherrywood, even if it was only till the Luas was extended, with buses straight in non-stop till Leeson Street Bridge.

It isn't non-stop, but the 145 will do this trip quite quickly.

My own personal view is that buses are more unfashionable to politicians than actual users. People like Cullen want big shiny legacies not solutions...

The Minister is worried about his legacy.