Dublin Streets Where Road Markings Continually Ignored but never Gardai on site?

AlekSmart wrote: »

None of these agencies have the management acumen to address your very valid concerns.

They are,in the main,now dominated by earnest young graduate types,all weighed down with CGI Laptop programmes of perfectly functioning traffic models....

Take a look at St Stephens Green East....between Hume St and Merrion Row....pay attention to the Statutory Road Markings,solid white line and all that...then watch the antics of those for whom queing to turn left is just too much to bear.......;)

This is NEW,Improved and straight off the Windows 8 of DCC....plus well monitored by CCTV......;)

The problem is that road markings in Ireland (along with footpaths, bus bays, traffic signals, speed limits, parking restrictions and general signage) are for many people merely decorations.

Likewise, our traffic wardens and police force (including the Garda Traffic Corps) are not really keen on rigorously enforcing the law.

As they amble along ignoring traffic and parking offences, they are effectively reinforcing our Irish culture of casual disregard for law and order.

I was at a public event recently at which a member of the Traffic Corps parked his motorbike across the dished kerb of a small pedestrian island, and then spent at least 15 minutes chatting to a passer-by, oblivious to traffic and parking chaos around him. His presence there made no difference whatsoever, except to reassure everyone that Light Touch Regulation still reigns supreme in this country.

ongarboy wrote: »

I actually have seen Gardai stop cars coming from the O2 and turning left onto the bridge (which is not allowed) once or twice. Mostly, they are not there however and I see this rule being flouted daily as I walk past it. I also saw a car doing same and ended up knocking a cyclist down who was going straight (thankfully not injured). Wished the Gardai were there for that one.

Problem is that banned turn is only to protect revenue on the east link till bridge, there are no traffic management or safety reasons why someone shouldnt be allowed turn left there.

Some of the problems identified are where common sense meets bureaucracy, should there be two left lanes ? Should there be a left lane and a left/straight ahead lane?
Sometimes when people aren't behaving as they are supposed to its because what they are supposed to do makes no sense, is badly designed or just badly communicated.

Some of the responses to the OP seem to suggest a view that traffic should be forming two lanes, where one lane is only marked, and that better traffic throughput would be maintained by shoehorning in as many traffic lanes as will fit.

I would be of entirely the opposite opinion. The more traffic lanes, the more traffic will flood in and fill them. It is not lack of traffic lanes that causes traffic jams, it is junction capacity. I think, within the entire city cordon, there is nowhere that should have more than one single file traffic lane in any particular direction, excluding bus lanes and cycle lanes, except in particular instances where traffic is filtering in two or three different directions.

Dublin's problem is that the whole road system is entirely unmanaged. Nobody is directing or monitoring the day to day problems. In fact nobody seems to care if there are problems at all. Frank MacDonald was talking on the radio only today, about how pedestrians have to 'apply' to cross a road, by pressing a button, which doesn't even have any effect on the light sequence in most cases, but is rather a placebo effect. Pedestrians should have far more right of way on the city streets. Yet some here seem to be advocating draconian systems elsewhere in Europe, whereby pedestrians are fined, to keep them off the streets altogether!

I saw a fine example of farcical Dublin planning today, which prompted me to post it anyway, before I saw this thread. There, in D'Olier Street, was a taxi with a clamp on it, and the driver and his client standing wondering what to do next. It had evidently happened quickly, while the taxi driver went to look for his client.

The point of it was, the taxi was in a long, empty stretch of disc parking, with only two or three other cars parked in it, on the 'offside' of the street, out of the way of the traffic flow. So many taxis simply stop in the middle of a busy traffic flow, regardless of their obstruction, and yet here was a taxi who got in out of the way, while running across to collect his client. I venture to suggest that had the taxi stopped on the bus stop side of the street, blocking everything, he would not have been clamped. His crime was to park in a disc parking space, and not to pay the fee.

All over this city, private cars, taxis, vans, lorries, and even buses, park in awkward places, causing enormous disruption to the flow around them, yet never, ever get clamped. The clampers exist purely to protect the lucrative revenue stream accruing from thousands of disc parking spaces. The crime is not paying the fee. Causing obstruction to traffic is wholly ignored.

In too many cases, vans and lorries are parked blocking traffic, because their official 'loading bay' is full of parked cars. Through passage of as many private cars is facilitated over all else, and where any deference at all is given to cyclists or buses, it is not to speed up their progress, but simply to keep them 'out of the way' of all the cars.

Double lanes of traffic, as seen all over the city, serve no good purpose at all, except to facilitate speeding, and overtaking. There should be no speeding or overtaking anywhere within the canal cordon, and there should be no double lanes anywhere that promote this. All of those double lanes of private cars can only put through as much traffic as the congested junctions would allow, and in the majority of cases, those junctions would operate much more efficiently if there were just one lane of traffic moving swiftly through, rather than two lanes shoving against each other, jostling to get ahead, trying and failing to merge, and squeezing cyclists out in the rush to make two lanes out of one.

I would gladly see every single street in the city reduced to single lane, giving ample space in many cases for safer cycle lanes, and better bus lanes, and wider footpaths for pedestrians. It would cause great consternation for a while, but everyone would get on with it, and the world wouldn't end. O'Connell Street was reduced from a multi lane highway down to single lane plus bus lane, and we seemed to manage. The quays is the obvious next candidate. Time to shove the cars out for a change, instead of shoving the buses and the bicycles out, or hemming them into unsafe and badly designed lanes, provided purely to keep them out of the way of the throughput of private cars.

HydeRoad wrote: »

Some of the responses to the OP seem to suggest a view that traffic should be forming two lanes, where one lane is only marked, and that better traffic throughput would be maintained by shoehorning in as many traffic lanes as will fit.

I would be of entirely the opposite opinion. The more traffic lanes, the more traffic will flood in and fill them. It is not lack of traffic lanes that causes traffic jams, it is junction capacity. I think, within the entire city cordon, there is nowhere that should have more than one single file traffic lane in any particular direction, excluding bus lanes and cycle lanes, except in particular instances where traffic is filtering in two or three different directions.

Dublin's problem is that the whole road system is entirely unmanaged. Nobody is directing or monitoring the day to day problems. In fact nobody seems to care if there are problems at all. Frank MacDonald was talking on the radio only today, about how pedestrians have to 'apply' to cross a road, by pressing a button, which doesn't even have any effect on the light sequence in most cases, but is rather a placebo effect. Pedestrians should have far more right of way on the city streets. Yet some here seem to be advocating draconian systems elsewhere in Europe, whereby pedestrians are fined, to keep them off the streets altogether!

I saw a fine example of farcical Dublin planning today, which prompted me to post it anyway, before I saw this thread. There, in D'Olier Street, was a taxi with a clamp on it, and the driver and his client standing wondering what to do next. It had evidently happened quickly, while the taxi driver went to look for his client.

The point of it was, the taxi was in a long, empty stretch of disc parking, with only two or three other cars parked in it, on the 'offside' of the street, out of the way of the traffic flow. So many taxis simply stop in the middle of a busy traffic flow, regardless of their obstruction, and yet here was a taxi who got in out of the way, while running across to collect his client. I venture to suggest that had the taxi stopped on the bus stop side of the street, blocking everything, he would not have been clamped. His crime was to park in a disc parking space, and not to pay the fee.

All over this city, private cars, taxis, vans, lorries, and even buses, park in awkward places, causing enormous disruption to the flow around them, yet never, ever get clamped. The clampers exist purely to protect the lucrative revenue stream accruing from thousands of disc parking spaces. The crime is not paying the fee. Causing obstruction to traffic is wholly ignored.

In too many cases, vans and lorries are parked blocking traffic, because their official 'loading bay' is full of parked cars. Through passage of as many private cars is facilitated over all else, and where any deference at all is given to cyclists or buses, it is not to speed up their progress, but simply to keep them 'out of the way' of all the cars.

Double lanes of traffic, as seen all over the city, serve no good purpose at all, except to facilitate speeding, and overtaking. There should be no speeding or overtaking anywhere within the canal cordon, and there should be no double lanes anywhere that promote this. All of those double lanes of private cars can only put through as much traffic as the congested junctions would allow, and in the majority of cases, those junctions would operate much more efficiently if there were just one lane of traffic moving swiftly through, rather than two lanes shoving against each other, jostling to get ahead, trying and failing to merge, and squeezing cyclists out in the rush to make two lanes out of one.

I would gladly see every single street in the city reduced to single lane, giving ample space in many cases for safer cycle lanes, and better bus lanes, and wider footpaths for pedestrians. It would cause great consternation for a while, but everyone would get on with it, and the world wouldn't end. O'Connell Street was reduced from a multi lane highway down to single lane plus bus lane, and we seemed to manage. The quays is the obvious next candidate. Time to shove the cars out for a change, instead of shoving the buses and the bicycles out, or hemming them into unsafe and badly designed lanes, provided purely to keep them out of the way of the throughput of private cars.

You are addressing a different point I think to the one the OP was making and the one I was answering. If there are multiple lanes and how they should be laid out is a different discussion to whether there should be multiple lanes. But since we are on the subject the most obvious problem in Dublin is the way we toll roads, the east link and the west link, 2 bridges with the potential to keep cars out of the city center and we toll both of them, incentivising people to come into the center to avoid the tolls.

lxflyer wrote: »

I would still argue that it is an effort to keep the traffic flowing - if you allowed traffic to make that turn, the whole area would just grind to a standstill.

Only because there is a ridiculous toll on the relief road for the quays. If you could turn left more traffic would go that way to avoid the toll, that just highlights how stupid it is to be tolling people for doing what you want them to do stay out of the city centre.
The toll bridges should be on the quays.

Half the road marking make no sense, and theres very little enforcement.

The is a traffic plan. Its to make the city center as unfriendly as possible for cars.

But like everything, its done half heartedly and unprofessionally. Just like the cycle lanes.