Operation Free-flow???

CherieAmour

Operation Free-Flow??? I just spent 40 minutes looking at Whitehall church from the window of a bus! I wondered if there was an accident, but no, it appears that gardaí pulling over cars to the side of the road on an already crammed junction (Collins Avenue) was the reason.

I thought the purpose of this was to make the system more fluid coming up to Christmas!

I think the lack of Garda presence on the roads for the rest of the year leads to people driving without insurance, tax, on provisional licences on their own etc etc etc because they know they can. Then when the Gardaí finally appear in their droves, they are stopping every tom, dick and harry breaking the rules of the road.

Any offending drivers should be stopped by all means, but if we had a better police presence on the road there would be less of them, and operations like 'Free-flow would actually work!

Am I naive? Any thoughts?

Kimbot

Operation Free Flow should be all year round and not just for christmas!!

That way less accidents will happen and more criminals caught!!

loyatemu

i don't agree with either of the options - I choose
"Its bad in theory, and it doesn't work"

most Gardai know nothing about traffic flow - getting them to direct traffic at junctions is pointless. If the city traffic office, with a supposedly high-tech traffic management system and a network of cameras, can't get things moving smoothly, what hope does one newly-recruited garda standing on a traffic island.

CherieAmour

loyatemu wrote:

i don't agree with either of the options - I choose
"Its bad in theory, and it doesn't work"

most Gardai know nothing about traffic flow - getting them to direct traffic at junctions is pointless. If the city traffic office, with a supposedly high-tech traffic management system and a network of cameras, can't get things moving smoothly, what hope does one newly-recruited garda standing on a traffic island.

I know what you're saying but I didn't put a 'bad in theory' one up because I do think there should be a traffic force specially trained in traffic management. The theory of having a police presence is a good one, but unfortunately you have newly trained Gardaí (or even mature recruits) who don't know the city or how to handle the volumes which can make things worse than not having them there at all. It should be all year round!!

Traffic is for life, not just for Christmas

markpb

I think this year is much better than before, the gardai seem to have given up overriding the signals which can only be a good thing. They seem to be concentrating on simple things like making sure people don't run red lights or block yellow boxes which is much more effective.

I would have to agree with the OP though - pulling people over for running lights or using the bus lane is silly. They should stop them long enough to get the license place and ticket them later.

shltter

markpb wrote:

I think this year is much better than before, the gardai seem to have given up overriding the signals which can only be a good thing. They seem to be concentrating on simple things like making sure people don't run red lights or block yellow boxes which is much more effective.

I would have to agree with the OP though - pulling people over for running lights or using the bus lane is silly. They should stop them long enough to get the license place and ticket them later.

The pulling over has a bit of a deterrent effect in that others see the Gardai are active and not just expensive manequins

To the OP the new layout at Whitehall Church is actually a huge part of the problem here the Bus Lane now turns into a left turn only lane which means the buses have to try and merge into the gridlocked traffic.
Unlike other areas this lane is a left turn only (no except Buses and taxis) what is needed is an island and lights to hold back the traffic and allow the bus to exit from the bus lane . They basically have 2 lanes and the bus lane feeding into 1 lane and the bus lane.
The cars should be merged into the outer lane before they get to the junction not at the junction or 100 yards after it.

fletch

The only improvement I've noticed is directly attributable to the fact that road works have paused and has nothing to do with the police on duty IMO.

The Swordsman

Actually, a funny thing happened last week at the Collins Ave/Swords Road junction last week.

I was coming down Collins Ave (from Donnycarney) looking to turn right onto the Swords Road (heading towards the M1).

Traffic was quite heavy (it was around 5PM), so the lights changed a few times before I got up near them.

There are three lanes at this junction. Traffic in the left lane goes straight ahead towards Finglas and the other two lanes turn right.

I was in the right hand lane and the lights changed. As I was getting closer, they changed to amber and I had one of those 'Will I/won't I' moments. At that point, I spotted two guards at the lights so I stopped.

But the guy in the next lane decided he would take the chance and went through. When he turned onto the Swords Road, he had to stop as the traffic was backed up.

One of the guards decided he should do something so he ran off in pursuit waving his little red light over his head. Just as he was getting close to the offending car, the traffic moved about twenty yards and the car followed. So the guard continued to run after it but again as the guard got close, traffic moved again and the car drove off into the horizon. The driver either didn't see the guard or chose not to see the guard.

Anyway, there was nothing for the poor guard to do only to trudge(he was obviously knackered at this stage) his way back to his mate with his tail between his legs and his mate laughing his head off. In fairness to the chasing guard, he was smiling as he made his way so he obviously saw the funny side.

Seth Brundle

loyatemu wrote:

i don't agree with either of the options - I choose
"Its bad in theory, and it doesn't work"

most Gardai know nothing about traffic flow - getting them to direct traffic at junctions is pointless. If the city traffic office, with a supposedly high-tech traffic management system and a network of cameras, can't get things moving smoothly, what hope does one newly-recruited garda standing on a traffic island.

I agree.
However, the numptie gardai who would be better off elsewhere are all wearing garda traffic corps jackets and one would be correct in assuming that they should therefore know what they are doing. This sadly is not the case.

dodgyme

my misus left the house at 9:20 and took an hour to get to blanch roundabout? - operation free what - free flow - should be called operation 'no go'. It took me 45 minutes to go from kepak to get into clonee the last night and there I saw cops at the roundabout in clonee heading off towards dunboyne (3 of them) to avoid it instead of spending 10 minutes at mcdonalds in clonee to move it on and thats all it woulda took - I cannot say what I thought of these so called gardai.