Re: post continued…
Finally before we leave this junction all together, I think its only fitting to pay one last tribute to DCC road engineers and their most recent works here – though this time non-cycling related. This time it is pedestrians that are the casualty.
Wellington Place, opposite the new traffic barrier island shown in the first picture in this post, is a road that splits off the very start of Morhampton Road. As it is a wide splayed junction there have always been traffic islands here. However, never to miss an opportunity to erect even more cluttering shite onto Dublin footpaths, the lads responsible for Morhampton Barricade Islands completed their project so that its now this way, with a 30-metre detour to cross a 3-metre stretch of road:
Predictably the resulting pedestrian behaviour is this:
Sandwith Street, Dublin 2:
There is a final shot that I would like to include with this post, this time of the city centre located stretch of where Sandwith Street approaches the junction with Pearse Street, Dublin 2. Again this shot is just one of the many, many places where DCC are failing to provide safe full-time cycling provision. In this instance there are three lanes of outbound traffic, which as they are unhindered travel at speed having approached this around a bend. As much of this outbound traffic is expectant of a generally green feeder light SE bound onto Pearse Street, there is every incentive for speed. If any location has both the space and the need for clearly marked safe full-time cycle-ways, this is it. Yet give the job to Dublin City Council and what do we get? Well judge for yourself – I’ll only note the basic absence of red tarmac as a starter…
There are so many instances around Dublin where non-mandatory cycle-tracks are put in instead of mandatory lanes. They’ll get put in because its seen to be compliant; yet if ever there was a most lethal form of lip-service, this is it. Ultimately such provisioning can become of a legal significance. All told it is high time that senior officials in Dublin’s Roads Department consider their responsibilities to all road users equally.
In view of what is in my opinion a matter of significant public interest, I invite other posters to contribute, and ideally add photos of other danger locations so as to create some kind of public record on this matter.
