Months before the Monument of Light (aka The Spike) rises from the site of Nelson's Pillar, Dublin Corporation is to make it even more difficult than ever for northsiders to reach the south side by tightening the noose on traffic in O'Connell Street.
Plans unveiled yesterday by the corporation's director of traffic, Mr Owen Keegan, would reduce southbound traffic on Dublin's main thoroughfare by up to two-thirds by banning left turns from Dorset Street into North Frederick Street.
Buses, taxis, bicycles and motorbikes as well as emergency vehicles and the corporation's fearsome clamper vans would continue to have free rein. But the cars that currently clog O'Connell Street would be forced to find alternative routes. Northbound traffic volumes on O'Connell Street have already been curtailed by bans on cars turning left from Dawson Street into Nassau Street and right from South Great George's Street into Dame Street. Now, southbound traffic is the target.
According to Mr Keegan, the winners will include bus passengers, whose journey times will be shortened by up to 10 minutes between Dorset Street and O'Connell Bridge, and pedestrians, who will find they don't have to wait so long at crossings.
The new restrictions are part of a package which also involves an extended cycle lane network in the city centre as well as the designation of several routes as 12-hour clearways with tight two-hour "windows" for deliveries. Nobody at yesterday's meeting of the city council's traffic and transportation policy committee had any argument against catering for cyclists. One Fianna Fβil councillor, Ms Deirdre Heney, said she was so impressed she was going to buy a bicycle.
Even AA spokesman Mr Conor Faughnan had no problem with the new cycle lanes. "The notion of being able to cycle across the city without being killed is something everyone would welcome, particularly in Beresford Place," he said
But he was less sanguine about choking traffic in O'Connell Street and will be pressing the corporation for more details on where the displaced motorists are going to go.
