FROM THE ARCHIVES:There were fewer cars on Dublin's streets 40 years ago but that didn't mean there were no traffic jams, as this piece by an anonymous reporter illustrates. – JOE JOYCE
THERE WAS nobody in when we rang the Garda Traffic Section in Dublin Castle at 6.30 p.m. yesterday.
“They’re all out looking after it,” said the officer on the switch when we asked him could anybody talk to us about the traffic jam which had been building up in town all afternoon.
The sergeant at Pearse street was equally helpless, and indicated the presence of his single station orderly. Again, all the traffic fellows were out – “down by Butt Bridge somewhere, I’d say.” I didn’t have the heart to repeat the unkind things said about the absence of traffic gardaí by two C.I.E. inspectors.
“I’ve been inspecting now for five months,” said the first man, “and I’ve seen it get worse each Friday. It’d be worth somebody’s while to get a helicopter, to go up and see it all from above. We night get some idea of what to do that way. At present we’ve just got to wait.”
And the schedule? Another laugh as he jumped aboard a 16A that rounded the corner into Westmoreland street. “Ah, they’re all upside down at this stage.”
The motorists I spoke to were equally frustrated. Nobody seemed keen on following C.I.E.’s advice and becoming a track star. On the other hand, a number of people in bus queues spoke longingly of the “bike.”
Harcourt street down into Stephen’s Green, Butt Bridge, and anything that was even remotely connected with Ringsend suffered the hardest, according to the second C.I.E. man. “Twenty-seven years on the job and I’ve never seen anything like it,” he added. “But if it was wet you’d have had a complete shut-down here .”
“I tried to sort out a jam there a while ago, and some fellow in a Cortina got a chance to move a few feet. He almost killed me in the rush.”
The Fire Brigade man said he didn’t have any delays in ambulances or tenders, but it was just as well, he added, that there were no big fires. He could tell by looking out the window that things were “very bad.”
The overall result? Not any worse than any Friday, said most of the motorists. The busmen thought it was particularly bad, and the gardaí seem to have got their extra share of motor-cycling. Comments from pedestrians were for the most part unrepeatable, but one bears recounting.
It was as the engines began to splutter into life after a 20-minute rest in College Green. As the evening papers were tossed wearily into the jump seats, two old codgers began to thread their way across the traffic from one side to the other.
The first laid a restraining hand on his companion’s arm and drew him back to the pavement. “Ah no,” he said, with the air of a man who knows he is viewing his less fortunate fellow mortals in their troubles, “ah no, let’s give them a chance.”
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