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Last week I read somewhere that there are now approx. 7,000 Electric Vehicles (EV) registered in Ireland. But the Irish government has committed to 20,000 on Irish roads by 2020 and 500,000 by 2030. :-O The 20,000 number doesn’t look reachable unless more is done to promote EVs.
In 10 years from 2020 to 2030 a lot can happen, so it is impossible at the moment to make any guesses about the reachability of that BIG goal, but the next milestone is – based on current uptake – impossible to reach.
Dublin City had planned to pedestrianise the College Green area from the TCD front to approx. where H&M and Starbucks are and turn this new City Centre Plaza into a public amenity. (An article is here.) It would have been the first and only City Centre event space and in my opinion it is the perfect location for a PROPER Christmas Market in Dublin.
But the planning authority, An Bord Pleanala, was not in favour of it because it would have a negative effect on traffic and would cause unacceptable conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians.
At the moment College Green can only be used by buses and taxis and getting taxis out of this area would – in my opinion – be a good thing.
By the way: The only chance a Christmas Market has in Dublin if it a) is in a central location and b) is organised and run by Dublin City, NOT an event management company and definitely not by DublinTown.
The next steps that Dublin City will take regarding this, have not been revealed yet.
Luas Drivers, or rather their union is causing problems again and you have to read this full article as published by RTE.ie to understand how ridiculous the issue is and how unions are (not all, but most!) at total waste of space!
The row is over where 13 LUAS drivers (out of 67) have to have their lunch. Because they can’t have it where they might have parked their car and where they start their shift, they seemingly want compensation. The reason is because they can’t bring a packed lunch anymore but will now have to buy their lunch.
Transdev, their employer, nicely placated them and offers to provide Cooler Bags for lunch transport purposes instead of additional money. Ooops, that’s not what they wanted.
Read that article, it is nearly hilarious!
The Journal.ie reported about a Tweet and its story on Thursday here: While Gardai were carrying our speed checks at the Limerick tunnel, a man drove by in the other direction and decided in his wisdom to beep and to make a “choice hand gesture”. (Whatever that is and more about that later!)
No matter what the guy did, it was stupid, childish and not justifiable in the slightest. He was clearly happy that the gardai didn’t get him, but you must be some sort of an idiot to react the way he did.
Being an idiot though, is not normally a punishable offence. But in this case, the gardai who did the speed check wanted revenge. They spent a “number of days” to identify the driver (using the camera recordings from the Limerick tunnel operator) and to issue him with a fine for “a combination of dangerous driving offences including not watching the road while travelling at high speeds”. EUR 80 and three points was the punishment. In addition they felt it was necessary to tweet about it here twitter.com/GardaTraffic/status/1024904377075748864 and decided to add a “choice hand gesture” from the series Friends.
As I clearly said, the guy was an idiot. BUT we also know (or SHOULD know) that revenge is never a good motivator. In the same way as the driver should have just celebrated quietly that he wasn’t caught speeding, the gardai should have just called him an idiot and should then have continued with their work. Beeping and a hand gesture are NOT enough to spend days of work.
And the offence? I wouldn’t be surprised if a judge would remove the penalty if he went to court. If beeping and making a hand gesture is a dangerous driving offence, then EVERY driver should get a EUR 80 fine multiple times every day. So I am really not sure if the gardai in this case affirmed their moral superiority. Instead it seems as if they lowered themselves to the level of of idiot driver. Their “choice hand gesture” was in the tweet and it was no better than the drivers stupid reaction.
I am actually disappointed about the reaction of the gardai! Nobody should ever have to endure being insulted by idiots when they do what is part of of their job, but revenge is NOT what I would expect gardai to spend days of their work on.
(By the way: We can only guess that the driver was showing the middle finger because the term “choice hand gesture” is NOT a term that is anywhere defined. If you search for it on Google, you will find no explanation but you will find MANY links to media articles about the same event. It didn’t make much sense to use this term!)
The Journal.ie announced on Friday that Fingal County Council has announced that planning permission had been issued for a new coastal cycling route and pedestrian path linking Baldyole and Portmarnock.
New shiny cycling paths are always good news because they benefit cyclists, pedestrians and car users and make life safer for everyone involved and when all is finished the new piece will allow a continuous link between Baldoyle and Malahaide. That’s even better news.
But there is a shocking aspect to that great announcement: The price for that new piece is indicated as in the region of EUR 2.5 mio. Well, 2.5 mio is not too bad for a good piece of cycling path AND pedestrian path, but then I read the article again and discovered that the distance is “nearly 2km”. WOW! More than 1.25 mio per kilometer!?!?
And then the Director for planning and strategic infrastructure at Fingal Council is quote with “The Baldoyle to Portmarnock route is the first phase of a major initiative to provide a Greenway along the entire coastline of Fingal.” The entire coastline of Fingal is 88km long, Does that mean they have EUR 110mio to spend on a cycling path? Or does it mean: It’s a great idea but it will never happen?
The article in the Journal.ie is here: www.thejournal.ie/north-dublin-coastal-4152556-Jul2018/
