The Last Straw: This paper is always getting letters about Ireland's bad driving. So it made a refreshing change this week to read one about low standards in pedestrianism, a problem this column has highlighted before.
A.J. McGowan from Marino was moved to write after negotiating Dublin's O'Connell Street by foot during the humorously named "Car Free Day". This turned out to be hard work, s/he said, "because people don't know whether to walk on the left or right side of the footpath"; in contrast to the rest of Europe, "where everyone walks on the right". By way of solution, s/he suggested painting "arrows" on the ground to encourage lane use.
As my long-time readers will also know, arrows would not be a good idea. The city fathers cannot always be trusted to place "you are here" signs correctly on street maps, so if they had to paint arrows on footpaths, pedestrians might run the risk of being directed into - for example - the River Liffey. And God knows, pedestrians don't need any extra problems.
The letter-writer's experience may have been exacerbated by conditions on Car Free Day, when the city's pedestrian population included a higher than normal number of anarchists, many of whom reject lane-discipline as a capitalist construct. But even on ordinary days, when the footpaths are the preserve of the three main categories of users - shoppers, office workers, and bicycle couriers - trying to walk anywhere fast can be difficult.
Needless to say, since we haven't even adopted the two-way system of footpaths throughout Europe, we have no rules at all for overtaking. So in the absence of a fast lane, most pedestrians in a hurry take their chances on the street; although of course you couldn't do this on Car Free Day, because it was bumper to bumper out there.
But pedestrianisation has turned whole streets into footpaths. And these only increase the problems facing purposeful walkers who, as well as the usual minefield of shoppers and tourists, have to deal with such hazards as dreamy young lovers, who are drawn in large numbers to pedestrianised areas, and cause chaos for other road-users. Add to this the effects of street theatre, currently rampant in Dublin but always a problem on Grafton Street, then add rain, and umbrellas - and you can see why footpath rage is such a problem that I'm forced to keep writing about it.
This is not just a Dublin issue, however. This week's National Ploughing Championships demonstrated the crying need for some sort of basic qualifying procedure for pedestrians using a built-up area. The streets of the trade village - Ploughtown - were entirely pedestrianised, and there were 75,000 using them on Wednesday, with predictable results. Admittedly, the problem was worsened by the high numbers of politicians present, back-slapping all around them, and sometimes weaving violently into the path of oncoming photographers. But spending three days in Ballinabrackey this week would lead you to conclude that Irish people are incapable of moving in a straight line, except when ploughing.
How much longer the rest of Europe allows us to get away with unregulated footpath use is anyone's guess. But the shape of the future is already visible in Paris, where the latest innovation is the fast-moving pavement, or trottoir roulant rapide.
Currently being piloted at Montparnasse railway station, the TRR works like the "travelators" already used in airports, except that it moves at a dizzying nine kilometres per hour, three times faster than a travelator, and the average speed of a Paris bus.
There are accelerators and decelerators at either end, to get pedestrians up to speed and down again. Even so, first-time users struggle, and accidents are common. There have been a number of minor compensation cases. But promoters of the TRR point out that there were similar problems when escalators and travelators were introduced. So the likelihood is that the technology will be "rolled out" across France in the near future. And already there is huge interest from cities around the world, where the lack of "intermediate" public transport - linking public transport proper - is a problem.
Here of course, we're still in the junior public transport league, and we can only dream about qualifying for the intermediates. Also, the one area where we are years ahead of the French is US-style personal injury litigation. So even though it's the obvious solution for, say, joining up the two LUAS lines when they're finished, we'll probably be slow to adopt the fast-moving trottoir here.
Which gives us a few years more to master the basic stationary trottoir. And to this end, maybe the Department of Transport could start by issuing guidelines to schools. Otherwise we'll eventually have a situation where the TRR is rolled out in Ireland, and the pedestrians are rolled out after it.
