About the only useful piece of election literature that I received through the letter-box during this year's general election campaign was an aerial photograph of the constituency in which I live, Dublin South, from one of the candidates, Seamus Brennan. Rather grandly titled "The Seamus Brennan Map", the photograph showed the main roads in the area in clear outline. As a result I am now able to drive from my humble street to the grand M50 motorway without getting stranded in the urban wastelands of Ball. Wesley Boyd writes.
It was with some prescience that Mr Brennan launched his road map on the electorate. Now that he has ended up as Minister for Transport with responsibility for all things that move or that are supposed to move, may the force move with him as he tries to get things moving. One of his first encouraging moves was to give the thumbs down to Dublin's crazy new orbital road-signs.
6,000 years
Man has been at the road-building business since the first stone-paved street was laid down in Ur of the Chaldees 6,000 years or so ago. You would think we would have perfected the craft by now. To see how far we have still to travel, may I suggest the new Minister should conduct a little exercise: Give the driver the day off, hop into the Mercedes and drive himself to, say, Swords. Then, following the roadside directions, he should attempt to reach Dún Laoghaire to catch the ferry, a journey made very day of the week by many travellers from the North.
If the Minister manages to navigate successfully the myriad of roundabouts between Swords and Dublin Airport, he will need to be careful not to screech past the little slip-road just down the way that leads on to the mighty M50.
As he cruises along this highway he will observe a maximum speed sign simply and boldly declaring within its red circle: 70. There is no indication whether the circular 70 appertains to miles per hour or kilometres per hour. This can be confusing not only to the visitor from the United Kingdom of miles, but also to the local from Ireland of the kilometers, whose dashboard is calibrated in m.p.h. and who has just read a piece by a motoring scribe telling him his new chariot is capable of a top speed of 130 m.p.h. and can accelerate from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 9.5 seconds. (The Minister has now indicated that he intends to remove the confusion.) At least there is a speed-limit sign of sorts on the M50; on a recent trip from Rosslare to Cork, generally a fine fast road much used by tourists, I encountered two Garda speed traps but did not observe a single speed-limit sign. Ignorance of the law, I know, is no excuse, but there is no excuse for the law to be ignorant.
Which terminal?
Continuing his solitary drive along the M50 the Minister will notice a sign showing a boat carrying a truck and a car. This surely must be pointing the way to the ferry terminal - but is it to the handful in Dublin Port or the one at Dún Laoghaire? Not wishing to miss the sailing, the Minister might well decide to leave the motorway at the next slip-road. As he comes near its end he will be confronted with a sign saying "City Centre" and carrying two arrows pointing in opposite directions. After a couple of spins on the roundabout he will decide he is nowhere near Dun Laoghaire and go back on to the M50.
Cruising along, he will ponder why road engineers, after 6,000 years of experience, persist in hiring compilers of crosswords to produce highway signs. Then he spots an easy one. It simply states "The South". Handy if you want to get to Cork, he thinks.
But would The South take you to Galway? Or does The South start at Limerick? The miles (sorry, kilometres) pass and the Minister begins to recognize some familiar landmarks on the fringes of his constituency. But still he can see no sign pointing to Dun Laoghaire. By now he is wishing he had brought The Seamus Brennan Map with him.
He knows the M50 is not yet finished and is due some time in the future to link up with the N11 to Wexford somewhere near Dún Laoghaire. So he decides to keep on the motorway, regardless of signs or lack of signs, until it runs out. Eventually it does; and having nowhere else to go, he follows the traffic flow and ends up in the eternal vastness of the Sandyford Industrial Estate. He decides Dún Laoghaire is a ferry too far, gets on his mobile phone and asks for directions back to the office.
Another hazard
Driving through the suburbs of Stillorgan and Mount Merrion, he experiences another hazard of everyday travel: The Ramp. Under the Road Traffic (Bollards and Ramps) Regulations of 1988, no ramp should go higher than 100 millimetres. But no one has told the engineers. Some of the ramps he encounters in the quiet glades of suburbia seem intent on challenging the Macgillycuddy Reeks. The Minister considers summoning up a tractor on his mobile, but bravely slips the Merc into low gear and takes on the assault.
As he brakes vigourously on the descent he wonders why a state with a population less than a quarter of that of New York city cannot have ramps of uniform size, shape, colour and warning illumination.
Safely back in the office, the Minister hands the keys back to his driver. "You can keep those," says he.
