Sir, - I must take your correspondent Frank McDonald to task regarding his comments on the Monkstown Ring road (August 12th). He stated that the residents of Yankee Terrace were not objecting to the development plan and that most people in the area were in favour of it. Nothing could be further than the truth. The residents of Yankee Terrace, some of whom have been there for nearly 30 years, will be evicted, their attractive artisan dwellings bulldozed, and without any guarantee that they will be ever able to find affordable alternative accommodation in the borough where they have lived all of their lives. To believe that these people are not objecting is laughable.
Frank McDonald may have interpreted as inaction their despair that nobody in authority seems to care. No public representative in the locality has made any comment on this destructive proposal and the planning department seems hell bent on opening this road.
The residents in Fleurville, Brookville Park and Rowanbyrn will have their environments destroyed with traffic figures rising from 200 vehicles a day to over 13,000 per day, or one vehicle every two seconds! This is seen in some quarters as equitable! You cannot transform a quiet cul-desac into a major link road without the attendent problems of accidents and deaths, pollution and degradation of the living environment for all concerned.
This road was on the draft development plan for many years and when studied in detail by councillors in 1993, they realised that it served no real beneficial purpose and that it would cause more problems than it solved, hence they removed it permanently from the plan. So much for democracy! It's back again in a different guise: the Monkstown "Ring" Road.
As a resident in the area I do not understand exactly what problem the development is attempting to solve. Nor does the council judging by its report on the proposal. The main positive element in its report is that Newtown Park will return to village-like status and will provide high-speed links between shopping centres! It is more likely to be seen as a relief road to take traffic away from the Stillorgan Road, particularly at peak hours. This is contrary to all notions of removing traffic from the residential areas and calming the traffic that's there.
I speak for most of the residents of our estates when I say that we are totally opposed to this road as the destruction of our environment for no obvious benefit is not only folly but ill-considered planning at its worst. - Yours, etc.,
Graeme Byrne,
Brookville Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin.