Sir, – Further to "National Transport Authority (reverses stance on College Green plaza plans" (April 2nd), the scale and complexity of the disputes over the proposed development of a pedestrianised plaza on College Green in the capital are as bewildering as they are disproportionate.
Something of a routine has developed whereby minute adjustments to the traffic management measures in force in our city are met by exaggerated tales of commercial apocalypse and accusations that the originator of any restriction has a private vendetta against a particular category of commuter.
If such fervent disputes are evoked by even minimal measures at traffic restriction, one might as well go all out.
If such measures are going to be treated as extreme anyway, one might as well propose something that is genuinely extreme.
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If anything, it might put the scale of the argument over a pedestrian plaza, and whether to put buses on Parliament Street or Winetavern Street, in some well-needed context.
So how about having no cars between the canals?
The whole city centre from Drumcondra to Ranelagh encircled in the loving embrace of pedestrians, cyclists, public transport and emergency vehicles (and maybe delivery vans and taxis as well).
Buses would sail through the city centre without even batting an eyelid at an obtrusive plaza, and petrol heads will have something about which they could justifiably complain. – Yours, etc,
CHRISTOPHER
McMAHON,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.