Madam, - Tom Ryan's simple suggestion of kerbside pedestrian barriers (February 28th) puts great swathes of our capital city's administration to shame.
Throughout Dublin and most other Irish population centres there is a long-standing and continuing reluctance on the part of urban planners to accept the principle of physical segregation between pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
Yet even the most modest UK market town is likely to have strategically placed stretches of ironwork designed to prevent pedestrians strolling out on to the roadway.
Importantly, the presence of these barriers also acts as a physical deterrent to that most dangerous of car-parkers, the only-nipping-in-for-a-paper individual who more often than not leaves his vehicle at an angle to the kerb - and usually at a bus-stop or junction.
In addition to its very simplicity, the pedestrian barrier is self-policing as it relieves police of the chore of incessantly patrolling stretches of city kerbside merely to shoo away apparently imbicilic motorists.
Our town planners appear to be reluctant to accept the level of change which Dublin has undergone in the last two decades and this reluctance is vividly displayed on many of our major thouroughfares.
One hopes that the recent tragedies in the city centre will prompt an urgent reappraisal of entrenched policies dating from the era of Bang-Bang and the Theatre Royal.
Dublin City, it appears has moved on, while its administrators remain in sepia-toned isolation. - Yours, etc.,
BILLY FLEMING,
Belgard,
Tallaght,
Dublin 24.