Brennan and council on the one road at last

AT last, the Minister for Transport and traffic chiefs were singing from the same song sheet and the tune came courtesy of The Wolfe Tones.

A year after setting off on opposite routes and still managing to collide head-on, Seamus Brennan and Dublin City Council finally found themselves on the one road.

The minister and the council united yesterday to erect the first of 200 oad signs around Dublin which outline two orbital routes and assign numbers to key junctions.

J52, otherwise known as the junction where Mount Street Lower meets Haddington Road in the leafy southside of the city centre, was the spot chosen for the ceremonial hanging.

The J denotes an upcoming junction and the 52 reveals that it is the second junction on the outer orbital route, the inner orbital route junctions being numbered from one to 50.

In August last year, a very different type of hanging was under consideration, when the council, on a solo run, unveiled its first attempt at the new signs and the minister saw red.

Actually, he saw orange as the signs were jaffa-coloured and so crammed with directions, routes, junctions, warnings, numbers and half the alphabet that the minister diagnosed instantaneous mass confusion and had the whole lot recalled.

The new signs, which will be erected over the weekend, were agreed

after much collective brainstorming involving the Departments of Transport and Environment, the National Roads Authority and Dublin City Council.

A simplified colour code is used, with blue hues replacing the orange, and basic directional arrows and placenames winning out over standalone letters and numbers.

Mr Brennan said he had approved them as the model for all 34 local authorities to use when updating their road signs or introducing orbital routes as a way of encouraging traffic to circle town and city centres, rather than drive straight through when their destination is on the other side.

J52 stands proud beside a bus lane under a fine specimen of a perennial plant. How any motorist is expected to see it when a bus is going by and the tree is in full leaf is not clear yet, but the minister said he was confident the system would work. “As with any new transport system, it will take time for drivers to become familiar with it and to take full advantage of the benefits it offers,” he said.

Thanks to Dublin’s chronic traffic troubles, time behind the wheel is something motorists have plenty of.