City centre residents, as well as visitors who are pedestrians and cyclists, are all suffering a chaotic situation caused by the volume of traffic accessing city centre car parks, according to Cllr Mannix Flynn.
The independent councillor is known for rallying against projects to improve streets for pedestrians and cycling, and he regularly gets animated at council meetings about protecting the status quo for motorists.
But at Dublin City Council’s first South East Area Committee meeting since the local elections, he highlighted the chaotic mess of Mercer Street Lower — which includes a mix of high-density housing, offices and a high volume of traffic access going to and from car parks.
Mercer Street Lower is not a main road for through traffic, but it is heavily trafficked mainly because of off-street car parks. This includes both the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre and the Royal College of Surgeons car parks, which have in-and-out access from the street.
At least some of the traffic flows from the Grafton Car Park (formerly the Brown Thomas Car Park), and the smaller underground Drury Street Car Park goes to Mercer Street Lower.
The car park traffic “all converge in the area,” he said. And: “Literally, it’s chockablock with traffic and cars.”
Cllr Flynn said: “It’s a residential area with children playing and people trying to get through on bikes etc, and it’s simply unacceptable. In the evening times as it gets dark, it’s very dangerous. In the morning time, it’s dangerous, there are trucks, you name it, all trying to get out of or into the city. It needs to be addressed.”
He said he raised it in the previous council term and wants a report from council officials. The local area manager said he’ll contact him directly after he talks to the council’s traffic department.
This is hardly the first time Cllr Flynn has spoken up for safer streets; he often does so just moments before or after advocating for the status quo or a slower or milder process of change, as he did yesterday in relation to a junction upgrade (to be covered in another article). But yesterday, he took aim at city centre car parks.
Not a zebra crossing in sight.
THE cheapest and quickest way to improve pedestrian safety in such an area – noting that they no longer require the idiotic belishas that exploded the costs and planning of them.
That there is not one across the exit/entry point of the car parks is beyond bizarre.