Sir, - Having visited cities in England this spring and after travelling in Germany, France and Switzerland this summer, I realise what makes Dublin so special. It is our extraordinary feat of urban engineering, the speed-ramp.
Nowhere else are there the same concentrations of these crudely constructed obstructions. Even the very few speed-ramps I encountered in Oxford were different from the species preferred by Dublin's road engineers. They were not built like small walls out of costly red brick, but were gentle tarmac slopes. They didn't require the vehicle to almost halt and then accelerate, but permitted a consistent, safe speed. As almost everyone knows, constant vehicle speed is more economical and less polluting.
Building speed-ramps is a costly, aggravating and cosmetic solution to Dublin's traffic problem. Time now to tear them up and think a little more deeply than the shallow foundations of these pointless obstacles. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Herriott, Waterloo Lane, Donnybrook, Dublin 4.