Go-slow 'feels like elderly aunt pootering to Mass'

Taxis drive a galloping coach and horses through the new bylaw but cyclists feel safer

HOW SLOW is 30km/h? Call it for what it is in imperial measures which everybody understands. It is 18 miles an hour, slower than a cyclist maintaining a brisk pace, slower than a tractor pulling a full trailer, so slow it wouldn’t even qualify a mediocre sprinter to run in the national trials.

Dublin City Council brought in its new city centre 30km/h speed limit on Sunday, but, despite ample warning, it is a bylaw already more honoured in the breach than the observance.

On Ormond Quay during rush hour, it is a salutary experience to have the whole slow lane to yourself. Taxis thunder past like nothing has changed and cars follow as resolutely.

By the looks of things, this will assuredly put more taxi drivers off the road than all their talk of over-supply. Not one obeyed the new speed limit.

Driving at 30km/h feels slow, really slow. You never get out of second gear.

One feels like an elderly spinster aunt pootering to Mass once a week in a Morris Minor.

The first honk of the horn for driving too slow comes as I round O’Connell Street and motorists use the wide thoroughfare of D’Olier Street to speed up as if these new speed limits were so much wishful thinking on the part of city planners.

Doubling back on oneself on Westmoreland Street and heading out the quays, it is positively dangerous to slow down.

The only sign of the brave new world for pedestrians and cyclists comes as one passes City Hall on Wood Quay where a Garda van had been conspicuously present for the morning rush hour.

Now in the evening traffic, it is a surreal experience to see a line of cars deliberately slowing down when there is no congestion and no snow.

The Garda van is nowhere in evidence. The threat is clearly enough.

It is hard to find a single motorist on the road or on the airwaves who supports the new arrangement.

“Utter rubbish”, “absolutely ludicrous” and “bonkers” were just some of the choice expressions used by 2fm presenter Gerry Ryan yesterday, who said he had a “deep, deep suspicion” that the people who brought it in did not know how to drive.

“I tried driving at 30 and my car nearly stalled,” said one motorist. “It’s political correctness gone mad. Give the world back to the foxes and we’ll all be on bicycles.”

Taxi drivers parked outside the Shelbourne Hotel said their job had just been made harder.

“You could push the car around the place quicker,” said Colm Farrell. “You spend more time watching the speedometer than you do watching the road.”

Polish-born taxi driver Marcin Sas said passengers were incredulous when he drove the new limits. “I tried to drive the speed and even they were saying that some people could walk faster than you can drive,” adding that the signs which marked the border between the 30km/h and 50km/h limits were not clear.

“I’m dreading it. I’m really uptight about it,” said Roy Dickson as he took some cleaning supplies for delivery out of his van.

Coach driver David Walden of Celtic Tours said the council had used a “sledgehammer to crack a nut” and he mused at how difficult it would be to maintain a 30km/h limit on the quays at 6.30am.

The views of cycling couriers gathered on St Stephen’s Green put another perspective on the decision.

Chris Grieve said “in theory” it would make his job safer. “If the traffic is moving slower, it means that if you get hit, you have a better chance of survival.”