Madam, – I need help to put “Ranelagh” back on the map. I mean it literally.
The street “Ranelagh”, sometimes called “Ranelagh Village”, runs from the bridge on which the Ranelagh Luas stop stands to where Anna Villa makes a T-junction, where Sandford Road begins. This is all clearly marked on street signs at either end and along its length; but you won’t find it in any current edition of Dublin street guides. Every guide and map I could find puts “Ranelagh Road” where it should be simply “Ranelagh”, as do the Luas maps at the Ranelagh and Beechwood stops. [Ranelagh Road runs from the Grand Canal to the Luas line; it does not continue beyond.]
Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSI) Dublin Street Guide 1995 edition had “Ranelagh” where it ought to be, but the 2005 edition omitted it, leaving the space blank. This seems the likely source of all mistakes.
Two years ago, Luas told me the maps were not theirs and they could not change so much as a letter for copyright reasons, but they said they would inform their supplier. Naively, I imagined something would come of it.
Nothing happened, and last November I began again. Someone in OSI’s map department, after checking, confirmed that “Ranelagh” had been accidentally omitted; he thanked me for pointing it out, and said it would be put right in the next update. And at Luas’s map supplier, the Railways Procurement Agency (RPA), Karen Maloney, who has responsibility for keeping maps error-free, told me I had picked an auspicious moment as they were updating the maps then and the error would be corrected in the new maps.
Alas on October 16th, with the opening of the Luas extension, the new maps appeared, still with “Ranelagh Road” where “Ranelagh” should be.
It was then I checked the other guides, and found the identical error in each. And OSI’s New 2010-11 Dublin Street Guide, instead of the blank of the 2005 edition, now has “Ranelagh Road”. Am I wrong to feel so exasperated?
In my subsequent call to the OSI, someone not in the map department dealt with me. He could not explain what had happened, though undertook to try to find out why my previous contact’s finding was not acted on. At RPA, Ms Maloney remembered my previous call, and indeed, on the strength of it, had queried the “Ranelagh Road” recurrence. But OSI had insisted that “Ranelagh Road”, and not “Ranelagh”, was correct. In the face of this authority, RPA did not have the power to make the alteration. What is OSI up to?
In this extremity, I turn to your organ to assist the cause of saving “Ranelagh”.
– Yours, etc,