image for illustration: Liffey East by Jtdirl, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
… Long tailbacks, sitting in traffic and navigating the M50 are a fact of life for many in Dublin… but how did the city become so jam-packed with cars, asks RTE Brainstorm?
RTE Brainstorm writes:
The twentieth century saw the transformation of Dublin into a motorised space that radically changed how people experience the city. Today there is one car for every two people living in Dublin…
… 1937 saw Dublin’s first set of traffic lights…. Reports stated that ‘there was considerable confusion at first’..
As cars became more commonplace, traffic and obstructive parking became an issue…
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… Dublin’s population moved out of the inner city to newly built suburbs… ‘The Safe Cross Code’ song was taught to children to instil good road crossing habits…
In recent years an ‘edge city’ has emerged where shopping centres, business parks and entertainment… located off the M50…. Time will tell how it will cope with this challenge in twenty first century.
