Traffic signals get green light after 33 years
Friday October 31 2008
IF you get frustrated waiting a few seconds for the traffic lights to change, imagine how you would feel if forced to wait three decades for them to appear.
Residents of a south Dublin estate are in the unlikely situation of celebrating the arrival of a set of traffic lights this week which they first demanded in 1975. People power works, it seems, but slowly.
"They are waiting for someone to be killed here before they give us lights," Noreen Brereton said in an article in a local newspaper on the issue in 1982.
"It's not enough that any number of people have been knocked down over the years."
Ms Brereton, who was pictured in the paper attempting to cross Mounttown Road, in Dun Laoghaire, without help from traffic lights, still lives in the area.
It was seven years before that particular article appeared that residents first petitioned Dublin Corporation to install lights at, what they maintained was, one of the busiest junctions in the area.
Last week, the council workers finally got the green light to move in.
The late Donal Hughes was also pictured in the 1982 article, and his daughter said that he would have been delighted to see work finally under way.
"My father was only too well aware of the dangers involved in crossing Mounttown Road," Mary Burnham said. "Several accidents had occurred at the spot over the years and I myself was in an accident involving the 46A bus at that spot many years ago."
It was Mary's own daughter, Sarah, who discovered the old copy of Southside newspaper in which the article appeared.
"I think it's a really sweet story to see my grandfather pictured all those years ago," Sarah said. "And now the traffic lights are finally becoming a reality."
- Niall Bourke and Jason O'Brien
