Gardai on Parkway Roundabout in Limerick Today

Berty

Hello All,

Its happened finally. The Gardai have decided to clamp down on cars trying to illegaly manouveur the Parkway Roundabout in Limerick. Fair Play to them as well because the weather is terrible. High Wind and Heavy Rain!

The right lane is for the city centre and the left lane is for the shopping centre. They come up the left lane and force their way around the roundabout causing a longer queue in the right lane because of this.

The Gardai stood on te roundabout today stopping people doing this. Unforuntately a lot of them spotted the Gardai from a distance and went into the shopping centre, turned and came back out still beating around 40 cars.

I dont believe the Gardai gave any tickets, they only seemed to talk in the windows of the cars for a few moments and let them on their merry way.

As somebody whom either goes around the roundabout legally or turns off and heads for Mulgrave Street I hope the have put the frighteners on people so some of them stop doing it.

h3000

Yeah I spotted that I was delighted. They used to do it every now and then before but I havn't seen them there in months. They should send them into the Parkway and hold them in there for 10 minutes.
I had a J.J. Kavannagh bus force me over to kerb on the roundabout there a week or too ago, it's just so dangerous.

ergonomics

Coming up to Christmas about two years ago a Garda was controlling traffic on that roundabout. A guy came round with no indicators and the Garda signaled for him to go, then to stop, then to go, then to stop. The driver rolled down the window and shouted something at the Guard about how was he supposed to know when he was meant to go? The Guard calmly replied 'Well now you know how everyone else feels when you don't indicate'. It was great.

Berty

h3000 wrote: »

Yeah I spotted that I was delighted. They used to do it every now and then before but I havn't seen them there in months. They should send them into the Parkway and hold them in there for 10 minutes.
I had a J.J. Kavannagh bus force me over to kerb on the roundabout there a week or too ago, it's just so dangerous.

Yeah the JJ Kavanagh Bus does this every single morning. I usually hit the roundabout around 8:20am or so depending on Finnegans roundabout area traffic.

Green Hornet

Its a real problem with roundabouts in Ireland. The same thing goes on at roundabouts in Wexford, people jumping the queues in the right hand lane and cutting in front of people on the roundabout to go straight when the right hand lane is indicated for people to turn right using the right hand lane.

Armadillo

What a complete waste of Garda Resources...
This is the fault of the road planners and councils\corpo's who were well paid for the work in the first place. They are the ones who should be out in the cold, wind and rain sorting out the problems they created.
Lets mobilize the pensioners and students to protest on behalf of the rest of us hardworking tax payers.

Berty

Green Hornet wrote: »

Its a real problem with roundabouts in Ireland. The same thing goes on at roundabouts in Wexford, people jumping the queues in the right hand lane and cutting in front of people on the roundabout to go straight when the right hand lane is indicated for people to turn right using the right hand lane.

You can legally overcome this dilema if you want to jump traffic. I used to do it in Shannon before somebody kindly built a dual carraigeway out. It used to take 40 minutes to get from the ind est to the dual carraigeway now it takes 5 minutes.

Go up to a roundabout and indicate right and traverse the roundabout and come back to the exit you want in a legal position.

Its only morally questionable but legal all the same.

Biro

Armadillo wrote: »

What a complete waste of Garda Resources...
This is the fault of the road planners and councils\corpo's who were well paid for the work in the first place. They are the ones who should be out in the cold, wind and rain sorting out the problems they created.
Lets mobilize the pensioners and students to protest on behalf of the rest of us hardworking tax payers.

Stupid post. So you think civil engineers should be out there changing people's driving habbits? This is the sort of stuff that Guards should be doing, changing people's attitude on the road. Far more useful than penalising someone who's doing 110km/h on a dual carrigeway.

kayos

Reading this I have a little symphony playing Odd to Joy in my head! I used live out in annacotty so was well used to seeing this roundabout abused in that manner.

Now if only the cops in Galway would do the same thing on pretty much every roundabout in town.

Berty

Armadillo wrote: »

What a complete waste of Garda Resources...
This is the fault of the road planners and councils\corpo's who were well paid for the work in the first place. They are the ones who should be out in the cold, wind and rain sorting out the problems they created.
Lets mobilize the pensioners and students to protest on behalf of the rest of us hardworking tax payers.

Its not a waste of the Traffic Corps resources. Thats what their resources are for, traffic duties.

Long gone are the days when we only had two types of Garda, Garda and Detective Garda.

You should see the new MP5 armed Gardai travelling around in the high powered Volvo T5 estate in Munster. The cattle rustlers around my area didnt know what hit them when they pulled them on the Limerick road. The guy was standing around 5 mtrs from the bonnet aiming the MP5 at the occupants whilst two flanked the van and the other spoke through the window. You could smell their soiled trousers driving past.

Biro

quirke_folder wrote: »

You can legally overcome this dilema if you want to jump traffic. I used to do it in Shannon before somebody kindly built a dual carraigeway out. It used to take 40 minutes to get from the ind est to the dual carraigeway now it takes 5 minutes.

Go up to a roundabout and indicate right and traverse the roundabout and come back to the exit you want in a legal position.

Its only morally questionable but legal all the same.

The problem with that move is you only add to the traffic problem, because you and everyone else who does that only causes the people queuing up to get onto the roundabout to wait even longer because you're holding them up even more.

h3000

Armadillo wrote: »

What a complete waste of Garda Resources...
This is the fault of the road planners and councils\corpo's who were well paid for the work in the first place. They are the ones who should be out in the cold, wind and rain sorting out the problems they created.
Lets mobilize the pensioners and students to protest on behalf of the rest of us hardworking tax payers.

I would not say a complete waste of Garda resources, people are constantly doing it at this roundabout and it is actually quite dangerous. It happens on a lot of roundabouts and its just very annoying but it is actually dangerous on this (parkway) roundabout. You are right, it was a badly designed road layout but the behavour needs to be stopped and having the Gardai there for a hour every now and then may make the twits think twice before doing it again.

Berty

kayos wrote: »

Reading this I have a little symphony playing Odd to Joy in my head! I used live out in annacotty so was well used to seeing this roundabout abused in that manner.

Now if only the cops in Galway would do the same thing on pretty much every roundabout in town.

The Rahoon road the meets Bishop O'Donnel road out by Westide/Knocknacarra. They drive down the wrong side of the road, some up to 1 km to turn right because the majority and turning left to town. There are exits from housing estates all along this road and sometimes car have come out and turned left up the road without looking(didnt expect they needed to) and nearly get hit by a flotilla of cars coming the wrong way.

Madness!!

The Headford road roundabout does spring to mind.

Berty

Biro wrote: »

The problem with that move is you only add to the traffic problem, because you and everyone else who does that only causes the people queuing up to get onto the roundabout to wait even longer because you're holding them up even more.

Only morally wrong so.

On the same rounadbout people exit way before it up the old Dublin road and rejoin from the right hand of the roundabout and block up the roundabout causing difficulty accessing the roundabout from the regular Dublin road. Not much that can be done about this. They have as much right to access the roundabout and they commonly allow a car to join in front of them.

But you can always spot the bumper huggers avoiding eye contact with you who wont. As*-holes!

bazz26

That Parkway roundabout is a disaster and was poorly designed from day one. Whoever was the genius who decided to put the pedsestian crossing at the edge of it should be shot.

If you are coming from the Childer's Road direction and trying to go through the roundabout to Clare Street which is the second exit, then you have to queue up on the lane originally for the shopping centre as the outside correct exit lane is blocked with traffic. These folks then think you are trying to jump the queue and will not let you merge.

Berty

Your right Bazz, they think your from the lane jumpers.

Do you remember when that was a T Junction. Where the Salon is and Clancy Electrical is that was the main Dublin road and it was a T Junction with traffic lights. I still think that would work better with a different entry and exit for the Shopping Centre.

I do hope that when the shopping centre closes that the roundabout can be revised.

Also, when the tunnell opens a lot of traffic will cease to exist on this road. Galway and Clare bound people still use this road because the Dock road is Chaos

bazz26

quirke_folder wrote: »

Your right Bazz, they think your from the lane jumpers.

Do you remember when that was a T Junction. Where the Salon is and Clancy Electrical is that was the main Dublin road and it was a T Junction with traffic lights. I still think that would work better with a different entry and exit for the Shopping Centre.

I do hope that when the shopping centre closes that the roundabout can be revised.

Also, when the tunnell opens a lot of traffic will cease to exist on this road. Galway and Clare bound people still use this road because the Dock road is Chaos

If that new Parkway Valley shopping centre ever gets finished we will be back to square one.

Berty

The parkway valley centre will not be finished anytime soon.

You need construction workers to finish it and they have none.

Berty

I cannot believe I have to revisit this thread and I cannot believe I have to revisit this thread for such an ironic reason.

The traffic on the roundabout this morning was very very light. I was only 2 cars waiting to access the roundabout instead of the usual 30 cars. There was a traffic core Fiat People Carrier behind me. My GF gets very nervous around Garda cars in general. I will never understand why.

They came on to the roundabout behind me and just after the parkway exit they gunned the engine and passed myself and the other car in front of me, switched on their blues and forced their way into the lane and switched off their blues.

I blew my horn as they gunned passed me because whatever anybody says its still illegal for them to do it without being on an emergency call.

They looked back at my and I just lifted my arms in a "what the f*ck" type gesture.

Imagine the irony of what their colleagues were doing the morning before stopping people from doing this and then their great example the next morning.

They were both traffic corps on both days.

ninty9er

quirke_folder wrote: »

You can legally overcome this dilema if you want to jump traffic. I used to do it in Shannon before somebody kindly built a dual carraigeway out. It used to take 40 minutes to get from the ind est to the dual carraigeway now it takes 5 minutes.

Go up to a roundabout and indicate right and traverse the roundabout and come back to the exit you want in a legal position.

Its only morally questionable but legal all the same.

I use that tact in Mallow. However, in Limerick on the Parkway Roundabout, the right hand lane is designated straight through as it's more than 180 degrees, with the left lane for shopping centre only. After being in the queue for ages today I edged at least 2 queue skippers to a halt. The problem is people going for the yellow box, when there's a space more to the left (just at the traffic island coming out of Parkway) that still allows Childers Road traffic to get onto the Dublin Road.

It's a complete mess there. Not a design fault, a crappy driving disaster, compounded by people not seeing any real danger of being seen by a Garda, and even if they are, even less liklihood of anything being done about it.

Tech3

ninty9er wrote: »

skippers to a halt. The problem is people going for the yellow box, when there's a space more to the left (just at the traffic island coming out of Parkway) that still allows Childers Road traffic to get onto the Dublin Road.

The amount of people that park on that yellow box junction is unbelievable. Even today there were people parked on it. Some drivers dont show their depreciation but i did when i saw a car parked in it when i was about to enter the roundabout from the childers road side.

Some need to learn the rules of the road again.