New traffic light on Collins Avenue creates more danger than it prevents, councillors say

Late in the afternoon on Tuesday, outside Puck Lane Café, a handful of customers finish the last gulps of their hot drinks, and the last scraps of pastries.

The café, which is part of the Whitehall Colmcille GAA clubhouse, is closing for the day, and the car park is about to be locked.

Driving out, one of the last punters slows at a red light at the exit for a moment, before it turns green. 

Then, they drive across the footpath and out onto the busy Collins Avenue, joining traffic and heading on their way. 

This traffic light at the car park’s exit is “a serious accident waiting to happen”, Councillor Paddy Monahan told the council’s North Central Area Committee. 

There is nothing to warn pedestrians coming from either direction when vehicles have just been given a green light to leave the car park.

“Some kid will be passing by on a scooter. I think it’s lethal,” the Social Democrats councillor says. 

At the meeting on Monday, though, Alec Dundon, a senior executive engineer for the council, defended the arrangement. 

The rules of the road are clear, “when you get a green light, that you’re meant to yield to pedestrians”, Dundon said. 

Okay, said Monahan, but “living in the real world, where most people have never opened the rules of the road in their life – green means go.” 

The reason it’s there

While Dundon agreed that the new set-up is “far from ideal”, he said it’s necessary.

A few metres to the left of the GAA club, as drivers leave, there’s a pedestrian crossing – and no light at that crossing to manage car traffic.

There can’t be a situation where pedestrians have a green man at the crossing, but drivers exiting the car park drive through the same pedestrian crossing, Dundon said. 

To solve this problem, a consultant, on behalf of the council, did a road-safety audit and looked at various options, including whether the car-park exit should be signalised. The consultant then recommended that it should be.

There must be “some sort of control on those cars”, Dundon said at the meeting.

The cure is worse than the disease, said Councillor Karl Stanley, Monahan’s Social Democrats colleague.

The rules of the road say green means “you may go on if the way is clear. Take special care if you intend to turn left or right and give way to pedestrians”. 

But Stanley says people in 2025 act differently behind the wheel.

As drivers are waiting at lights, they could be distracted by devices, or other things, and when they see a green light, many will assume it is safe to progress, he says.

When there's no traffic signal, it's clear to a driver they’re in a shared space, and have to mind their surroundings more, he says. “The safety is engineered into the design, as opposed to using the signal.”

Are there other examples like this around the city, where a private entity has a traffic light placed at its entrance, beckoning vehicles to drive over a footpath? asked Monahan.

Dundon, the council engineer, said that while the situation is not unique, he would have to check to find other examples.

The council has not yet responded to a query sent Tuesday asking for any such examples.

What now?

The light at the GAA club exit is something area residents had been asking for, says Councillor Donna Cooney, of the Green Party.

While she agrees that it could be made safer, she wouldn’t want to see it removed entirely, Cooney said on Tuesday by phone.

In his motion to the committee, raising this issue, Monahan said a crossing could be installed for pedestrians walking along the footpath past the car park.

However, while this might be a logical solution, given the situation that has been created, it would also be “ludicrous”, Monahan says.

“And would fly in the face of Dublin City Council’s commitment to active travel to compel pedestrians to use pedestrian lights in order to continue straight on a public footpath past a private property,” he says.

Stanley suggests that maybe installing a speed bump at the car park gate could help ease the risk of drivers exiting without noticing potential foot traffic on the path.

Any of these interventions would be akin to putting lipstick on a pig, says Whitehall Colmcille GAA secretary Diarmuid Murphy.

Murphy says he wonders if putting a flashing amber light at the exit would be an improvement. But, ultimately, it was much safer without any light at all, he says.

“I just looked at it [the new traffic light] and thought, this is mad. Someone will get killed here,” he said, by phone on Tuesday.

Now that the construction of the traffic light is complete, the council will have an independent audit done, says Dundon, the council engineer.

In the meantime, he says, the council has arranged with the GAA club to put up a sign on the club’s grounds, warning drivers exiting through the light that there may be pedestrians crossing the footpath.

But this isn’t just about this one set of traffic lights, says Monahan. It’s another example of the council’s “unquestioned car brain”, he says.

At Monday’s North Central Area Committee meeting, the chair, Fianna Fáil councillor Daryl Barron said the concerns raised by Monahan and Stanley should be taken seriously.

The next step should be councillors, the council’s local area manager, and Dundon visiting the traffic light to review the situation, Barron said.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.