Traffic Lights Outage in Kilkenny Shortens School Run Time
The cat comes out of the bag in Kilkenny
This week in Kilkenny City there has been a traffic light outage leading to users of the small city’s one way system to make it up as they go along. The main intersection of the traffic through the middle of town is called The Parade. This is where the one way traffic from John street, up through Rose Inn street, meets the traffic from the Castle Road and Patrick street. Three of the five roads off of the the Parade are one way streets, two of which lead away from the junction. This leads to high levels of traffic build up as the lights alternate between red, amber and green, sometimes causing a back up all the way up Patrick Street, the Castle Road and rose Inn Street. This has a knock on effect of blocking the slip road at the back of Dunnes, through the Market yard and completely disabling the the flow of traffic inside the ring road of the Town. Yesterday, with the traffic lights out, something else entirely occurred.
I experienced the effect of no traffic lights at the Parade myself yesterday. I came down John Street, through Rose Inn Street and approached the junction. I noticed the entire way that the town was very quiet as the row of traffic I was in did not stop once. We proceeded all the way up to the the junction and I realised the lights were out. Was there panic? Was there a pile up? Far from it in fact. As I got to the junction it was apparent that the road users involved in the situation were adopting the default rules of roundabouts in that you make way for traffic coming from your right. As High street was to my right and a one way entry only, I was able to traverse the junction smoothly with intuitive reactions from both myself and the two other lanes of traffic involved. A few hand signals and away we went. Traffic was barely stopping and other users were taking the natural breaks in traffic to interject themselves and progress their journey. It reminded me of those traffic videos you see in India where there are no rules other than “don’t hit anything and don’t let anything hit you”. There was a noticeable smoothness to it.
This morning, I decided to walk my child to school, forgetting entirely the moment of clarity the day before. She brought her scooter and I carried her bag. We made it across the town in about 15 minutes or so and we were the first parent/child double team to the gate. Within two or three minutes there was a whole gaggle of us with some of the parents who drive their children to school sparking up a conversation about the lights situation at the Parade. One of the parents was quick to point out that they managed to get to the school ten minutes earlier than normal with traffic moving smoother than ever. Another parent agreed and I shared my story from the day before. This led to a conversation of the “Temporary” one way system which was made permanent against the wishes of all the local businesses and also the people at large. High Street and Rose Inn Street used to be two way systems and traffic used to flow through Kilkenny as smoothly as anything. The introduction of the bollards on both of these streets is purely designed to harass drivers and limit the value of driving a car in Kilkenny. These same policies are copy and pasted throughout Irelands population centres and all across the western world in tandem with the other local councils that have signed up to the UN SDG’s. Still our politicians pretend like these were individual organic decisions with “safety” and congestion in mind. With talks now of lowering of the speed limit to 20 km we can clearly see the direction this is all taking.
If a local business in Kilkenny reads this, or a few motorists, take note of these two facts:
1. The congestion in Kilkenny is completely fabricated by intentionally antagonistic traffic management planning. Any person that would do that is morally bankrupt.
2. The people that have implemented this are nothing more than sock puppets for Europe and the UN. You must speak with your vote at the next election. Andrew/John McGuinness, Kathleen Funchion et al are hostile towards the people of Kilkenny. Sure they do it with a smile and when they clock off they are reasonably involved with the local culture and community but they are ultimately agents of chaos due to their lack of ability to make any decision on their own. They require approval from Brussels, The UK, the US or Geneva first.
The bullshit they will spew in defence of these measures is beyond belief. Everything from “safety” to Doomsdayesque end of the world Climate predictions will flow from their mouths as they run cover for the pyramid scheme that got them their plush government jobs in the first place. We need better people in government both National and local who will tear up the SDG script and pull every single one of those bollards up from the root. Remember this come election day.
There is an emergent factuality here also, which is that the natural mode of communication, inference and intuition innately held by people, particularly so in Ireland, fills the vacuum of the states Simon-says systems instantly in their absence. The hand signals of the expressive Irish, and picked up reasonably well by foreign nationals, operate as effectively as any traffic light ( extreme/outlier examples aside ). It has been long theorised and accepted as one of societies axiomatic truths that without these hand signals such as the “you go ahead there” hand wave and its response, the “sound" thumbs up (both of which are typically accompanied by the mouthing of the respective associated words), the road system of Ireland would collapse under its own weight. The lights out on the Parade in Kilkenny is an open gate on a farm. Yee-fucking-haw I say. Let us at it.
The Nanny State’s guardrails fall down sometimes and reveal the real Truman show to be reality TV and not a fictional 2 hour movie. In the event that this happens to you, and you find yourself in charge of a vehicle in such a situation I have prepared for you the natural rules of the road below:
Give right of way
Giving right of way when the government cant keep the lights on is easy. Bring your car to a stop in a sensible place and double flash your beams. Eye contact with the other driver you are making way for is essential and they will usual signal back to say thanks and proceed on their way. You can complement this with a “you go ahead there” hand gesture as seen below:
Sound / Spot on .
Acknowledging smooth or efficient cooperation between you and other drivers is essential for this system of mutual respect to endure. A single finger raised is sufficient but a big eccentric thumbs up out the window keeps it country also:
As always, don’t forget to give two fingers to the government.