ENGINEERING is the first place to go, and enforcement the second, when it comes to the policing of existing pedestrian spaces and vehicles illegally parked in them.
So said Garda Inspector Padraig Sutton at Limerick Council’s recent Travel and Transportation Strategic Policy Committee (SPC) meeting during a discussion on the local authority’s approach to pedestrianisation and pedestrian-priority spaces.
“If the engineering is right, vehicles shouldn’t be able to drive in those pedestrian streets, and enforcement will kick in then where we have a continual problem,” Inspector Sutton told Limerick councillors.
Businesses, he said, have to be looked after as well, before outlining one challenge Garda members face in carrying out their duties in the city centre.
“Whenever someone makes a complaint, we will respond accordingly, but we don’t issue fixed charge notices onto vehicles or wind screens. A lot of times, someone might ring in if there’s an issue with people parking in a taxi rank, or there’s an issue with a person parking in the pedestrian zone. Next thing, the Garda arrives, or they might just pull up in the car and use a mobility device to issue a fixed charge notice, and then they move on,” he said.
Inspector Sutton told the meeting that “sometimes people can, understandably, form the view that GardaĆ actually came and they actually looked at the car that I complained about and they did nothing, whereas we have issued thousands of fixed charge notices for traffic violations across Limerick, city and county, last year, and the numbers will be comparable again this year”.
Inspector Sutton assured councilors that it is certainly not a case of GardaĆ not doing anything about parking violations.
The Think Before You Park initiative, in conjunction with Limerick Council, committee members were informed, sees a sticker go onto vehicles which clearly outlines that a person has been found in breach of a parking offence and that a fixed charge notice has been issued.
“That visual is huge for us, but we do focus primarily on people who have disabilities, people who have issues getting down a path where a car is parked. So we really focus on those vehicles that are causing disruption for vulnerable road users or pedestrians with special needs. That’s what the Think Before You Park campaign is about,” he concluded.
– Local Democracy Reporting Scheme