Local residents living close to the Fatima Luas line have in recent times expressed a deep concern over intensive parking beside the Fatima Luas stop.
Drivers are parking their cars from as early as 8am and leaving their car parked there all day as they go to work and return at 5pm to collect their cars. This is causing a great concern to locals living close to the Luas line in the area.
There are no double yellow lines or parking restrictions in the area this allows drivers to park freely wherever and for as long as they like. I spoke to locals on the street for their view, “I’m not having a go at people for wanting to park, it’s just the amount of time they stay for and this is five days a week. Then if there is no room on the road way they have a tendency of parking their cars outside people’s houses causing distress for the owners should they return to find their parking spot taken.”
There are safety issues with the situation as well the Fatima Luas stop is not near the new traffic lights meaning that people have to negotiate between parked gates (creating blind spots for vision) and oncoming traffic. This problem is exasperated when people dart for a leaving Luas without paying proper caution to the roads. There is no room to swerve if needed, if you can’t break in time this can turn into a very nasty situation.
Finally, all these parked cars are leading to a rise in car break-ins the area, it’s not unusual to walk by and see car glass shattered along the pavement, indicting a robbery.
I asked another local, who told me that they phoned the Dublin City Council (DCC), to see if they could fix the situation and turn the area into a resident only parking zone. The drawback of this approach is that it will cost locals €130.00 a year to park one car. Several locals expressed that this would be too expensive a price to pay for the privilege of parking outside your own home.
At the Royal Liver Industrial Estate less than two kilometres away, drivers can park there all day for only €4.00 and their cars are watched by CCTV. There is a slip gate where people can walk out and go to the Kylemore stop and get their Luas to work from there. If drivers were to use this lot to park their cars this would free up the space in Fatima and people will be able to cross the road safely. In addition, cars won’t have to share one lane while driving and should anyone suddenly run for their Luas, a driver will have time to react or swerve away and locals wouldn’t have to pay €130.00 a year to park their car outside their house.
I believe that using retail lots just outside of inner city near pre-existing infrastructure such as bus routes or Luas lines is the best way of dealing with an increasingly congested city centre and its environs.
