I know there has been a lot of commentary and citizen activismonline about those signs in the last few weeks.
To recap briefly – Commuters and pedestrians have noted the dangers presented by the signage and many others have commented on the deal that was done, the cityscape that was sold and the execution of the project by the advertising company and their agents.
I realise I’m late to the party but I had noted the arrival of the signs when I came back from holiday and had the phone all geared up to take a pic/video or two when I came across one that would cause me and the mothership a problem or 20. (Rumours that I was planning to ram raid them in Henry St. are greatly exaggerated… well maybe!)
I was wondering how long it would take blind and visually impaired people to speak up – and now they have – cane users in particular face huge problems as their canes will go under the signs as the bases are not solid and they will walk straight into them.
Dublin City Council are again assessing things. At this stage in the whole debacle Cllr Daithi Doolan should be hanging his head in shame as chairperson of the committee responsible as should his colleagues!
All those signs for a few hundred bikes that only able bodied people (including the muppets who nick them) are going to be able to use and oh Cllr. Doolan was spouting some rubbish about controlling the presence of advertising in the city on Liveline last week like some sort of born again urban connoiseur. Tiocfaidh ár Gaudi .
(Hat/tip to my sister 
for the latest ska! She thought I might have an opinion! Cough…)
Amongst the 100 or so problems I have with these signs, I noticed the Henry St. ones yesterday and was enraged by the way they’re installed.
It’s not too long since Henry St. got completely re-paved and it looks quite well all told – that is until these yokes came in, not only visually polluting the street some more but also removing up a few feet of quality (read expensive) paving around them and replacing it with tarmac… Maybe it’s just a temporary measure but I won’t hold my breath.
To say that it brings advertising under the control of the council is stupid. It’s not our fault that the council doesn’t control or get a cut from the existing public advertising but I don’t see how adding more is solving the problem – why couldn’t they change the law that forced all new public ads to give an annual commission to the council? A tax to offset their visual impact on the environment which could be used to pay for “beautification” measures, perhaps.
To compare them to bus shelters, as Doolan did on Liveline is equally obscene – maybe if these were public information stations which featured ads the argument might hold some weight but they serve absolutely no service to the public. (And before anyone says ‘what about the bikes?’ you have to firstly ask ‘what bikes?’ and secondly ask if it’s all that good an idea to make bikes available to rent when they’re only going to be of use to people who don’t cycle regularly and are as a result more likely to be bad at cycling.)
I would be less inclined to beat Daithi Doolan up on this one as it was a deal done by the city management with JCDecaux. The councillors were simply not in a position legally to prevent the deal going through. If you want to take it up with someone in particular then the city manager is your man and the only person he is answerable to is the minister for the Environment, by extension we could blame Dick Roche and John Gormley. People for entirely understandable reasons tend to think of the city council – what the councillors are members of – as being the same as the city council which is the vast public service apparatus that actually has most of the decision making power. Cllrs did object and made a big song and dance about this deal, and nothing was done. Councillors are for the most part in office, not in power.
I think we might be best served by finding a new name of the council chamber (call it the assembly or the dead pool, I don’t much care) so that we can apportion blame to the correct body.
There was quite a bit of comment on this decision back when it was made public in early 2007.
http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=16813&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=5715