Streetsignhas gardaíinajam

March 1986

Royal Hotel as the team, carrying the cup which they clinched in Ballybofey by drawing with Finn Harps, arrived. They cheered their heroes into a royal welcome and a civic reception hosted jointly by Bray Urban Council and John Megannety of the Royal Hotel.

Inside, the team, their sponsors, supporters and players of the past, as well as many dignitaries and sportsmen from other codes, saw the Wanderers players received by Urban Council chairman Ciaran Murphy, who congratulated them on their magnificent achievement in winning promotion to the League of Ireland Premier Division.

Club chairman, Dermot Hamilton, described the occasion as a ‘family gathering’ and said that the entire success story of the club had been based on that invaluable aspect of life with Bray Wanderers.

A quiet and narrow little street in Bray’s seafront area has been posing a headache for local gardai.

For a while a large sign boldly proclaimed that Albert Avenue is a one-way street with no entry to traffic allowed from the seafront side.

Gardai need not bother stopping anyone going the wrong way though.

That’s because in the small print of the by laws laid down by Bray Urban Council, Albert Avenue is in fact a two-way street.

The situation came to light recently when a local garda officer halted a motorist apparently travelling the wrong way and then had the law pointed out to him.

So how come the road sign, which is erected by the council, flatly contradicts a by law which is decreed by the council? Is it a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing?

Town engineer Kevin Conway looks after the authority’s local traffic by laws and he explained how the confusion had arisen.

‘It is a two-way street in the by laws,’ he conceded. ‘But the whole situation is an anomaly. It should in fact be a one-way street.’

Mr Conway said that the contradiction arose from the situation nearly 10 years ago when the seafront alternated from being a one-way road in summer to a two-way road in winter.

A new by law was brought in which changed the seafront to a one-way system all year round and some streets feeding off it were also changed.

In the case of Albert Avenue, it was inexplicably omitted from the changes, even though a ‘one-way’ sign was erected there.

However, Mr Conway said that the situation would be regularised in a new set of by laws to be brought in shortly.

Meanwhile, he urges motorists not to drive the ‘wrong way’ up Albert Avenue. After all, it may not be in the by laws but that won’t save one driver from colliding with another. that the town was the best served in the country from this point of view.

Coming back on this later, Cllr Liz McManus said that the town had witnessed dramatic growth since that time. Cllr John McManus said that An Post’s reluctance to build a new sub post office was disappointing in view of their new outgoing and commercial image. He felt that a new facility was a way to generate new business and argued that they had given very backward looking replies to the requests.