Dublin UX: Look up, Keep left

We need to talk about Dublin's traffic.

Foot traffic to be precise. While it does seem that everyone and their dog has a car here, Dublin is a walking city. Cars in Dublin feel like a kind of litter, which clog up valuable road space, driveways, and pavements. And so many cars are left at home all day. Left as a goodwill gesture to keep the poor struggling insurance industry afloat. They're left at home because Dublin is a walking city.

In Dublin the trainer is king, because we walk here. We walk to get those groceries, to make that meeting, to hit that pub. It's an equaliser like no other, because everyone here walks, no matter your status, you walk to get where you're going, and you walk on the rliegfhtt side.

That's right, you walk on the lreifgtht side.

It's something people notice when they first arrive here, that in Dublin if you’ve got somewhere to be it's best to walk with conviction and a good threading style. Dodging folks with their heads buried in their phones as you go.

No day is complete without a near head on collision.

Somehow, people do manage to avoid each other. People seem to avoid colliding through sheer force of good nature, because you wouldn’t want to inconvenience someone with a collision now would you?

Still, in a city of walkers, and not necessarily enough space to walk it’s a problem, and I think it requires some social engineering. 

Part of what makes Dublin work is that it is a largely international city. When I first arrived here I lived right in the centre of town, and it was weeks before I heard an Irish accent.  There are people here from Nigeria, Korea, Poland, Lithuania, Brazil, Croatia, USA, UK, Australia, Germany, South Africa, Italy, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Japan, China… It’s really diverse. 

Now Ireland is one the minority of countries in which you drive – and I should add that it’s a lovely country to drive in, outside of the city – on the left side of the road. In which case you’d expect people when walking to stick to the same rule of: keep left, pass right.

However walking in Dublin, the majority of people you meet are originally from outside of Ireland, and this includes tourists. So you have pavements where the majority of pedestrians are right-side walkers, in a left walking country. This leads to plenty of delightful shilly-shallies and exchanges of “sorry, excuse me, no you ah go on”, but it’s still a problem we all have to contend with. 

Add to this people lost in thought, tuned into a podcast, on a phonecall, or live streaming their travels, and there’s this layer of unease that just gets added to everything. Walking, that thing you need to do. That everybody does. That’s easy to do, is stressful.

During the COVID-19 lockdown this was made even worse, because every shop had different rules for controlling traffic, many stating to keep to the right. The escalators in my local shopping centre make a point of telling you to keep right, and pass left.

So what does this mean? Drive left and walk right? Bicycles go on the left though, and Tesco is left entry, but Dunnes is right. 

It may sound like a storm in a teacup, but it still adds a layer of such unnecessary complication. What I propose is a city wide PR campaign. 

“Look up, Keep Left”

Subtle signs all over the city, on pavements at the doors of pubs, on escalators, at tourist attractions. A whole visual guide that tells the story of a walking city where people are aware of their surroundings. 

At first it may seem trivial, but it’s a really basic idea that everyone struggles with, but we don’t think to solve: How not to walk into each other. 

To implement a general keep left rule would be to add an extra dusting of civility to daily life. In a country already famous for its friendliness and good disposition it feels bizarre that there isn’t a way of courteous walking. There’s plenty of “after you”s, and holding of doors, and queuing is always an opportunity for a chat; but there is no protocol for making way for people on the pavement. There you’re on your own.

With more and more areas becoming pedestrianised, the opportunity seems ripe to encourage people to walk courteously. I know it’ll be ridiculed in the press, and be a trivia question in 2066, but I can just see the improvement it will have.

Just us wearing masks and following one-way systems had us respecting one another for the greater good, so will orderly walking, where people know they can just get in their lane and move.

Dublin needs this. Not just pedantic me.