Long time, no see.

In this rather famous segment from a 1982 episode of the candid camera show The Live Mike, Gay Byrne is repeatedly prevented from recording a scene in Trinity College Dublin. I liked it, not just because seeing an infuriated Gay Byrne is hilarious, but because of the few glimpses of Parliament Square back then.

This evening I read through the general conditions of access and use of the dublinbikes service, which stipulate that:

The customer is authorised to use the bike in accordance with the terms hereof,
provided that such use is reasonable, which excludes the following:

• any use contrary to the provisions of the Rules of the Road and current traffic regulations;
• any use on land or under conditions that are likely to damage the bike;
• the transportation of any passenger under any circumstances;
• any use of the bike causing a danger to the customer or to third parties;
• any dismantling or attempt to dismantle all or part of the bike, and more generally, any abnormal use of a bicycle.

Assuming similar regulations exist in Paris, this video probably depicts the violation of every single one.

Note the hilarious description:

Aucun des Vélib’ utilisés dans cette video n’a été maltraité

Most Irish readers will be aware that Dublin City Council has given 15 years of advertising rights in Dublin to the advertising company JCDecaux in return for providing one of its public bike schemes, the first of which debuted in Paris in the summer of 2007 as Vélib’.

I was in Paris not too long ago, and although I didn’t get to try one of the bikes out for myself, the whole thing seemed to be a raging success. There are now close to one-and-a-half-thousand stations in operation, with 20,000 bikes between them. That said, however, there have been instances of vandalism and theft. There have been reports of Vélib’ bicycles turning up all over France. rollingresistance.net even suggests that they have been found far away from Paris in Romania.

Naturally, the introduction of ‘Dublinbikes‘ has been met with some scepticism. As I can attest, Dublin is not the most pleasant place in which to cycle, and a lot of people (myself included) question whether Dubliners will treat the ‘dbs’ with the same respect as their Parisian counterparts.

I noticed this anti-lisbon poster sitting high on a lamp-post the other night (or more accurately, the other morning) as I walked home through Rathmines.

Is this a joke?

No really. Is this a joke?

With my holidays mere hours away I’ve suddenly taken to looking at old transport-related videos on YouTube. A while ago, I discovered tecmovie, the channel of Ireland’s Transport Enthusiasts Club.

It hosts amazing videos of Ireland gone by, with everything from buses choking O’Connell Street with their fumes in the 1980s to proud and cheesy Aer Lingus promotional videos about Dublin Airport.

Say what you will about train-spotters and anoraks and such: If you love nostalgia, the videos speak for themselves.