Frankly, I see no reason why the lamp-standards - or, for that matter, the special posts - which support our new traffic lights should be painted in those eye-torturing stripes of yellow and black, like a football jersey.
The necessity for such vividness is reasonably apparent in the case of the posts that mark pedestrian crossings; for otherwise the poor pedestrian would be hard set to find them. But, surely, the traffic lights are sufficiently arresting in themselves. After all, one light or another is on exhibition during every moment of the twenty-four hours.
Talking of posts, I wonder when the wit of man will devise some more satisfactory form of indication for traffic. The day is coming, I fear, when the pavements of Dublin will be crammed so thickly with lamp-standards, tram-poles if, indeed, these can survive much longer "no parking" notices, "cross here" signs, and "na teig isteach" poles, not to mention standards that advise you where to call for a cheap lunch or a soothing shave, that the pedestrian, to all intents and purposes, will be walled off from the street by a continuous barricade.
Dublin, I admit, has not gone so far in this undesirable direction as many other cities, but the process ought to be stopped while there still is time.
The Irish Times,
February 3rd, 1939.