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RESIDENTS IN BLANCHARDSTOWN have witnessed chaotic traffic scenes at the recently opened Krispy Kreme Doughnuts outlet at Blanchardstown Shopping Centre.
People living in apartments nearby report that it has been a “nightmare” to sleep because of the constant queues of cars and drivers who frequently blow their horns.
The store, which is the first outlet to open in Ireland, closes at 11pm but the company also operates a 24-hour drive-through.
Krispy Kreme opened the outlet on Wednesday of last week, with hundreds queuing before 7am on the opening day to place an order.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie, local resident Kim Grehan said that the Krispy Kreme outlet was located “just to the right” of her apartment balcony.
Around 11pm people go mad. I don’t know why they’re beeping because you can tell even before you get into that line of traffic you’re going to be waiting a while.
Grehan said that on Sunday evening she heard a row between drivers queuing for the popular American chain. She said she thought that drivers who came to the shopping centre were under the impression they would get their doughnuts quicker, later at night.
It’s so so bad. Things are actually getting worse.
Grehan, who said that her area was otherwise quiet, said she was worried that with the festive season around the corner “it’s going to get absolutely mental”.
She said that on Sunday night her two young children were crying because of the traffic and that tighter security is now needed at Krispy Kreme.
The lack of sleep is getting to them. They were like zombies getting up. It’s the drive-through that’s the problem.
In a Facebook statement, Krispy Kreme said that it was aware of the traffic issues and was taking steps to resolve the problem, including asking drivers to stop beeping.
We do apologise to local residents who are affected by this. To help encourage drivers to be respectful of residents we are getting signage made asking them to be quiet in the area and looking into other options to improve the situation.
The company has said it is also engaging with shopping centre management to control traffic congestion.
‘Like zombies’
Salim Sanehi lives in the same apartment complex as Grehan. On Sunday morning, Sanehi filmed cars beeping while queuing for Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.
The video, filmed at 2.35 am on Sunday morning, shows queues of cars continually sounding their horns.
https://www.facebook.com/SolidShnake/videos/1811876492195367/
Sanehi said that drivers had recently started shouting at each other while queuing and that he rang the gardaí twice to complain of noise, once on Friday night and once on Saturday night.
“Both times nothing happened,” Sanehi said.
You can hear people egging other people on to beep their cars. Last night there was still beeping going on at 1am.
Sanehi said residents of the apartment complex had now set up a Facebook group in response to the traffic and noise pollution.
Local Fine Gael councillor Ted Leddy said that he has received numerous complaints from local residents.
“I wasn’t quite prepared for what a big deal it was,” he said.
Leddy said that he has been touch with Fingal County Council’s traffic department and had urged it to liaise with the management company which runs Blanchardstown Shopping Centre “to do something about the chaos”.
Gardaí are also investigating a complaint that a car was damaged outside Blanchardstown Shopping Centre after 11pm on Monday night. It’s understood that the damage was done to a car that was outside Krispy Kreme.
No injuries were reported and no arrests were made, a Garda statement said.
- Additional reporting by Grainne Ní Aodha
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Oh great. Now we’ll be hearing from all the armchair experts with blindingly simple solutions that the programmers didn’t think of because they were too busy eating their liga and colouring in with their crayons. I can’t wait.
@8bitplebian: I don’t eat liga when I’m coding lol
@Scorpionvenomm: Sorry, Farley’s.
They should turn it off and on again
“British Airways HAVE apologised to ITS customers…”
@Harry Whitehead: British Airways is the name of the company, singular. The airways themselves haven’t actually apologised.
If you are going to be pedantic, at least be right.
@Michael Doyle: If British Airways is to be treated as a singular noun, the correct verbal agreement would be HAS, not HAVE. Try reading it again.
@Harry Whitehead: Exactly. That’s why your original correction was incorrect.
My heads hurt.
@Neal Ireland Hello.: Err…mine wasn’t a correction. I was directly quoting the article. I used capitals to highlight the mistake. Either ‘has + its’ or ‘have + their’.
@Harry Whitehead: Lol, show how much the Irish care about the stranded passengers
@Harry Whitehead: maybe the article has been fixed since you read it first. Further down I do see “British Airways say” , which is conflicting.
@Michael Doyle: Yeah you’re right, it’s been fixed.
@Harry Whitehead: That explains it. Now we can get back to worrying about the group of passengers that are/is stranded.
@Michael Doyle: *WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY WORRY…*
@Michael Doyle: Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I’m glad we got to the bottom of this, gentlemen.
There’s some good deals in pc world, maybe they should get down there
Resilience and redundancy plans anyone??
Probably cloud-based….
Look up its an empty sky.
go back to old system with ticketing, technology is weak, all it takes is one system to go down and the hole lot falls down, flights delayed, or cancelled no good to people travelling or missing connecting flights! then they dump you outside the airport to fend for yourself!
@Stephen Finn:
There is a whole lot wrong with that suggestion.
@Nick Allen: and yet you aren’t arsed pointing out exactly what is wrong with it.
I think you will find they were hacked, but not admitting to the fact. It seems impossible that they would have no redundancy or contingency plan if a data centre was struck by lightning.
Hugo Drax involvement I’ll warrant .
The cancellations also hit flights to Heathrow and Gatwick, I’m in Miami and two flights from here today were cancelled. The staff on the desks said nine flights from New York were also cancelled, they were still suffering a lot of computer glitches while trying to transfer us to alternative flights with different airlines. I was in a queue for about 90 minutes and it then took about another 20 minutes for the desk agent to convince his computer to book me onto a new flight.
I somehow read the hashtag as ‘competence outage’.
Word on the street is the Indians screwed up!!!!!!
have your say