Luas Central - Which Route?

[jimg]

Sorry about that Graham. I often don't attribute my quotes at all - I did in that case because I wanted to address a particular question to you.

If you get your wish and the B route is chosen, you will end up with the worst of both worlds - an angled bridge ruining the "water space" between O'Connell bridge and Butt bridge AND poles and wires on college green a few years later when the Lucan Luas gets built (coming down Dame St.)

I don't think they will go for the insulated third rail system initially for financial reasons (as Morlan points out) but at least you'd have the option of installing such a system in the future (when the 2025 IAP for College Green is proposed). The bridge will be there forever.

[Morlan]

Some very valid points there. Changed your mind yet Graham?

[SeamusOG]

If you get your wish and the B route is chosen, you will end up with the worst of both worlds - an angled bridge ruining the "water space" between O'Connell bridge and Butt bridge AND poles and wires on college green a few years later when the Lucan Luas gets built (coming down Dame St.)

I wouldn't be sure that the bridge itself would need to be at an angle. Hawkins Street and Marlborough Street are not offset by much. I'd think the angle could be removed as the trams cross Burgh Quay, i.e. if the trams were to cross Burgh Quay at an angle, leaving a straight run across the bridge. (Though I might need to borrow Garret's measuring tape to prove that:) )

[Peter Fitz]

the offset is fairly insignificant & could be easily resolved by a slight turning of the tram on burgh quay & coming on to the bridge itself ....

[Morlan]

I don't understand why you lot are trying to justify the building of a new bridge when there's ample space on O'Connell Bridge already. Route B just seems like a complete waste of cash to be honest.

I'm fairly confident that route A will get the go ahead anyway.

[Devin]

Entirely separate from the Luas ‘Route B’ plan, a new Liffey pedestrian bridge in this location was proposed in the 1998 O’Connell Street IAP. I think putting any kind of a bridge there – for Luas or for pedestrians – is a load of cack. Just because there are streets lining up (approximately) on each side does not mean you have to put a bridge there. I’m all for ‘connectivity’ but it can be taken too far. Too much damage has already been done over the past 30 years with putting bridges in the wrong place on the Liffey (a major bugbear of mine ).


On the Route Poll thread (http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=4474&page=2), 'a boyle' says that Route B will allow the Pearse Street/Westland Row area to become a shopping destination - I wouldn't have thought these streets, made up of 18th & 19th century commercial and private buildings, were that suitable for this. Somewhere like Westland Row I think fulfils its purpose very well as it is.

If you live on the southern leg of the dart, I suppose having the Luas Green line come to Westland Row station is attractive … you’d be able to get for example from Sandymount to Dundrum without bearing the full brunt of the city centre.

But really, why should the eastern rail corridor be connected up to both Luas lines in two different places in the city centre? I just think Route B is daft!

[GrahamH]

The Lucan Luas and/or the George's St link will prove disasterous for views of the BoI - next time you're in town, stand outside Habitat, look across and weep at the notion of wires cutting across that magnificent building - there's little worse one could do to it if they tried.
Cables would not be permitted in front of the Custom House you may be gauranteed, yet a building of equal significance that is affected even more so with its splendid vertical proportions, is simply disregarded.
You cannot have horizontal black cables crossing a crisp white building composed of sweeping columns - you just can't.

I really don't understand this, how the city centre wasn't considered at the very beginning - you can bet anything were cables to have been finally removed in say the early 1990s from an antiquated tram system, they would have featured prominently in F Mc D's positive splurge at the beginning of the Construction of Dublin, describing it as one of the major contributing factors in the improving the city centre in the boom years - 'opening up views' of the Bank of Ireland for the first time in 100 years, 'decluttering' the city centre, 'cleaning up' the space after decades of neglect.

Really - sorry but I value the spaciousness and 'clean' views in our city centre - it is such a retrograde, backwards step to take, using the antiquated technology of suspended wires above our streets in 2005 in such sensitive areas.

It's not just about views of significant buildings, but also the overall clutter generated which we could more than do without. Morlan's picture up there is helpful to a degree, but does not show the view from the ground where wires tend to 'pile up' in one's field of vision.

Okay it's not the end of the world to have cables, Trinity isn't going to self-combust, and the everyone just might be able to get over the shock horror of it all , but it's a sad move

[SeamusOG]

I have not heard any mention of Anglesea Street and Fleet Street being used in the link-up. Could these streets be a partial solution to Graham's problem?

[Devin]

Perhaps I am so addled by the thought of traffic being removed from College Green (for Luas) that I can't yet contemplate what wires running in front of the buildings would look like. The buildings and the space can't be enjoyed at the moment; it is a dirty, noisy, hostile area where it is best to keep moving. The gain of Luas going through seems immense.

A version of the Citadis tram (the one we use) can run without overhead cables, instead relying on a conducting track running between the rails, underneath the vehicle. It is constructed in short sections that only energise when a tram is covering them, meaning they are quite safe to step on otherwise! I think Lyon uses this system in it's visually important areas and then the trams switch to overhead supply in other places.

This is interesting. Luas running without overhead wires doesn't seem so far-fetched if the same type of tram does so elsewhere. I don't see why it is so unlikely to happen, as a few people have said.

[murphaph]

I think we need to remember that a city is a living breathing thing and therefore a degree of compromise wrt 'views' and so on will always be necessary. The live wires and associated supported wires on the Luas are a lot less intrusive than many older installations in other European cities.

When you're standing looking at a feature building your brain can disregard things like wires, they can't be seen in the same light as say the loop line bridge which really does obstruct views.

Personally I can't wait for trams across O'Connell Bridge and up the street and I don't consider myself an arcitectural heathen or anything Get the cars out of the city centre north-south axis and you're in business for a very pedestrian fiendly city core.

[JJ]

This is interesting. Luas running without overhead wires doesn't seem so far-fetched if the same type of tram does so elsewhere. I don't see why it is so unlikely to happen, as a few people have said.

Edinburgh is in the process of getting a Luas like system. The use of the third rail system has recently been ruled out there on grounds of cost and lack of reliability. The only city to use the system to date has been Bordeaux where its had problems.

Theres some new alternatives such as dynamos and batteries which can allow short sections to operate without overheads but these are relatively untested so I can't see them being considered..

Personally I think the overall improvement in the street that will ensue will more than make up for the visual impact of the cables.


JJ

[Morlan]

Cables would not be permitted in front of the Custom House you may be gauranteed, yet a building of equal significance that is affected even more so with its splendid vertical proportions, is simply disregarded.
You cannot have horizontal black cables crossing a crisp white building composed of sweeping columns - you just can't.

I just don't think it will be as bad as you say, Graham.

Have a look at these pictures of the Parliament building in Melbourne. Might give you an idea of how it would look in College Gr.

[GrahamH]

Good example Morlan. Only that photographs are not the best for picking out detail, and either way that scene is still ugly to me have to say, ugly and messy.
Agreed, they do not impair one's enjoyment of the building, but equally they certainly don't contribute to it either.

And in Australia, as in the US, there is something of a colonial culture of hanging cables about the place, even in urban areas, for transport, telecommunications and electricity.

Were London, for whatever bizarre reason to introduce such a system to their city, I can't imagine them going for a suspended cable system in the centre, where there just isn't such a culture. Could be completely wrong on that, and of course Manchester has a cabled system, but I cannot see it being used in the heart of London where such pride is taken in their streetscapes and furnishings.

And yes, most people couldn't care less about what system is used, and it is highly subjective. Just very simply I don't like cable systems on city streets. Some people find them charming, and European and cosmopolitan and all the rest of it - I don't....
Sorry!

[GrahamH]

I dare you to advocate cables in front of her face - look at her there, shivering in the corner. How could you be so cruel to such a defenceless creature?

[Morlan]

Poor little shivering, defenceless lamb

Right lads, bring on the cables!

College Green is my favourite part of Dublin, a beautiful spot of the city. However, we have to move forward with our public transport system. It so happens that College Green is one of the most important arteries through the city. Trams through here are meant ot be as it's the most logical route for pubic transport. Private fehicles will inevitable be banned from this area anyway.

Graham, do you admit to the fact that trams will HAVE to come through here at some stage over the next decade? It's going to happen whether you like it or not. With that in mind, route A is the most logical route to connect line A & B.

Poor lamb.

[Bill McH]

The battle of the College Green cables, eh? I see the picture shows that the army are already in place to keep the peace...

[Morlan]

Didn't know what your were on about there. On closer inpection.. well spotted

[anto]

I dare you to advocate cables in front of her face - look at her there, shivering in the corner. How could you be so cruel to such a defenceless creature?

Plenty of cluttter there already!

[aj]

Plenty of cluttter there already!

those damn panters are everywhere.. i purpose burning the lot of tehm them are hideous and spoil the views of the BOI and other magnificent buildings

[aj]

those damn panters are everywhere.. i purpose burning the lot of tehm them are hideous and spoil the views of the BOI and other magnificent buildings

planters

[GrahamH]

Indeed, which highlights even more the need for less clutter in this hugely significant area. College Green over the next 10 years is going to be transformed beyond recognition in a fashion similar to O'Connell Street, which 1. makes it all the more disappointing that cables and poles are going to pass through this space, and 2. will make these additions so much more intrusive than they would be in the current haphazard streetscape.

As for 'admitting' to public transport having to pass through College Green eventually - what would I know about the transport needs of the city? By all accounts there may be a relative need to pass through College Green - all I'm saying is that the cable element simply hasn't entered the radar of public disussion on Luas.
It reflects for me Irish people's typical disregard for the built environment - the fact that a powered rail system doesn't seem to have been given adequate consideration for use on the exceedingly short, not to mention virtually flat stretch of Dublin's principal streets and arguably its finest public space in the form of College Green.

In Bordeaux the French went out of their way to develop their system, not just copy it from elsewhere.
Similarly a no-wires policy has operated for the best part of a century in Washington, Manhattan Island, and even London originally, purely for environmental reasons; with some of the systems as with Bordeaux adopting cables once outside principal areas.

And it's a cop-out to say that Dublin is not an historic gem as other European cities, or that trying to eliminate cables is attempting to 'preserve' the city as a 'museum'. For basic modern-day environmental/aesthetic reasons it ought to be seriously looked at. If nothing else, large floats will now have to be banned full stop from the annual St. Patrick's Day parade.

We could be leaders in developing alternative energy sources for LRT if the will was there, but it isn't.
Which is no surprise.

[jimg]

Wow! A and B are now neck and neck. This is more exciting than the Grand National.

[Morlan]

I dare you to advocate cables in front of her face - look at her there, shivering in the corner. How could you be so cruel to such a defenceless creature?

The magic of Photoshop!

[GrahamH]

Are there images here or is it just me that can't see them?

And what's this I've been hearing Morlan about comments on a certain other thread?

As for BOI, what the hell are they feeding those flower boxes?!
We don't need flower boxes here. Remove them, that motorbike, and any other unnecessary 'things' from obstructing the fine view of the building.

ahem...

[Morlan]

I reattached the images.

A solution to your concerns