Another history question

The route was due to continue down Queen St, a new concrete ‘overpass style’ Bridge was designed for the crossing of the Liffey.

On the South side it would take a few houses out to meet with the Dual Carriageway on Bridgefoot St down the Side of Court House on Thomas St before obliterating Pimlico and connecting at Ardee St, there are drawings available from 1974

Sounds like the worst kind of vandalism possible………………

thank god we had no money in those days!! The city would resemble Charleoi!!!

All you can do is laugh at it now – with shaking hands…

Believe it or not, the completion of the widening of Bridgefoot Street (the bit nearest the Liffey) is in the transport objectives of the new draft Development Plan 2005-11. This was begun in the early ’70s as part of the now discredited Inner Tangent scheme.

It’s pointless to widen that street now cos you would also have to widen Thomas Court, the one that runs down the side of St. Catherine’s Church, which was part of the original plan. And that’s not going to be done now cos people live in the houses.

But the main reason why it shouldn’t be widened is that it would destroy the urban context of Mellowes (Queen Street) Bridge, the oldest and most hump-backed bridge on the Liffey. Currently, the streets leading off to each side line up with the bridge. This is very rare in Dublin now. So many bridge junctions have been blasted open by street widening or ruined by bad new buildings that the Mellowes Bridge context is really worth hanging onto.
An taisce dublin are trying to get this objective removed from the new draft Development Plan.

I thought Bridgefoot Street went on to James Joyce Bridge? It woiuld seem to make sense to widen the street as it would allow traffic to pass through more easily. This route is now part of the inner circle cross city route the council launched last year. The present layout just looks messy and illogical to me.

Yes I think you might be right. The JJ Bridge runs from Blackhall Place not Queen St. Sorry

That’s interesting. But it’s hard to tell from the before-and-after map plans of the entire scheme whether the lowest bit of the street will be widened or not because the two maps are at a slightly different scale & don’t go all the way to the Liffey & bridge. The text mentions “redesign of the dual carraigeway” but doesn’t say what that means. I know that the first phase of the scheme at the top of the street has been completed on the widened streetline.

This pic shows the view from Bridgefoot Street across the bridge into Queen Street – it would just be a matter of replacing the single storey structure on the left to full height…

Is’nt all this area of the city in a pityful condition.
Look at the rubbish on the left in the picture, the shed masquerading as a city building.
Bargaintown should be prosecuted for the shoddy condition of their premises along the Liffey as well.

The Bridgefoot Street dual carriageway should be narrowed. The side running down towards the Liffey doesn’t actually go anywhere and the other two lanes are just left and right filters for Thomas Street. You can see very clearly how there was a semblance of a plan for it to be a busy orbital route but it never happened.
I think the damage of the 1960s road plans can be seen clearly in places like Glasgow and Birmingham. And you’re all right about the finance issue – it was there but for the grace of God go us, it was the luckiest poverty we will ever endure.
Also I think that what’s called the HARP area, which includes Queen Street, Church Street, Brunswick Street, Nth King St, Smithfield and so on is really beginning to progress well. This was a non-area in the late 1980s and I think you can see it coming together now.

I know there’s an argument for indigenous firms remaining in the city, but I think Bargaintown should just bloody well move out to the M50 – they’ve killed diversity in the Queen Street area. Then again, this area is so neglected that maybe there wouldn’t be anybody there….

In years to come, when heavy traffic is cleared off the quays, you can see that Queen Street could be vibrant. A sort of ‘Parliament Street’ of Smithfield. The south end of the street has a pleasing urban grain. And it leads onto that beautiful bridge.

Parts of the HARP area are coming together right enough.

Diaspora I think the concrete overpass was to be part of the Patrick Street/Bridge Street/Church Street route, crossing beside Father Mathew Bridge. The relationship here would have been similar to the Butt Bridge/Loop Line Bridge relationship.