Re: Re: college green/ o’connell street plaza and pedestrians

I’m not sure Graham. I could be wrong but my impression was that the intention of “bus gate” was to allow the more efficient passage of buses through this area of the city not to funnel extra buses through there. (Actually when you think about it, where would they come from? There there are no other South to North routes in the city centre. In addition, Dublin Bus is actually cutting it’s fleet I believe.) So I don’t view it as a “foot in the door” sort of thing and it’s hard to take city centre traders’ sky-will-fall-down concerns seriously after they made similar noises about the Luas which proved to be completely unfounded. Anything which gets buses out of that area quickly and efficiently is to be welcomed. I think if the flow was smooth and efficient, the “bus depot” effect created by buses stuck in traffic, buses stopped for pick up, buses queuing for a place to stop, etc. would be minimised. Anyway, whatever about buses traveling through large WSC streets, theres is no justification ever for sending buses down small intimate streets like Suffolk St.

Like it or not we are stuck with buses as the prime public transport mode for a few years yet. I don’t see where else buses could go through the city without seriously compromising the utility of their routes. Restrict the number of buses and you’d murder the city commercially; it might look nice for a year or two but there’d be tumbleweed in the city if you stopped buses from crossing the centre. The only option is to try and mitigate their damage and Bus Gate does that to a degree. No it’s not perfect but I think it is a small positive step.

Yes this should be the perfect time to show that the city has a bit of pride in its centre of gravity and it could be done relatively cheaply. Particularly I’d be 100% in favour of taking a chainsaw to every single tree in College Green, Westmoreland St and the East end of Pearse St. These are some of the most important buildings and vistas in Dublin and obscuring and masking them with a hodge podge of irregularly laid out and in some cases deformed trees is disgraceful.