Re: Re: Metro North

I think that there is a great flaw in the argument to place the rail corridor through Santry / Northwood. The M1 already serves this area. Anyone living in the area will tell you that congestion is focused on the Clonshaugh roundabout, and where Coolock Lane, Collins Avenues and Griffith Avenue hit the Swords and Malahide roads. The flaw I perceive is that people seem to want to go straight to Z and create the possibility of car free commuting? Grow up!!!
The metro should have run through Clonshaugh, Kilmore and into town. This would have allowed those living in the largely residential area between the Swords and Malahide roads to have an alternative to the Car / Bus. In effect it would have added another artery. Those further out would benefit by having the Coolock contingent removed from their roads? What is proposed however amounts to running a second albeit rail artery along the M1 Swords road? This artery will run through Northwood where they currently can’t give apartments away, i.e. in an area of potential population, rather than an area with a population. And through Ballymun, whose population never had much of an impact on rush hour? I don’t think mush will change despite the patronising colour added to their lives with their new rendered social housing. Anyway the current metro proposal will not prevent the real problem with our city, disruptive cross communication.
I see Dublin’s north side congestion problems being caused by the design of lateral or east-west super capillaries bursting onto enfeebled north-south arteries, resulting in blockages and rush hour aneurisms. The solution is obvious, find the destination as fast as possible, and add direct underground routes into the city bisecting the existent surface routes.
But no, we still hang on to our much celebrated failure of a traffic control system the funnelling system and now we’ll stick to it when designing metro. Example: You want to leave town, well wait until you get the meandering tour of our city centre, and let us show you how friendly a nation we are, and why we are so social, well in Dublin you can work in the south west inner city, live in Rathmines and on the way home meet and greet everyone who works in D2.
This traffic calming measure not being able to connect on to Camden Street from Christ Church until you reach the South Circular Road, then you turn back around Harcourt Street is a perfect microcosm of what happens throughout the city and identifies the real congestion problem. In the afore mentioned case it is the lack of exits, the funnelling effect. The problem with the north side is similar but the reverse, too few entries into the city.
Basically what I’m saying is that metros should not be positioned where it is cheaper to build, or near high densities of population. We should look at the broader picture and identify problems and their reasons, not look to some foreign theory and take it as gospel. By all means look at similar examples and learn, but I get the feeling that in Ireland we benchmark possibilities and impose the cheapest solution always with a two-dimensional mind-set, well most rubbish architects do design by elevation?
It seems to me looking at the Metro route that those designing Metro North only heard of the Northside in Southside Jokes, or else were rewarded for increasing the value of potential development lands. Give a child a copy of a Google map, and they will identify the Malahide, Swords and Howth roads and the Dart line as the routes into the city. Now look at the catchment of each, the densities are pretty similar throughout. One can quickly identify the subserviced Kilmore / Coolock Clonshaugh (including an industrial estate) areas. Placing a Metro across the M1 unbalances the services, should someone from Clonshaugh want to use it, or should someone work in Clonshaugh Industrial estate they will now add to the disruption on the Swords road! By crossing it. How this isn’t blatantly obvious to all is beyond me? But then again coming from Kerry, having a degree in Geography and an 18 month course in Planning, having read about Lyon “and their experience” won’t really engender the feel of waiting in a bus lane at Donnycarney church junction for 25 minutes in the morning, while Collins Avenue vomits out its population.