Boardwalk or Boardsit ?

Did anyone notice the low tide the other day in the Liffey? It really was good to understand ‘just how much’ of an overhang the Liffery board walk really is. If you take the board walk, and compare it to a building, then the rock bottom of the Liffey, which was clearly visible the other day, is roughly 2-3 storey deep beneath the bottom of the currently constructed Liffey boardwalk from Chapel Street bridge to hapenny bridge.

I just thought I would highlight this observation, in this thread.

i noticed that disruption of the boardwalk before, it ending at the bridges but i can’t imagine how you would integrate into the brdiges along the way could you?

I was suprised that it was not integrated into the Millenium Bridge. It seems it would have meant too much alteration to the other older bridges, but with the Millenium Bridge it could easily have been achieved. At one stage I had thought it could have been achieved when the Hapenny bridge was redone, but I dont really think it would be possible anymore.

Who uses the Hapenny bridge now as much as they did before? Or do you ‘aim’ for the new pedestrian bridge instead? Anyone of you walking north/south in that direction on regular basis now?

I cannot honestly ‘remember’ the last time I purposefully ‘aimed’ to cross the Liffey ‘at’ the Hapenny Bridge.

Is this really a good thing?

I mean…. should one expensive bridge project be done right along side another pedestrian bridge project….. so that one entirely negates the value of the other?

Especially considering that, the rest of the country…. Cork, Limerick, Galway, would never get that calibre of pedestrian bridge building.

I really think that in future… these projects should be alot less to do with ‘curtain-raising’ and politicians cutting ribbons… and a hell of a lot more to do, with actually putting something where it is actually needed.

Just a side note, I was down in Henry St, this sunday morning at 9am, with the ‘spire’ at the end….. without the people, the concept works very different I think… any opinions.

In fact, the whole city of Dublin works very differently as a concept without the people…

At Harrold’s Cross bridge, where you could turn down towards the Locke restaurant and portobello before…. they have blocked off now to car traffic.

The swan wildlife have very cleverly taken advantage of this fact too, and the shelter from the bridge itself… and established this little patch as ‘their territory’. Birds tend to do that you know, and more species than one too.

Anyhow, has anyone ever seen a swan going to sleep? Just like a turtle the neck, head and feet all go in under the shell sort of….. but i was cycling by this way Friday evening late in the dark and saw, in the lamp light,…. what resembled a whole load of ‘white plastic bags’ scattered all over the place in front of me.

I quickly explained this fact away, by assuming that the builders in the nearby building site, were just reckless with their rubbish or something.

Anyhow, as I was ‘just’ about to do that thing, you often do when on a bicycle… ya’know when you see a plastic bag blowing around the temptation is to aim for it with the wheel of one’s bike?

Then at the very last split second…. the truth of what I was about to do…. finally dawned on me and I barely managed to swirve my way, and somehow navigate my way through a whole flock of about 50 odd sleeping swans!

I can assure you it was a rather skillful piece of cycling if I do say so myself.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Originally posted by garethace
Who uses the Hapenny bridge now as much as they did before?

I don’t and I won’t if I can avoid it in the future. It took me ten minutes to get through Merchants Arch yesterday such was the volume of people using it. Don’t get me started on tourists with Cameras.

Don’t get me even started about having to walk from Parliment street all the way over to College green and back again…. because the only cash dispenser there… had a cue, that resembled a football match.

And the dear folks all along in front of the Olympia Theatre etc, just walk around as if they were strolling in St. Stephen’s Green on a hot summers day…. which means you have to step out on the footpath, and with traffic zooming down, the hill from Christ Church you really only have millimeters/seconds of margin to avoid getting splattered all over the road…. wellington quay style.

If ever there was a good candidate for footpath improvement, right in front of Olympia Theatre is a good one. What bugs me though, in this country is how we imagine how having more cops on motorcycles is going to straighten out these sorts of problems.

How a LUAS going through the city at 100mph is going to improve things…. https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2744&pagenumber=3 …. that is where I spoke of suburban shopping centre traffic/pedestrian relationship too…

Cash machine in square in temple bar is a joke too… avoid it at all costs…. horrible space there now really, and yet you would expect it to work,…. but it doesn’t really… dunno.

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Originally posted by garethace
Don’t get me even started about having to walk from Parliment street all the way over to College green and back again…. because the only cash dispenser there… had a cue, that resembled a football match.

The one at Dunnes in Georges St usually cuts the trek, or if your feeling adventurous the old AIB at cornmarket

I heard the boardwalk doesn’t integrate with the millenium bridge by design – at the request of the architects involved.

That is interesting D_D. Why do you think that was?

Something along the lines of: they wanted their winning design to be ‘as entered’ into the millenium bridge competition, and the boardwalk interefered with that so the council respected their wishes and 20 feet clearance later thankyouverymuch.

Thanks D_D, what do you think? Do you think it should have been integrated?

i use the liffy bridge just as much
usual

phil, I can see the bridge designers view of wanting to maintain their own design, but yeah – it would have been nice if the bridge was integrated with the boardwalk.

The question of integrating the boardwalk with the Liffey bridges raises the fundamental question: Should the boardwalk have been built outside the quay wall?

Everybody agrees the boardwalk is wonderful, and it’s undeniably a pleasant space. But it’s no harm to ask the question: On a relatively narrow river like the Liffey, uniformly enclosed by a stone quay wall and Classical bridges, was it right to put the boardwalk out there, to encroach on that ‘sacred space’? Is the boardwalk an acceptable solution to the problem of providing pedestrian space by the river, pending the removal of heavy traffic from the quays?

Elsewhere on the forum somebody said An Taisce was wrong about the boardwalk (because it objected to it in the first place). But An Taisce asked these questions at the time, and they are still valid.

If you were building a bridge on the Liffey, with carefully designed abutments, would you want a boardwalk coming along and crashing into one side of your bridge, messing up the symmetry etc.?

Good points.

I’ve never liked the way one is faced with the dilemma of whether to keep walking along the narrow quay, or veer off down onto the boardwalk. It’s silly having two segregated pavements/routes running side by side and neither serving the other – essentially wasting space.
And the view of the boardwalk from Grattan Bridge is not pleasant; in contrast to the bridge’s solidity and mass, the boardwalk is light and flimsy and looks like its clinging onto the quay wall for dear life.

The quays are the better for not having it integrated into the bridges – including the Millenium Bridge, they are features on what is a narrow and otherwise featureless river, and should not be interfered with.
And under no circumstances should the opposite quay walls be touched. the classical nature of the whole setting would be ruined.

The Boardwalk’s really pleasant to sit and walk along, but it would have been far superior to have developed the quays properly with wide promenades after the Port Tunnel and other traffic measures implemented, leaving the solidity of the charming granite wall as the boundary between the river and the city

how would you envisage a place to sit down on the pavement behind the river wall?

there are now building the boardwalk further down the river i think its great… i always wondered why they didnt’ build it on the other side too…

encroaching on the river i dunno…. i thought it actually makes it look better , its better looking then a slimey green rgey wall….
now that the river ain’t used for anything its good thats it area is being improved….

i was reading a frank mcdonald book yesterday and he was suggesting building a weir down at the custon docks which i thought was wierd

Chewy, I think the weir was proposed to enable transport on the River as it wouls stop the tide from coming up past a certain level. Not sure though, maybe someone else might know?

No that’s exactly it Phil. The river would only be tidal as far as the weir, meaning you could put leisure/tourism/passenger boats on the Liffey if you wanted with no worry about them getting banked.

It was partially that, but mainly just to make the place look better and stopping the river from stinking to high heaven once the tide goes out.
It’s only then that the river looks awful, with green slimey walls and the seaweed on O’ Cll Bridge, and the wheely bins and trolleys and traffic cones, and as for um, womens secret things lining the bed outside the Civic Offices – how absolutely disgusting…

Originally posted by Graham Hickey

The Boardwalk’s really pleasant to sit and walk along, but it would have been far superior to have developed the quays properly with wide promenades after the Port Tunnel and other traffic measures implemented, leaving the solidity of the charming granite wall as the boundary between the river and the city

Wouldn’t work, don’t have the footfall on the Quays.

Where you definitely do have it, is in Dame St., where a job should really be done.

I mentioned that chokepoint, just immediately in front of the Olympia theatre before here on the board.

Yes, they paved that little laneway, behind the bank near ped entrance to Dublin Castle…. whats it called? But that place is still a haven for bums.

Dames Street is due something very badly though, for years and years…. I hate the way in which Suffolk Street dicates so much of how College Green is being used as a space…..

Suffolk St. should not have traffic at all…. to the extent that it now does,…. but for the life of me, I cannot simply think of how differently it could be done, short of tunneling straight under Trinity college! 🙂

Any suggestions?

One thing is for sure though, traffic engineers do make decisions, which the city as a whole gets ‘lumped’ with in all sorts of ways for years afterwards…. Suffolk Street as a bus stop is just a ridiculous solution IMO, and if they solved that, and Dame Street pavements….. then maybe look at the Quays.

But my basic point being, that the Quays isn’t a serious attraction for pedestrians at the moment, as places like Suffolk St, Dame St etc are….

Brian O’ Hanlon.

Originally posted by Graham Hickey

It’s only then that the river looks awful, with green slimey walls and the seaweed on O’ Cll Bridge, and the wheely bins and trolleys and traffic cones…

And that’s not to mention a certain clock!!!! 😉

Brian – with regard to the ‘chokepoint’ at the Olympia Theatre. The theatre have just got planning permission for a redevlopment and upgrade of the theatre one element of which ius a widening of the footpath in front of the theatre with renovation of its delightful canopy. I agree with you alot about Dame St. its just not been given the attention it deserves. Looking at it the other night that central island with the Davis statue looked very gloomy and dark. A new lighting scheme for the whole street is required getting rid of the massive floodlights around Trinity and bringing some uniformity to the street from the City Hall down to College Green. I would love to see College Green and the lower portion of Grafton Street pedestrianised.

Does anyone know why work came to a standstill on the bookmarket on Grattan Bridge. The ‘fridges’ have been left in an unfinished state for weeks now.

With regard to the quays as a whole, those of you who read the new Draft Development Plan might have seen a proposal by the CC to draw up an area strategy for the quays in light of the opportunities that the Port Tunnel should (hopefully) offer when it opend next year.

Was going up Suffolk St, this evening and a taxi drove up it at about 50 mph, blaring his horn at pedestrians… sort of a mess really Suffok st.

No one will convince, but there is some other way of doing things, than the present condition…

http://www.irish-architecture.com/aai/events/data/1077118169.html

ON a monday though…..