Cycling down the new O’Connell St.

I am not kidding, I cycled past two bendy buses and three double decker buses driving together in a convoy, with about a foot between each of them today. It was like one huge snake going up through O’Connell Street. I have to ask the question, wouldn’t it be a lot better to have more of this underground?

Just imagine all that congestion removed…. like saying hokus pokus and it all just disappeared! 🙂

Then it might be worth attempting to create decent public space in O’Connell Street and elsewhere in the city centre.

The right job would have been to put the traffic underground in the middle of the street and leave a proper open public plaza in the middle in front og the Gpo etc…

your not far off talking a Boston job, which is still under construction ( 14 years and counting, don’t let anyone tell me that deadline overruns are peculiar to this country ) and who’s going to pay for it ????

Not justified at all given the city’s population.

The O’Connell Street sites (and most of the Luas sites) are devoid of activity at weekends. One Saturday afternoon, I saw a pair of hard hats and an empty mug sitting on a load of paving slabs – like the workers had just downed tools at 5pm on Friday.
This shouldn’t be tolerated on the main street of a capital city; they should be working around the clock to get these things done, particularly when so many people are being put out by the works.:mad:

Did you witness that massive pedestrian choke point created on the route up from Hapenny bridge as far as Roches Stores during the xmas spending? Where about 40 thousand people were trying to squeeze into a space about the width of two people standing?

I think, half the crowd who wanted to go and shop in the Illac and Roches, Arnotts, Marks and Spencer, Jervis Street etc, must have just turned around completely and walked back over the Liffey again.

Mind you, the Jervis Street Shopping centre had the considerable foresight when designing their operation, to add that second crucial access point on a corner, on Jervis Street. While that entrance needed escalators, and considerable trouble to make it happen – it probably is worth a bomb in terms of increasing footfall through the Jervis Street centre.

Similarly with St. Stephen’s Green Shopping centre – the provision of multiple acess points really stands out in my mind, as being a sucess in terms of retail profitability.

Not all shopping centres etc, observe this crucial fact though, and many just fail, because they only have one access point. Thus many the creation of a pedestrian route through the centre impossible. Cleary’s shop in O’Connell Street is a clear example of that – with massive decay of shoppers moving through that shop in the past 10 years.

And it is not all down to the sucess of Henry Street either – rather it is the design of circulation in Clery’s doesn’t lend itself at all nowadays to the ‘browse and stroll’ attitude of todays ‘consumerism as a hobby/pastime’ market out there.

Scary things are happening to the Illac these days I think too, have any of you walked into the ‘Dunnes Stores’ in the Illac lately! 🙂 I remember when that used to be a pretty decent shop space.

I think that Roches saw the opening, and invested wisely in their new premises. Between Arnotts and Roches now, and Jervis centre, the Illac doesn’t stand a chance. Except at the very, very, very bottom (scraping the bottom) end of the market.

There are multiple entrances to Clerys. One on Talbot Street side and several (I think three) on O’Connell Street.

But do they work, do they create a route through the interior retail space? I think that O’Connell Street became too much of a linear space in recent times too – hopefully this new re-surfacing can halt the rush of crowds up and down O’Connell Street, trying to get somewhere as fast as they possibly can, rather than dwelling in O’Connell Street at all.

All I know, is that Jervis Street entrance into the Jervis Street centre, albeit it is a secondary entrance, it was a master stroke in terms of retail design. The mere fact, it elevates you to a half level, from which point you can either go up or down, is interesting too – better than just the normal ground level tunnelling job that Dublin City Council normally aspire to.

I agree garethace about Liffey street north and I think it should be predestrianized once Abbey st is reopened fully. It’s such a busy link between the main shopping areas of the city centre. Not much traffic uses it any more either.

I noticed that the part predestrianisation of the south quays (post port tunnel) was mentioned in the new plan for Temple bar. This was an idea that was rubbished on this site a while ago. I wonder why the south quays where chosen over the northern quays? Northern quay are after all south facing.

(As you may have noticed I’d predestianize the whole of the city centre if I had my way 🙂 )