Liffey Cable Cars – Pointless Gimmick or….
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Personally I feel that a combination of a
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‘figure of eight luas’
- The interconnector
- Dedicated cycle lanes on the quays and Dame St
Would acheive more; having said that they are as works of design quite attractive
I think somtimes we’re too critical. We give out that there’s no imagination ever being shown among Irish business and then when it is shown we all give out about it. Personally I don’t think the cable car format as is earns acceptability but at least it is imagination and they shouldn’t be attacked for that. It should be encouraged, but that doesn’t mean the first idea is always the right one. Back to the drawing board with this one I’d say.
Also, how come the poll has 3 negative answer options and only 1 positive?
I like the idea of a cable car but I don’t like the planned route. It would look terrible and should stay away from the historical areas. I would be in favour of it if it were confined to the docklands.
A simpler and more practical idea, why not just dredge the Liffey and clean out the muck and pollution. Clean the remainder of the quay walls. Touch up the bridges again. Be consistant and plant trees in a symmetrical fashion along the quaysides and put fecking boats on the river.
The time in the slime wasn’t a bad concept really, it was just executed very badly.Gas how there seems to be a willingness to put up all sorts of aerial clutter…pylons, cables, masts, poles, satellite dishes,chimneys etc…. throughout the city, yet when a building over 4 storeys is proposed there is a large hoo-haa about it.
@Thomond Park wrote:
Personally I feel that a combination of a
..and the rejuvination of West Morlan Street and College Green.
🙂
Just to expand on what Niall said earlier: no NO NO NO
Demonstrating just how farcical a proposal this is, I thought the thread’s removal from Ireland was down to it being a practical joke after all, and that it had been deleted :rolleyes:
Whatever about the historic city core, any city would be destroyed with such muck draped across its skyline – what a hideous concotion it is. Talk about one-off house syndrome that F McD so vents on about – building a structure to capture a view only to devastate the very landscape the vantage point is being built on.
It’s an ugly idea, a pointless idea in contrast with other tourist possibilities, and a fundamentaly stupid-looking one. A small Irish city, as flat as a pancake, barely rising above five storeys, with cable cars strung above it in some sort of techno-space-age-Jetsons fantasy for the benefit of camera clicking tourists.
What an embarrassment.
Dump it now City Council before you end up with a Grattan Bridge II of mammoth proportions.The poll is very biased as it was set up to try and force people to vote against it. I am disapointed by the barely hidden subtext of the poll which is not what I have come to expect from this normally open-minded forum.
Why was a simple “Yes/No” poll instaed of a tabloidesque editorial in the guise of a poll?
I think it is a really good idea and it won’t cost the taxpayers anything. It is not a public transport project and does not pretend to be either, and were some people are getting this from is beyond me!
It’s an inovative tourist project and this is how it should be seen.
why didn’t they show the bit where people get on or off, does the car do a vert or is there a big spiral staircase?:rolleyes:
aha – now you’ve hit the nail on the head, there’s probably two office blocks at either end, the cable car is a trojan horse 😉
Just like the rail spur for Shannon Airport that evaporated once the Shannon Sky Court was built,
same company I feel a Vega City play coming on
https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=2504&highlight=vega+city
However in fairness they did at least get a semi-decent design for the cable car supports even if it required a rope ladder for access 😉
This is just personal speculation, but perhaps there are no spiral staircases on with ends, and the cable car returns to street level or near at both ends? This is what cable cars were designed to do – steep vertical accents and decents. No reason why the cable from the most eastern tower makes a steep incline down to Spencer Dock (same at the other end)?
This to me would add to the sense of theater to the project. Think of the the way the lift at the Liffey Strorehouse enters the Gravity Bar from within the darkness and on to the roof of the city. I had taken this lift a few times and in every case there was a collective “gasp” from the tourists and they suddenly find themselves above Dublin. The same effect would be achieved by this. Being a Dubliner I would love to see the city from this.
I would life to see a scale model of the towers in relation to the city scape. Frank MacDonald is no moron and he is right behind this. Maybe he knows more about it than we do, and he has see more of the design than the one image of the tower behind the Four Courts.
I must say I am amazed at the ultra conservative reaction to this project. Dublin City centre can hardly be called “historic” in any real sense. Certainly not compared to many other European cities. We are not running this through the centre of some elegant fully in-tact baroque street scape. Has anybody had a look at the Liffey banks? It’s hardly Venice or Bruges! Look at it this way, the few historic buildngs such as the Four Courts, Customs House, Christchuch can be viewed from a whole new aspect looking down upon them from a nearby distance.
@Cute Panda wrote:
I must say I am amazed at the ultra conservative reaction to this project. Dublin City centre can hardly be called “historic” in any real sense. Certainly not compared to many other European cities. We are not running this through the centre of some elegant fully in-tact baroque street scape. Has anybody had a look at the Liffey banks? It’s hardly Venice or Bruges! Look at it this way, the few historic buildngs such as the Four Courts, Customs House, Christchuch can be viewed from a whole new aspect looking down upon them from a nearby distance.
What exactly do you mean by describing Dublin as not being “‘historic’ in any real sense’? One of the attractions of Dublin for many visitors is its sense of history. that ability to be able to see the remnants of different ages juxtaposed. Visitors can wander through the streets and get a sense of being in an unfolding history as oppossed to what is basically a museum like landscape such as Venice or Bruge.
Cities like Dublin, which have been born of the river, take their essential legibility from them. This is why it is so important that the Liffey is respected. Take the Thames in London for example. The lenght of the river is dotted with various features: Canary Wharf, Tower 42, The Gherkin, St Pauls, Parliament Buildings and the London Eye (to which this cable car claims its inspiration). This is what gives it its legibility. The wanderer in the city, whether tourist or citizen, sees these features and starts to understand how the city is unfolding around them. The Placing a cable car running over the natural axis of a city (any city) would take away the visual impact which it is trying to view in the first place. This is why the London Eye works so well. It is relatively inobstusive, allows the tourist to view the city from a variety of gradually altering perspectives, but yet does not detract from the rythm of the cityscape.
@phil wrote:
What exactly do you mean by describing Dublin as not being “‘historic’ in any real sense’? One of the attractions of Dublin for many visitors is its sense of history. that ability to be able to see the remnants of different ages juxtaposed. Visitors can wander through the streets and get a sense of being in an unfolding history as oppossed to what is basically a museum like landscape such as Venice or Bruge.
I have travelled fairly extensively and Dublin to me looks about as historic as Boston. There is little of the city over 200 years old. Most of the city centre starts around 1880’s onwards when you really look at it as a whole. Apart from a few churches here and there, Dublin does not feel much more overly historic than a lot of cities in the New World and I am talking Quebec, Savannah, Havana etc. Dublin also has a huge amount of late 20th trash buildings. Claiming Dublin is mainly a visually historic city is a bit like claiming that Irish is a living and vibrant language.
I really do not see how these towers are anymore horrible than much of the 1960’s kitch which already lines the Liffey. What precisely would these towers visually ruin which has not already been ruined decades ago?
If we have beautiful historic quays lining the Liffey I could understand the negative reaction these towers are inciting, but I really don’t get why so many people are horrified by this project to the level they are – except perhaps the old Oirish fear of anything new and unique. We are hardly an innovative or dynamic culture – we are the boiled cabbage eaters, the conservative clods on the fringes of Europe wagging his finger at anything which manifest from outside the pre-determind box we are all so comfortable locking ourselves into. As Joyce said “the centre of paralysis” and all that.
I am not saying I do not respect people’s reasons for being so against the cable car idea, but I am amazed as the explosion of viceral repulsion it has unleashed on this normally well balanced forum. The same hostile reaction to this idea is no different than the residents groups and NIMBYs walking around the construction site of a 5 storey building with “NO SKYSCRAPERS HERE” scrawled on a sheet of cardboard looking and acting hysterical for no reason.
@phil wrote:
Cities like Dublin, which have been born of the river, take their essential legibility from them. This is why it is so important that the Liffey is respected. Take the Thames in London for example. The lenght of the river is dotted with various features: Canary Wharf, Tower 42, The Gherkin, St Pauls, Parliament Buildings and the London Eye (to which this cable car claims its inspiration). This is what gives it its legibility. The wanderer in the city, whether tourist or citizen, sees these features and starts to understand how the city is unfolding around them. The Placing a cable car running over the natural axis of a city (any city) would take away the visual impact which it is trying to view in the first place. This is why the London Eye works so well. It is relatively inobstusive, allows the tourist to view the city from a variety of gradually altering perspectives, but yet does not detract from the rythm of the cityscape.
I am sorry, but I honestly have no idea what you saying here. I read it a few times and all I am getting is subjective analysis. You’re rationale in the above paragraph why this would not work in Dublin borders on a form of civic theology rather than a good argument against the cable car idea. You’ll have to do better than that.
Forgive me, I am simple man and I like cable cars and I think it would be neat to take one along the Liffey. I am sure many people would like to do the same. It looks like fun. Sorry, but that is how it is, this idea actually appeals to me, and as a taxpayer won;t cost me a penny and I don’t see how the towers along the Liffey are anymore horrible than some of the junk already there.
If the towers are too high, then build taller buildings in Central Dublin rather than retreating in a Georgian Society ostichifaction state based on a shallow argument that the Dublin quays are masterpieces of civic beauty when they are in fact lined with all manner of ugly shite already.
Holy crab. I leave town for a week (no newspapers, no internet) and return to this? What’s been going on in my absence?
I voted ‘No’ on count 2, but it could have been any of 1, 2 or 3- the reasons have been outlined above by others. Just to add- wasn’t Barry Boland the scheming chancer in ‘Bachelors [sic] Walk’?
Monorail Monorail Monorail… indeed.
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