Mad Ted

Its to allow for the building of a new NanoTech Centre and Sport Hall by TCD. Its the usual deal where you are allowed to borrow the pavement if you are building to the very edge of your site.

And cut down the mature trees on this stretch. One met its untimely end already. How we are supposed to move towards a green city when trees and planting can be so easily done away with is beyond me. All part of Trinity’s continuing commitment to the public environment of Pearse St

BTW the pavements of Pearse St will be widened as part of a CC renovation of the street put on display last April. Includes QBC and cycle lane, new planting, paving and street furniture.

Whist I agree with the “greening” of Pearse Street, surely the pavements do not nedd to be widened?

Even with the proposed new entrance to TCD the existing pavement will still be more than generous in my opinion? :confused:

yeah, i noticed the tree last night and was suprised, however. stephen c, do you know if the student residenence building planned for the wedge beside luce hall will follow the existing building line or come out to the edge of the trinity lands, as marked by the bollards?

http://www.irish-architecture.com/news/2004/000150.html

Macken Street Bridge

Aah bigjoe…where have you been for the last few years! There is also a new fixed bridge planned to replace the mess that is MacMahon Bridge over the Grand Canal Dock – also part of the above scheme

Its mad.
DCC plan (sorry are in process of) reducing the number of traffic lanes on Pearse Street from 3 to 2. As there is allready a bus lane, it is proposed to place a cycle track instead.

http://www.dublincity.ie/shaping_the_city/infrastructure/quality_bus_network/schemes/dublin_city/pearse_street_bus_priority_scheme.asp

It’s not confined to Dublin, you may be relieved to note.

On the Airport Rd in Cork climbing from the Kinsale Rd roundabout to the airport, they have created a footpath that is about 6-7ft wide. The gap between it and the ditch is about 6-7ft of wasted space, so they have taken away the climbing lane rather than use the dead space. Again, inspired. The footpath is presumably for the large number of people now “living” in the area, i.e. the refugee centre on the old Kinsale rd Hotel site. These folk have a bus at their disposal and no longer walk up and down the road very much…..

On the Well Rd in Douglas, they are currently installing a footpath which is reducing the width of a narrow two lane road further. What’s even better about this one is that the footpath starts and stops in the middle of nowhere as private property makes the continuation of it impossible.

grrr…..

I am sick of the OBC Network idea. Loads of money has been spend over the last few years on the design and engineering of QBCs. Meanwhile no extra buses have been provided on may of the new QBCs’.

Take for example, the Rathfarnham Extension QBC was built in 2004 at the cost of 500,000 euro. This consisted of a set of traffic lights at the junction of the Yellow House Pub and a bus lane that runs of aprox 0.5 km. What’s more, the bus lane is located on the part of Ballyboden road where there are never any traffic jams. Only when the road approaches Rathfarnham is there a build up of traffic – hence no bus lane. Added to this is the bus lane is only operational between 07:00hrs and 09:30 hrs. The only bus which uses this Road is the 15c. Looking at the bus time table, only 3 buses are scheduled to run on this route during this time. Madness. Oh by the way, the traffic lights delay general traffic all day.

There is more of this QBC madness happing at various spots throughout Dublin (including Pearse St). The Nangor Road (better known as the South Clondalkin QBC) is another mad over engineered traffic light streak of misery. Double the number of traffic lights, get rid of any free flowing round-a-bouts and put in a half continuous bus lane, ensuring that any time gained by any bus is lost while trying to merge back into the general stream of traffic. And this wonderful piece of infrastructure has been 2 years in the making. When finished, bus journeys will certainly be a little faster, but car journeys will be hell.
Dublin Bus as of yet are unable to provide any additional buses at present for this route.
The OBC’s are held up as a major success by Eoin Keegan and the boys in DCC. Yes, the 46 A bus route was an outstanding success. The reason for this was the frequency and why was it frequent. It goes through some of the most affluent parts of Dublin. Certainly other QBC’s don’t to seem to be of the standard of the 46A route. The Rathfarnham QBC still crawls along.
My point is that lots of money is being thrown an QBCs yet very little return is being provided. The cost is additional travel times / stress / for car users yet there would appear to be very marginal gain to bus users. Would this money be better spent?