O’ Connell Street, Dublin
- This topic has 3,789 replies, 212 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 6 months ago by
.
- Posts
It won’t remove enough traffic to achieve that. I take my coffee breaks in Bar Italia on the quays, and although taking the trucks out of the equation will ease the traffic, there is still a huge amount of cars and buses. Many buses stop on the quays… if the traffic was all on a two-way southern bank, one bus stopping at a bus stop would cause chaos. The quays aren’t wide enough.
The Quays aren’t wide enough to close, but they are wide enough to accomodate more car traffic that is currently using other routes.
One thing that has always occured to me as crazy, are the number of Dublin buses parked between Burgh Quay and Wellington Quay. Not picking up passengers but doing the ‘tachograph’ 45 minute rest periods. If these were ‘rested’ elsewhere and the trucks go via the port tunnel, it would be possible to accomodate all car traffic from Dame St along this Route.
Thus facilitating the closure of Dame St to all traffic except a reduced number of buses and Taxis requiring half the space.
Then you could have what O’Connell St is about to become a Street with dramatically reduced traffic flows and much wider pedestrian spaces. The closure of Dame St to cars would facilitate an extenion of this to Westmoreland St giving a continuos Boulevard from Parnell Sq to City Hall.
The only changes required would be no right turns to be introduced at Trinity College and Christchurch.
I know it wouldn’t be easy but maybe sometime in the future when our public transport system is the envy of the rest of the world and cars are banished from the city centre it might happen.
… I really should get that coffee!! 😉
I’m just thinking of the long game. But I agree with Diaspora and others Dame St Westmoreland St should be first on the list. Just imagine College Green if it was traffic free it would be fantastic. Imagine sitting there having a coffee surrounded by Bank of Ireland, Trinity, etc it would be cool.
At the moment it’s so difficult to get from Grafton St to O’Connell St/Henry St by foot. The pavements are just too small for the footfall and it’s off-putting battling with others on this route. Pedestrianise this route and we’d have an amazing city centre area that is actually enjoyable to walk around in.
I’m not so sure that you could banish traffic completely from College Green.
I think if you kept the D’olier St-College St-Lower Grafton St-Nassau St route open in tandem with Pearse St, that traffic flows would be protected.
While giving Dame St and the upper end of College green back to the pedestrian.
It would really only involve a diversion of the existing flows going West via Wellington Quay and Parliment St. The flows East via Wine Tavern St and Ormond Quay.
A pretty small adjustment in real terms. 😉
I thought it was buses that normally got stoned?
i don’t think total pedestrianization is always good, while it works for busy shopping streets, it can take the life out of a place, lots of towns in the se of england give examples of this, i amn’t even sure that the trafalga sq pedestrianization has worked, it is good for the gallery, but to my mind it diminishes the square. sometimes the best thing is to have one lane of well behaved, read suffering, traffice. the rambla in barcelona is a good model here. i think college green would be fabulous with much reduced traffice, but i amn’t sure total pedestrianization would be as good, even if it were possible.
I wasn’t total pedestrianisation I was advocating. Simply three measures.
1. The elimination of the right turn at Trinity College for cars/vans/trucks
2. The same ban on entry to Lord Edward St for cars/vans/Trucks
3. Moving the taxi rank from College green to westmoreland St.
These three measures would free up sufficient space to place a central median on Dame St/College green, similar in size to thatproposed for O’Connell St.
Giving space for cafes and urban art/statues etc.
It would make the city a little more user freindly. I know it is not as simple as that, but it does merit examination.
Shadow:
”un-named (!) organisation” was a just reference to feelings expressed towards an taisce on another recent thread. I wasn’t really trying to conceal an t.
Interesting comments about traffic in the city centre.
This is why the decision to terminate Luas line A at Stephen’s Gn was so disastrous, rather than the original plan to bring it down Dawson St, through College Gn and on to link with Line B at O’C St. The government just caved in to the vested interests of the AA, IBEC etc. back in ’98, who couldn’t contemplate losing an inch of roadspace in the city centre. And Garret Fitzgerald and his newspaper articles didn’t help either.
The original plan would have given the much reduced traffic priority on College Gn that notjim talks about, and given the city centre a civilised and continental feel. Instead we’ve just got the noise, fumes and brutality of heavy traffic domination. Really annoys me!
🙂
Yes I remember the ’98 debacle well. Mam O’Rourke and Mary Harney et al caved in to the shopkeepers and toffs on Dawson Street and College Green.
We now have two luas lines that meet nowhere!
Completing line B would make it viable if the proposed Ranelagh-Airport metro line were built – the tram would go from Ranelagh to O’Connell St., which is about three miles or so. As it is, if that metro line takes over line B south of Ranelagh, the digging up of Harcourt St. has been mostly in vain.
Incidentally, I have read that EU law prevents dual running of trams and heavy-rail trains on the same track – is this correct? A tram is, after all, still a train.Andrew,
I visited Newcastle last year where the Metro shares track with heavy rail on a new extension to Sunderland. Theres also shared track in several cities in Germany. No EU rules against it but I think rail safety issues can be a problem.For my money Line B will never be upgraded but theres a fair chance that the link to Line A will be built. Its removal was a very spineless decision from the cabinet at the time.
What happened to Mr Brennans decision about Metro by Christmas. Maybe he’s too busy with Aer Rianta and CIE!
JJ
I would imagine when Luas is opened there will be calls for the linking of Lines B and A.
They will go back to the original 1996 proposal and hey presto the Dept of Finance will give it the ok.
RIP metro, on costs grounds!
Andrew is right,
The only option for Luas now is to go underground from Ranelagh and all the hassle on Harcourt St was really only a short term solution.
This really is a pity because Luas at ground level through College Green really would have added an ambience to the City.
To compensate for the loss of this, something will need to be done to further enhance the visual in the College Green through Westmoreland St to O’Connell St.
Luas will never be able to use the heavy rail tracks so even if the EU bans such practice it doesn’t apply here. We have the honour of having a completely non-standard rail gauge across the country. We can thanks our nieghbours across the Irish Sea for that one. This is one reason why it’s no so straight forward for CIE to do upgrades to the rolling stock – everything has to be custom made and commissioned. Bearing this in mind Luas was designed to a european standard gague (which means ease of new rolling stock – but incompatible with exisiting railways)
When the Govt ditched the plans for A/C link they did so in the hope that when the current lines opened, there would be immediate calls for the link as a result of the success of Luas.
Metro has thrown this out the window – I agree it should go underground from Ranelagh – even if it means digging up part of O’ Connell St for a station.I was looking at some pics of O’ Cll St & Bridge from around 1980 – it’s quite extraordinary how much cleaner the buildings were then compared with now, it’s most noticable on the 1920s terrace from Eden Quay to Abbey St, including the Irish Permenent corner bldg.
All of the stonework has accumulated so much dirt in the intervening 25 years or so.
Even the GPO which was cleaned in 1984 is manky – compare it with the Custom House cleaned 4 years later – although I appreciate it is built of whiter Portland stone.
Also the balustrading on the bridge is bone white in colour and sparkling clean – such a contrast with today, I don’t think it’s been touched since.
The removal of the HGVs from the quays should help a lot on reducing the dirt and dust in the air, when walking along the quays for a few minutes you can feel and taste the dirt in your mouth – don’t know if anyone else has noticed this!
Alos the elimination of smoky coal a couple of years back should also help cleaniness into the future in a big way
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
