O’ Connell Street, Dublin
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@ctesiphon wrote:
TP-
pedestrians have been misled by a combination of confusing ground treatment and visual distractionCould you explain this in english please?
Sure thing, TP.
The ‘confusing ground treatment’ is the granite paving that runs across the carriageway (as shown in Graham’s pictures, above, particularly his last one of 20th Sept), giving people coming from North Earl Street the impression that they have right of way, which as we have established is not the case.
The ‘visual distraction’ is the Spire itself, as I said in my original post. This was a reference to an earlier post which mentioned that The Spire was designed to draw the eye of the approaching viewer upwards as they got nearer- the original words coming from Ian Ritchie himself, I believe.
This combination has probably contributed a considerable measure of confusion to much of the pedestrian activity in the vicinity of the Spire.With all due respect the provision of traffic lights at this location should be sufficent given the amount of pedestrian space; if people behave like lemmings there are consequences.
Just as the lemming theory is a myth, I think the notion that traffic lights are sufficent in this case is equally so.
Even if a minority of people walk about with their heads in the clouds, it doesn’t mean they must be ignored – they have to be catered for. Yes you do have to draw a line somewhere and this line is reflected in the Plaza I think; there is a sufficient demarcation at work here to cater for all but the most oblivious.
By contrast, the busy nature of the crossing, and all the ‘distractions’ about requires a more careful treatment around the Spire.Even if you’re well used to the crossing it is still difficult to know where to stand at the crossing – usually you have a kerbline making it easier to judge just how close vehicles and bus wing mirrors are passing by. It is much more vague at this crossing.
A simpler solution might be to impose a 15 or 20km/h speed limit for vehicles through the plaza bit. I know it wouldn’t stop all vehicle/pedestrian “interactions” but it would make the area far safer. It would also make the area far more pleasant – even while standing on a kerb, it isn’t particularly nice having vehicles go by in close proximity at 50km/h. It’s only a short stretch so it shouldn’t affect journey times for vehicles at all given the bottlenecks elsewhere.
If society catered for the head in the clouds division all the time nothing would get done; there are serious issues relating to O’Connell St but this certainly isn’t one of them. In no other European City have I seen such brazeness on the part of pedestrians; they (myself included) rarely cross at designated junctions and fail to observe traffic signals. One can only expect the system to deal with compliance, a fair analogy I feel would be with apartment balconies; if someone were to jump should we cover all our balconies over for reasons of safety?
You think that’s fair analogy?! – deliberately jumping over a balcony railing?
Still it raises an important point, those that deliberatly choose to break the lights, and those that just don’t realise there’s a crossing.
I could not agree more about the pedestrian indiscipline in Dublin, and especially at this crossing. It is astounding the level of breaches of the lights here in even the most dodgy of circumstances – people are so stupid it beggars belief at times.
Saying that, on the Henry St side it is more than just a little tempting to break the lights when the whole Plaza and beyond is clearly empty – in such a case I must also admit to having broken the lights on occasion…But a distinction must be made between those who deliberately choose to ignore the signals and those (usually old(er)people) who just don’t see them.
The adoption of a lower speed limit is a good idea, though ought to be a given in any case in such a pedestrian-dominated environment.
Wasn’t there something published this week about local authorities adopting a standard low urban speed limit?Possibly a solution could be a really annoying audio message or even crossing gaurds for a limited period of time. The problem here is not the materials used it is a combination of excessive traffic volumes over and above the design spec for the plaza and as stated above ‘head in the clouds type behaviour’ I’d also say that most people going off balconies are doing so accidentally through horse play or drunkeness.
There is a paving material problem, and if anything there is far less traffic here than at other junctions in the city so this really is not the issue – rather it is a vague paving scheme coupled with a surrounding pedestrianised environment that lulls the pedestrian into a false sense of security. It’s fine to have such an environment provided where pedestrians and road traffic come head to head the boundaries are clearly defined.
It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of the incident either way…
Just on another matter, there’s a great new book just out by Jim Keenan called ‘Dublin Cinemas’, and features many of the city’s urban and suburban cineamas photographically, with complementary text on the opposing page.
Naturally of particular interest are the O’Connell Street cinemas 🙂 of the 1920s and 30s.There’s a wonderful image of the Savoy just after completion which shows the orginal elegant canopy in all its glory. It was a lovely slender piece of work – flat, with ridged detailing running along the edge, somewhat reminicent of the Arnotts canopy with possibly bronze used as the cladding material, matching the windows upstairs.
Having seen the canopy in Hodges Figgis and then the current-day ‘refurbished’ silver box 15 minutes later, it’d make you want to cry 🙁
I’d never seen the original canopy before, and it really was just so elegant – it hangs with the upper facade perfectly.The original Portland stone piers on the ground floor are also evident (these are to go back in soon I think) and there’s great big roundy arc lamps illuminating the upper facade 🙂
It really is most surprising in the light of the recent lavish and respectful refusbishment of the interior that the horribly flash and clunky silver box was deemed appropriate for the exterior, especially given the apparent high standards of the same management.
There is perhaps a glimmer of hope that the silver cladding was a temporay measure to get the cinema through its anniversary year, before the exterior being tackled…@Graham Hickey wrote:
– rather it is a vague paving scheme
Substitute the word Vague for subtle and you are getting somewhere.
Thomond Park wrote:In no other European City have I seen such brazeness on the part of pedestrians]This is a two-way street, so to speak. Irish pedestrians are definitely a law unto themselves. This, however, should not be about one particular crossing in O’Connell Street or about one street in Ireland. It is an educational and infrastructural issue. The number of pedestrian crossings in Ireland is pitiful so pedestrians are left with no alternative but to cross when and where they see an opportunity and that opportunity very often presents a risk to their lives.
Now if you want to live your life on one side of a road only and deal with all of the obvious existential issues that such an existence would bring with it, then yes the lack of pedestrian crossings is not a problem. If, however, like me and many others, you like to cross a street once in a blue moon, then you have a problem. The solution is simple. Here is the safe cross code:
1. provide a thousandfold more pedestrian crossings around the state (one or two at every junction and street corner would be about right) so that pedestrians have a viable alternative to death;
2. educate pedestrians on how to use them;
3. educate motorists how to use and respect them;
4. penalise pedestrians that don’t use them;
5. heavily penalise motorists that don’t respect them.After a few years of doing this, the crossing in O’Connell Street will not be a problem.
I wonder how people manage to get by in countries that are snow bound for 4 months a year and they cannot see any surface at all, whether it be vague, subtle, granite, or tarmac.
Most countries that are snow-bound for 4 months of the year have developed means to deal with this fact. If Ireland was snow-bound it might be a different story, though…
In New York, for example, it is the responsibility of building owners to maintain the pavement outside their buildings- I believe if someone slipped on the pavement the fault lay with the owner for insurance purposes. The first sight that used to greet me on leaving my building on a snowy morning was our maintenance man dilligently shovelling snow into banks, so there was always a buffer between path and street, with gaps left in the banks at crossing points and junctions. If anything, it made walking safer as there were fewer places at which to cross the street and there was that buffer between people and traffic.I think you could double or treble the lights at this O’Connell Street junction and still not solve the problem- it is so much more than just that. As I said above, it is the designed environment that confuses the users, rather than simply users choosing to ignore the green man.
If society catered for the head in the clouds division all the time nothing would get done
There is a counter argument to this, which is if society didn’t listen to dreamers then no progress would ever be made (and O’Connell Street would never have changed, women would never have got the vote, the world would still be flat, &c. &c.). 🙂
@ctesiphon wrote:
I think you could double or treble the lights at this O’Connell Street junction and still not solve the problem- it is so much more than just that. As I said above, it is the designed environment that confuses the users, rather than simply users choosing to ignore the green man.
You mean people who deliberately ignore traffic lights and then choose to use lame duck excuses to extract large amounts of insurance compensation. We all owe a duty of care to other users of the urban environment, by all means cross the road away from traffic lights or even when the light is red, but do so in a way that you can justify if it goes pear shaped. ‘Your honour I got distracted by the unique symmetary of the spire’ will not wash and to argue it will is extremely niave.
@ctesiphon wrote:
There is a counter argument to this, which is if society didn’t listen to dreamers then no progress would ever be made (and O’Connell Street would never have changed, women would never have got the vote, the world would still be flat, &c. &c.). 🙂
Never make the mistake of confusing poor concentration or downright ‘mad out of it’ with the level of vision and discipline required to secure the acheivements you have listed above.
You wouldn’t be trying to patronise me there by any chance, TP, would you?
When I write something in a post it is carefully considered, so I resent being told what it is that I mean. For the record- No, I don’t mean “people who deliberately ignore traffic lights and then choose to use lame duck excuses”, I mean exactly what I said originally (see above)- I mean that features of the environment in O’Connell Street have created cicumstances whereby people who would normally not walk out in front of a moving bus do so because those environmental features not only are not as legible and unambiguous as they should be, they also cause much of the behavioural confusion by virtue of their design, i.e. they aren’t just failing in their task of assisting law abiding citizens to adhere to the rules of the road, they are in fact actively encouraging people to engage (subconsciously) in dangerous behaviour that other designs would not. Or, put yet another way, some people choose to jaywalk, some people have jaywalking thrust upon them. That is what I mean.
Re. your second point- I was being mildly facetious in my original post about dreamers, but this arose as a result of your use of the phrase “the head in the clouds division”. This phrase, in my experience, is normally reserved for society’s dreamers, and I do firmly believe that without dreamers, by which I mean people who look at the world and see it not as it is but as it might be, our society would long ago have stagnated. I don’t deny that the balance is more towards perspiration than inspiration, but without the initial spark the perspiration is worth far less than it otherwise would be.
To take your original point seriously, I still disagree. Society must take into consideration the “the head in the clouds division”, if by this you mean those who have been distracted by the environment. Had you said that society should not take into consideration those who wilfully ignore the rules or environmental cues with which they are familiar, then I would be in agreement with you. It is not, nor will it ever be, possible to legislate for every eejit me feiner who, say, knowingly dices with vehicular traffic when it has right of way.I don’t know whether the women last week deliberately and knowingly crossed while the traffic had right of way, but I do know that many others have done it accidentally.
Incidentally, sad to report that the badly injured woman passed away last night as a result of this incident.
It was a highly unfortunate accident and the fact that her bag was stolen as she lay there fatally injured is one of the most obscene incidents I can ever recall in this country. I am however not aware of how she came to be in the path of the bus but can only speculate that she may have lost her balance or been jostled into the accident.
I am not trying to patronise you; this is a discussion forum there is no patrimoney for distribution in this place. I am however perplexed by your assertions that urban designers need to be dictated to by poor concentration and willful recklessness. Designers need to work within the accepted norms of risk modelling; what you are suggesting is truely revolutionary and in my opinion over considered. Over analysis can be more dangerous than under analysis in some cases; In this particular situation O’Connell St could change from having a very distinctive paving scheme to an auld dollop of tarmac arrangement. For the simple reason the paving is protected and maintained; once an asphalt/tarmac surface was laid there the street would become a free for all patchwork quilt as designed by our utility companies.
I’ll say it again- it’s one thing to have a neutral effect on behaviour, quite another to create the conditions for subconscious self-endangerment. The designers made a mistake. It’s not a case of dictating to them, it’s a case of them observing some basic environmental-psychological facts.
There’s no reason to presume that a new paving scheme would be any less well cared for than you think the current one will be.I think I have heard it all now,
The designers created an attractive environment at the Northsides most important landmark junction and they got it wrong; the definition for negligent endangerment is the pedestrian lighting arrangement outside the Flowing Tide Bar on Lower Abbey Street where a green man appears and leads you directly into the path of the ultra silent Luas system which is directed to go about 10 seconds after you are. The only deviation required to your end is one metre beyond the steel barrier in the direction of the Abbey.
To presume infers to have experience or knowledge of comparable cases; on that basis there is every reason to suggest a patchwork quilt of utility degradations would emerge in a matter of months rather than years. The different nature of these materials makes it much easier to deny consent in this strategically important area.
” it is a combination of excessive traffic volumes over and above the design spec for the plaza “
This sentence IMO cuts directly to the chase in relation to O Connell St and many other Irish Grande Projets.
How,why and by whom were these Traffic Volumes allowed to remain at and indeed exceed the levels which had been used during the Planning and Design phase of O Connell St`s rejuvination process.
For example Dublin Bus vehicle movements along the street in addition to the elongated dwell time at stops surely must have merited some form of professional consideration before being nodded through ?
Once again it is the simplest questions which appear to baffle our planning and design elite.
Questions such as why have Airport Bus/Coach services picking up at the narrowest point of the entire street when most Bus Drivers can attest to the extreme levels of delay which exists with Airport Bound foreign commuters having to burrow for Fares and Ask various questions of the driver.
Most Non-Professionals could forsee delays at such points and make alternative arrangements….not so DCC or indeed Dublin Bus.
The Official line appears to be that O Connell St must present a “Business as Usual” image to the world and no amount of increased risk will deter DCC from its chosen strategy.I’d agree about the unacceptable level of buses on the street, and their use of it in potentially dangerous circumstances, but the level of traffic on the street does not interfere with pedestrian crossings – if there’s 2 buses or 20 buses on a lane they still have to stop in a safe fashion at crossings.
A lot of good points have been made – I think what stands out is TP’s noting of spatial standards set by designers and planners; these are used in all newly-planned crossings. To suggest that we change this model to cater for absolutely everyone is something that just cannot be done.
On O’Connell St there is perhaps an exception to this rule as ctesiphon notes, in that one is to an extent encouraged to break the rules, even if subconsciously. If there’s echoing empty space surrounding the crossing, i.e. an empty Plaza or roadway stretching into the distance, people will cross, especially if the roadway paving is the same as that you’re standing on, and with no height differential. The nature of the new O’Cll St layout whereby traffic gets held up at certain sets of lights resulting in large expanses roadway lying idle does encourage people to break the lights. I’m not sure that this is a bad thing – if there is no traffic in a largely pedestrianised area, is it not acceptable to do this?
Saying that, the problem arises when traffic gets closer and people continue to hurry or run across; as mentioned before it is this previous casual crossing of others that encourages people later on to put themselves in danger. But again you have to ask, it people cannot exercise good judgement when they see traffic approaching, then whatever danger ensues is entirely of their own makingBut it is those who do not notice the crossing that are at greatest, and if possible to say, most ‘legitimate’ risk. There is a problem in this respect. I remember in Dundalk in the early 90s a horribly busy crazy-paving scheme was laid out in front of the Court House, made up of roadways, islands, and pedestrian crossings, but all made up of different coloured paving bricks.
Eventually it was simplified with the roadway being laid out in tarmac again, likely due to a great many pedestrian complaints – people simply didn’t know if they were on the road or on pavement.The same goes for the Spire crossing, even if things are more clearly defined with the many traffic signals – the crossing is still ambiguous. I fully agree about people being complacent and not looking at where they’re going – I can’t get over how so many people don’t realise there’s a crossing, but you just have to work with the fact that many people just aren’t observant!
Even from my own perspective and knowing the crossing very well, I’d still like to see the kerbline defined more – it’s always difficult to know where to stand to wait.As for a quality paving ‘scheme’ being replaced with ‘cheap’ tarmac, I suggest to you TP that you don’t know this crossing very well. The granite cobbles on the roadway here have nothing at all to do with the beautifully patterned Plaza scheme, nor do they fit into any greater scheme in the street at large. Their removal would have little impact in this area.
Furthermore, the laying of tarmac would do the exact opposite of what you suggest about a ‘patchwork’ effect – rather the crisp black roadway would flow effortlessly from the Upper Street right up the the Plaza – no patches.
And if anything it would improve the current look of acres of bland granite swamping the area around the Spire; elsewhere on the street it is broken with attractive accent tones: at the crossing there is nothing. It is dull, it is boring, it blandly plazafies the area, and above all it is unsafe.Perhaps a contributory factor is that Dublin and Ireland at large is simply not used to this type of scheme – we’ve all grown up with concrete kerbstones and different cloured roadways. Yes we can deviate from this model, but not at the expense of those who are put in danger with the alternative.
@Graham Hickey wrote:
But it is those who do not notice the crossing that are at greatest, and if possible to say, most ‘legitimate’ risk. There is a problem in this respect. I remember in Dundalk in the early 90s a horribly busy crazy-paving scheme was laid out in front of the Court House, made up of roadways, islands, and pedestrian crossings, but all made up of different coloured paving bricks.
I was in Dundalk for rag week in 1992 as guest after the event at the Imperial Hotel was shut down by the local constablery/Siochalinies and re-opened when they supplied ‘an acceptable dj’ we all had our few pints went home or to our borrowed sofa in my case. One of the girls from that house who I didn’t know, got confused by that paving scheme, sat down in an open fashion on the road and had her legs driven over by a car. It was quite horrific and she suffered very serious injuries; the drunk driver did time for it.
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