The Quays
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I was interested to see in the Irish times today that Dick Gleeson has at last grasped the nettle. A series of changes to the Quays have been proposed including a reduction in parking and extending the board walk.
Personally I would be utterly opposed to the board walk running in front of the Four Courts but else where would be welcome :). Dissapointingly no traffic calming or tree planting is directly mentioned.
So what is everyones opinion as regards what we want our Quays to be?
More importantly is this going to be just another grandiose framework or will it happen 😡 ?After all in the spirt of James Butler Duke of Ormond, the Quays should be worthy of any great capital of Europe 😉 .
I have an idea, May be ga-ga, but could the boardwalk not make a loop to the opposite quay and back again so that we can sit and ponder the administration of justice over a cup of tea or coffee?
You would have to remove the balustrade that runs along the quay walls and it’s probably the most beautiful part of the quays in Dublin.
They’re almost certainly protected and it would mean destroying two large chunks of it and then having seats along the length of it, which wouldn’t work either.
I’m nearly sure this feature is on both sides of the River so switching sides would not help.
This is what the quay wall looks like. I think/hope balustrade is the right word:
http://www.irish-architecture.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/northcity/quays/inns/4courts_lge.htmlthe boardwalk could be added without affecting the balustrade. the boardwalk level is below the pavement level normally s the visual effect on the balustrade from the oppostie bank would be minimal.
Without getting into the effects on the ballustrading surely there is enough space to enhance the perdestrian envionment along Inns Quay without intervening with a boardwalk as this area accomodates on-street parking. Which if it were to be removed would provide a space more than equivelent to a stretch of boardwalk; this could also be done on Upper Ormond Quay. Arran Quay in contrast would require a boardwalk.
That seems to be part of what’s planned. They are phasing out the on-street parking along the quays, almost all of which is around that Four Courts area. It will leave a space that is the best part of four metres wide when you include the existing pavement. I really don’t see how the balustrade would not be very seriously affected by a boardwalk.
For a start, you would have to remove two chunks and considering it makes a perfect rectangle of two bridges and two quays, it would at the very least damage that continuity.
The balustrade would make a very imperfect barrier between a boardwalk and a pavement as when you looked through it from the street, all you would be seeing is the back of a load of seats and probably a lot of rubbish shoved in under.To say the least – really an truly, a Boardwalk on the most special part of the quays?!
Whatever about the more pedestrian stretches of the Liffey, we can do without that grotesque heap of builders yard juck tacked onto the quay walls outside the Four Courts thank you very much.The distinctive cream-balustered balustrading is what makes this area:
Obviously a Boardwalk is not proposed for here, and never should it be.
As TP says, there’s ample room for pavement widening with the elimination on-street parking – evident above.The south quay has standard granite walls.
I am sure a boardwalk isn’t intended infront of the four courts, it would spoil the affect and anyway there is lots of room for a widened footpath.
you can’t boardwalk the south quays, it would be in continual shadow and therefore dank, damp and horrible.
we should see a definite change in how the quays develop when the dublin port tunnel comes online. seem to recall talk of banning hgv’s from the quays in so far as is possible. with the new framework plan and the creation of new markets on the M50 hopefully a significant change will be seen in the city.
when is the port tunnel opening anyway? this year or next? so much is happening, it’s hard to keep track.
I would’nt be in favour of adding a boardwalk in front of the Four Courts (or the Custom House), nor removing the ballustrades. This would be outright vandalism. More importantly, I think the council & co should concentrate on the condition of the buildings along the riverside from Hueston Station to the docks . There are a lot of shoddy and unsubstantial buildings still adorning the Liffey quays.
A boardwalk past Ormond Quays seems pointless to me. There just isnt the pedestrain activity to merit it (although I appreciate there is a degree of chicken and egg scenario here). The CC would be better placed concentrating on getting people up to Smithfield and Heuston along the Luas line then investing in a redundant Boardwalk. The existing B is a nice feature in the city centre but its no substitute for proper predestrain space along the quays and investment in new shops and businesses farther up river.
Could spend the money painting those bloody flagpoles providing some decent public lighting.
I’m not even sure the Boardwalk should extend down the length of Ormond Quay. The less populated each section becomes, the more unsavoury the characters frequenting it.
The amount of anti-social activity they attract is beyond belief.
On two separate occasions in the last fortnight, I have seen people urinating through the railings during the afternoon.
Every bum and junkie congregates on Eden Quay and people skulling cans and bottles of beer are more common than coffee drinkers.
The Ormond Quay extension would become a/ a waiting room for gougers waiting for a court apperance and b/ outdoor smoking areas for the people who spend all night and morning drinking in the early houses along the quays and Chancery Street.Its quiet interesting to look at the priorities of the Gardi. When the new Caltrava bridge first opened the archs were being climbed by childern (extremly dangerous). I cant speak for every minuite of the day but since the first week I havent seen it happen since.
I was told by a tour guide during a heritage week walk of the liffey that the Gardi from the Bridewell will be out in seconds if the cameras see a child on the archs. Yet how familiar is the sight of people drinking alcohol or even worse mets, on this same bridge. Part of the proactive attitude to keeping childern off the bridge is that the council would be libil in court if a child fell.
So looks to me like an issue of will power rather then man power. If we want to stop suburban sprawal we must have a high visibility polise force to make people feell same and want to live in the city.I don’t mean to sound snobbish but I think Ireland has to have one of the highest rates of socially dysfunctional people in Europe.
Couldn’t agree more, any country with four per cent unemployment while 50,000 jobs are unfilled is highly dysfunctional.
When you have the best part of 10,000 junkies trudging around the streets on any given day, you are going to get a lot of antisocial behaviour.Where did you get that figure from Kefu?
Agreed about not extending the Boardwalk beyond Grattan Bridge, it would not only be practically pointless but visually damaging too.
It would seem the aim of the existing Boardwalks is essentially to ease pedestrian congestion in the busiest part of the city in the short/medium term, and provide a decent seating area as an added bonus.
In the longer term I would like to see them removed, and the quays given back to the people once/if the city’s traffic problems are sorted.Agreed about increased Garda activity needed around the Eden Quay area especially – it is the only area in the city I do not feel safe in day or night, so much so I’d elect to use Talbot St as an east-west route anyday over that quay.
The unemployment rate was 4.3% last year: Ref: http://www.indexmundi.com/ireland/unemployment_rate.html
There are actually 13,000 heroin addicts in Dublin but on the basis that not all of them are in the city centre (although it often seems like that) I rounded the figure down. Ref: http://www.finegael.ie/fine-gael-news.cfm/NewsID/22150/action/detail/year/2005/month/7/level/page/aid/186/
No exact figures are available for unfilled jobs but 50,000 isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.
I have every sympathy for an unemployed person in the West of Ireland or along the Border where there may not actually be any jobs but there is little excuse for being jobless in Dublin.
“In 2000, it was estimated that there were 60,000 unfilled jobs in the Irish economy and that Ireland needed to attract 270,000 employees into the workforce over the next six years to sustain even modest levels of economic growth.” Ref: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/inimr-ri.nsf/en/gr107272e.html
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