What is the most attractive bridge over the Liffey?
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City Council hell bent on shoe horning in this new bridge it seems, out of sync, out of character & out of line.
(think there’s another thread on this, sorry if there is, couldn’t find it.)
@The Irish Times wrote:
Dublin to get new bridge over River Liffey
ELAINE EDWARDSDublin City Council has confirmed it is to build a new €15 million bridge over the River Liffey, just downstream of O’Connell Bridge.The council said the bridge, funded by the Government’s Transport 21 plan, will carry buses and Luas trams across the Liffey.
“It will have cycleways and generous footpaths that will open Marlborough Street and Hawkins Street to greater footfall, prospective development and create a new north-south link from Abbey Street to Pearse Street,” the council said in a statement.
It promised an “elegant, contemporary” design, with proper facilities for cyclists and wheelchairs to cross.
There will also be seating and landscaping.
“It will be a slender, single span, smooth concrete structure, with the underside of the bridge being designed to be as high above the water as possible so that river traffic is not impeded,” the council said.
Construction is due to start late next year and will take approximately 18 months.
Consulting engineers Roughan & O’Donovan and Seán Harrington Architects were appointed in May to design the bridge. Roughan O’Donovan was the engineer for the Taney Luas bridge in Dundrum, Dublin, as well as the M1 Boyne Bridge at Drogheda, amongst others.
Harrington’s projects include the Dublin Millennium Bridge. Conservation architect David Slattery will ensure that the historic quay walls are properly conserved, as well as advising on other matters relating to the historic and important setting of the project, the council said.
Gordon Rowland of the council’s road design department, said the bridge would take a lot of bus movements away from O’Connell Bridge.
Asked whether the project might be under threat as a result of current economic difficulties, Mr Rowland said he believed the project was “fairly robust” and that there was a requirement for such a bridge to be built at that location over the Liffey.
Mr Rowland said that in the event that the project was not completed within an 18-month timeframe, there was a provision for a temporary bridge just downstream, which would facilitate work on the planned metro line.
Gordon Rowland of the council’s road design department,said the bridge…
Need any more be said? They’ve been lusting after this for this for years.
What a way to f*ck up the compelling rhythm of bridges along the Liffey. What’s galling is the lies and deliberate deceptions used in the PR to justify this. It won’t “open up” anything in the city in the same way that D’Olier St. doesn’t “open up” anything. It “opens up” a corridor which goes nowhere except to inpenetrable side of Trinity. Why not admit that this is a traffic engineer’s bridge and nothing else. The mention of a Luas using the bridge is simply a deliberate lie; BX is off the cards for the forseeable future.
Worse, this will severely compromise the symmety of the setting of O’Connell Bridge. It will also devalue it’s significance by reducing the amount of river it commands. Leaving O’Connell Bridge to rot (besides inserting weirdly shaped balusters – bulb like instead of teardrop shaped) and using it as a Taxi rank while persuing this project is absolutely typical.
Why not spend the money on a proper restoration of O’Connell Bridge? It’s plenty wide for bikes, pedestrians, wheelchairs and anything else and it actually leads to somewhere people actually want to go. It is part of a carefully designed set piece and is one of the most important locations in the city.
The egos required to confidently ignore the significance of the context and condition of O’Connell Bridge must be immense. Do any of the philistines in DCC ever even wonder why other European cities which straddle rivers (I know aspiring to Paris is expecting too much) treat their historic bridges with loving care and think about the impression such bridges leave on visitors?
Public consultation info here:
http://www.dublincity.ie/RoadsandTraffic/MajorTransportProjects/Pages/MarlboroughStreetPublic.aspx
as we all know it is simply not needed… traffic is what 5km hr
it will be expected to increase to 5.23km hr therefore justifying 15 million…
I have no problem with the Irish Army providing a temp bridge…
but if metro north goes in the number of buses cars ect could be expected to go down down down…
if the ticket price is right which we have no idea…fix o connoll st bridge pave the whole thing in stone and not the standard DCC landscaping solution competition I hear?
im seeing things
@missarchi wrote:
as we all know it is simply not needed… traffic is what 5km hr
it will be expected to increase to 5.23km hr therefore justifying 15 million…
I have no problem with the Irish Army providing a temp bridge…
but if metro north goes in the number of buses cars ect could be expected to go down down down…
if the ticket price is right which we have no idea…fix o connoll st bridge pave the whole thing in stone and not the standard DCC landscaping solution competition I hear?
im seeing things
Sport on.
Bus ( & car) numbers will drop and so it should when a higher capacity service goes the same way. In fact the whole bus network has to be re-designed and it has to stop ths over crowing An Larism system that currently exists.The 2 Luas tracks should use O’Connell St, the as trams have been doing for many, many years, and head to Liffey Jtn and onward to Finglas.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that Mary O’Rourke should foot the bill for all this as it was her decision to break the Luas into 2 lines under the pressure of city centre business lobbies that started this mess in the first place. Then same groups later call for the Luas link up and for the metro, then they say that they don’t want the construction to occur. :rolleyes:
And now Dublin Bus has make things worse by crying like a little baby and forcing the RPA to come up with the up O’Connell st , down Marlborough St plan all because they refuse to re-design their network.:cool:
p.s. (As for the design, yes bland but can you be more than bland at this spot)
Does the railway bridge that crosses the Liffey between Islandbridge and Hueston Station have a name? It’s surely one of the Liffey’s least known bridges.
Good question, the disappointing answer is that it is called the “Liffey Railway Bridge”
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