a boyle
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if that is how you feel fair enough, but after being knocked over twice i wouldn’t dare cycle anywhere without a helmet.
@ctesiphon wrote:
Not wearing a helmet is not against the law.
Removing every motorised vehicle from the roads also gives a perception of safety, to give just one (admittedly far fetched) example.
Also, the pic you posted shows yet another design flaw in bike lanes. the concrete bits are aligned in one direction only, so getting off that lane is easy mid-lane, but joining it mid-lane is impossible unless the cyclist stops and turns more than 90 degrees. hardly encouraging.
Here’s that picture anyway- now I really must go. Gotta get into my bright pink lycra bodysuit.:)
In that case think it should be against the law to cycle without a helmet, i have had way too many near misses …
yes yes if you get rid of cars you make it safer , but you need to get people’s confidence of cycling being safe before you will convince people to cycle. Telling people that cycling is safe if they leave their cars behind is a chicken and egg situation that is just not going to wash.
Good point regards the attached photo , pity the dockland development people didn’t spot it. in truth you would only need to place such bumps every 3 / 4 feet . just enough to keep a car out of the way.
cobalt wrote:I have 2 problems with the concrete barriers:
(a) The lanes are usually narrow, so if you get stuck behind a slooooooow cyclist it’s very difficult to pass them out]That is why i thought they should stick the two cycle lanes to one side of the road, so that you would have that wiggle room to overtake someone.
Also i meant the kind of bumps along the docks. this is what i am talking about , a series of bumps so that cyclists can easily get in and out of the laneway.
no no don’t get me wrong . i don’t think that it is ok that gardai jsut plain don’t bother. I just think it is a case of what is practical.
I definetely think that the traffic corps should be running around handing out fines left right and center : not yielding , not stopping, using the right turn lane just to get in front of everyone going straight , cyclists not wearing a helmet ,etc etc.
But i have to disagree regarding setting aside a cycle path , surely that is a good idea. They give a perception of safety which is probably the most important thing to encourage more cyclists. If people perceive it to be safe , they will feel safe , and far more will use the cycle lanes. Then i think you will find people respecting them more, as they will be used , which currently they are not.
i am not trying to belittle you frustration in cycling through the city , but looking for garda enforcement to help cyclists will never work . Not because our gardai are any lazier than policemen in other countries but because almost all the cycle lanes are a joke.
People drive through cycle lanes , and park in them , even though they know it is selfish simply because they can.
if you want to improve things the solution is pretty simple. Move the cycle lanes to one side of the road only , and seperate the space from the rest of the road with concrete bumps , making sure they are just high enough to discourage all but the most hardy of drivers from entering the lane. The ones used along the docklands are just right.This cycle lane problem is something that truly mistifies me. Such small concrete blips are cheap. It doesn’t mean removing car lanes (god forbid – actually god did forbid any actions to impeded car use – little known fact . He said this right after denouncing just about anything fun) .
cycle lanes are being put in places where the traffic lanes are particulary wide for the most part , so nobody is losing out .Instead we have these red strips that actually seem to attract danger instead of warding off.
i suspect the poles will turn out the same as the single one already in place. I think what has been screwed in place already are the lower stems. I suspect that an upper part will be placed on top of each stick , that way they can get at the bulbs when they eventually break!!
It is nice to see this going ahead so quickly.
There was a discussion which ended on another thread where someone asked if they could name ten new buildings of quality , it is such a shame that following years of building in the ifsc we have nothing of note , and are hoping that this center revives things. The original ifsc buildings are probably the best , and certainly finish off beresford place quite nicely, i don’t think anybody will be writting about this decade kindly.
yes . we .don’t use the liffery , we bridge it.
the particular bridge is very beautiful by all accounts , but we seem to have far too many. i would hack off butt bridge . it doesn’t do anything.
Unfortunately with transport , people get the impression that there are different solutions to the problem. Often they think that there own ideas are so fantastic that everyone elses are just ridiculous. i would not fall into such a category, no no.
having been to scores of cities , those that work do things similar to what i am proposing , and those that don’t do things the way dublin has done.
It is more a case of i am right, it is obvious and when you agree we can set up do it. As opposed to i have a solution, you disagree and we will continue to muddle through. Then maybe in twenty years when there are three tram lines in cork we will think about making it harder to drive around.
Not impressed
@Angry Rebel wrote:
There’s no reason why it couldn’t be opened in stages! They could build sections sequentially and open as they go or build in parallel and allocate resources in decreasing proportion as they reach the centre.
ie Apply 30% resources to the 60 miles out of Dublin (the busiest and containing the busiest bottlenecks of Kildare/Monasterevin/Abbeyleix)
30% to the 60 miles out of Cork (next busiest and containing the bottlenecks of Fermoy, Mitchelstown and Cashel)
40% evenly across the quieter sections in the middle.Well if you open it up in stages then surely your are defeating the purpose of building in one go? are we not building in stages ?
@Angry Rebel wrote:
What are you talking about?
I am talking about an ESRI report which came out last year i think . The basic jist was (is) we have twice as many people in the construction industry as we ought to. Accelerating spending on infrastructure would exacerbate this. They wanted the government to wait until construction of houses naturally degins to decrease before cranking up the spending on infrastructure. Thus to try to keep a lid on the number of construction worker.
@Angry Rebel wrote:
Nonsense. There are more bus stops on a route than existing pedestrian crossings! Think about it.
Yes but there are also crossroads all over the place. So there is always a point when cars are stopped to allow other cars to move. during these times pedestrians can cross roads without affecting the flow of traffic. One very good example of this is the mad cow roundabout in dublin where the tram crosses lanes but does not hold up cars anywhere. Think about it. Besides you would not just be providing a little bit of bus capacity , you would provide space for half , two thirds? of commuters , drastically reducing the number of cars.
Angry Rebel wrote:I’m not saying I have all/any of the answers. I’m just being Irish and rubbishing part of yours ]You do have some wide streets. We are not after all the first monkeys living in an old city to realise that we needed to find some transports solutions. Firstly narrower buses are available (they are made longer to keep the number of seats the same). Secondly you don’t have to have four lanes every where. You can selectively close rights of way, and traffic patterns to keep cars away from bus routes.
The beauty of this whole idea is that you do the whole city in one go. That way every can see the immediate benefit of necesarry pain. Other wise if you build one bit of a bus lane between wilton and the city say . everyone along the route is inconvenienced and won’t see much benefit because wilton and the city center are not the only places these people drive to.
Think about it . if you don’t do this you will still be sitting in your car giving about about some new shagging magic roundabout in five years and probably ten years.
@Angry Rebel wrote:
Providing infrastructure is not the same thing as building houses, and in fact, given the high level of housing provided, there should be accelerated delivery of infrastructure to support these developments. This means roads, public transport, schools, medical facilities, public space and much more.
Dedicating central lanes is one of the more pointless ideas I’ve heard in a while. For a start, having an increased number of pedestrians in the centre of the road, who must cross lanes of traffic to access the central median to leave or enter buses is dangerous and disruptive to traffic flows. Furthermore, there is space to run buses in those lanes, but generally not enough to provide a safe and comfortable boarding area.
building houses is not the same as building roads. but roughly twice as many people are employed building things as is appropriate. And so the esri advised the government to ease of infrastructure till it has built all the houses it wants to .
No you are plain wrong about central lanes. they are a great idea. The disruption to other traffic is minimal because roads have to have pedestrian crossings anyway. The improvement is huge , because the bus is not blocked by anybody else so you get reliable journey times . The bus being segregated can drive consistenly fast (30/40 miles an hour). And the route can take a much higher frequency of buses no doubt 2 minutes between each bus is doable.
You also are able to do the whole city in one go instead of piecemeal. So it is entirely realistic to go from the shite you call public transport now , to four /five routes operating right across the city with very high frequency of service and huge increased capacity. Thus you force people out of there cars because it is in everyones interest. But you are able to force people out of their cars because from day one you have a full system.
Through the use of smart cards you can then start to analyse where people are going and coming so that you can plot where you will need to upgrade to a tram in the future.
for cork what would work very well would be to reserve south mall / lapps quay , merchants quay/lavitts quay, and corn market street grand parade. You put stops to the north west and south (the east stop is the current bus station) pick four five routes and have them lead on to this circular route, with the buses stopping at all four stops before returning where they came from. just like chicago.
Sorry but what could you do that is better?
i think too if you built the motorway from dublin to cork in one go , then you could not open it up in stages … . You would be talking about a 7 / 8 years build not a nice prospect for a government that has to look for a new job contract every five …
It is probably all in all much in a muchness. Since brennan redid the contracts the motorways have been progressively built quicker. look at the nra, site and you will see that they have a fair bit on their plate all over the country.
Now whether it was a good idea to build a motorway between dublin cork limerick and galway that is another discussion…
thomond is of course selective in his information. The esri has previously warned us not to increase the rate of infrastructure provision because the economy is already so tilted towards building houses.
Indeed there is no denying (except thomond) that cork infrastructure is in much better shape now and moving forward .
As already point out the motorway round fermoy is nearing completion this year (early i think) and the michelstown relief road is done and of course the recently started chunk of motorway.
Corkonians should focus on my suggestion of canvassing for dual carriageways to have the central lanes segregated with plastic bollards , and the provision of comfortable buses, and bus stops in the center of the road , thus keeping other traffic seperated as much as possible. looking at the map of cork it seems ideally placed for a chicago styled central loop (on the central island) with offshoots in the different directions
there is no reason that a ten/ fifteen minute long journey between the airport and the city couldn’t be done.
If i have it wrong thomond , what exactly would you do ?
@CM00 wrote:
it’s just yuppie housing, visible in the Soulless, Yuppie filled, wind swept developments which have sprung up all over the North and South of Britain: Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, et al.
I would like to add that I feel the North Docklands have been quite successfull and I’m not for one moment suggesting that the docklands should be low rise. I just feel that DDDA have compromised. They have neither produced an outstanding design or vision. Or retained any of the “feel” of the area. They have bulldozed a lot of history and replaced it with a lot of what passes for suburban housing on the continent. A series of gated, self contained blocks, with little or no hope of community.
Yes but all is not lost . I am pinning my hopes on this new arts center (note not the abbey / no no not the abbey). I thinks if schawtz personnally oversees the square to her satisfaction , and yer man with the glasses gets the abbey right (sorry no arts center ) it could really bring the whole thing it to focus. Currently the building to the left of the square is pretty much finished . I think i can safely say it is the best building in the docklands so far . It has some kind of glass which gives the whole front a different colour depending which angle you look at it. It is really a very good office block (no photos sorry)
If this turns into a disapointment then cm00 is right the whole exercise will be a failure over all, and the docklands will remain a sterile yuppie sleepover with no life at all.
definetely. They should be kept. The possiblity of a boardward extending in a crescent shape around them should be considered. (it might be possible although storms /flooding etc etc.).
They could be really interesting additions to the liffey if redevelopped. One would certainly make a very cool nightclub. And while that might not be the msot desirable use from the point of view of the purists that frequent this site , it would certainly help to re invigorate the area.
Saw something similar in budapest or prague and is twas only massive
there are several routes through cork which are appropriate for a central median reserved bus system.
Buses are better because they can give relief immediately whereas light rail will take a minimum of 6 years.
They combined with the use of a smartcard allow us to analyse traffic patterns and find out where a light rail might be needed in the future.
They create the modal shift between car use and group transport, thus making it far easier to then build a tram network. It is much easier to close a lane on a road to proceed with utilities diversion/ track laying if people already have a alternative to the car.
Ha good idea come from me, negative comments come from you .
keep them . they have great potential. a board walk around would sort out any cycling acces problems.
thomond look at a map of dublin there are many routes which go through the city and do not require a bus to turn once. Thus the use of triaxle bus is indeed very possible.
The use of two axle bus down suffolk street is of course so thick that only a dublin bus person would have proposed it.Regards convincing poeple to use them . Well If would have though that a bus that was airconditioned with nice cool air in the summer, heated in the winter , it would be an attractive option. Removing many of the stosp along the way so that their were a minimum of 800metres aparts would be a good improvement to. Moving the bus lanes into the center of the road and segregating the space with plastic bollards would help too. This would allow for proper express bus services.
Insisting on the use of prepaid tickets only would further speed up the bus.
Maybe it is just you .
@markpb wrote:
Buses, Irish style, are only useful for serving urban sprawl. There are lots of things that can be done to make them just as effective as a tram system with half the cost and much more flexibility.
A completely segregated bus network (not the bits of auld bus lanes that we have in Dublin) with articulated buses with three sets of doors (all of which actually open, unlike Dublin) can be built for almost nothing compared to a tram system. It’ll also carry vastly more people at the same speed as a tram.
finally someone agrees with me and sees sense .
