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DC you are a touch harsh; whilst the public realm has been neglected through the absence of a wider vision; many attractive period buildings are clustered in specific spaces to make Dublin a decent destination.

Stephen – please give credit for the idea where it is due – Kefu

On the Dept of Transport Road Manual it should be updated and remitted in pdf format to each motorist each year, assuming their road tax is paid online.

My own feeling on why the place is littered with poles is that local authorities derive significant revenues from parking charges; to ensure that utility companies don’t spoil the party poles versus lines are used. Solution for 2010 – any utility company that wants to dig up any street must undertake to add lines behind them; any works that involve removal of the lines must be rentalised to reflect the value of the spaces for the period until they can produce income for the council again.,

I wonder are DCC capable of making money?

Shit goods should just be outlawed full stop; ask two questions, how many of these goods are made in Ireland and how likely is it that the appearance of this tat in peoples homes is likely to attract the purchasers mates to Ireland for a visit.

I had the misfortune of flying Easyjet a few weeks back and using their bagdrop system; an utter farce almost one hour to drop a bag which is ridiculous considering the check in was online; looking at the Ryanair bagdrop at the same airport made me want to cry; there was no waiting and they only recently pulled off the route. O’Leary is shrewd man; whilst he is opposed to white elephants like Metro North; he has also realised that punctuality and not price alone will drive profit growth going forward to create the Worlds second most profitable carrier within 2-3 years.

To get the tourist business moving I would allow hoteliers to be allowed enter a level of debt for equity swaps with the banks that enables them a two year interest payment holiday and thus the ability to cut room costs and get beds filled; as much as I am depressed by the abject absence of reality in government the people and many of the venues are top drawer,

@gunter wrote:

Maybe it’s not the Corpo’s fault, maybe Dublin has a serial sign thief

That would assume that the signage actually had a real function in the first instance as if genuinely required said signage would no doubt have been replaced.

You must welcome the new way finding signage it is attractive, fullfills a real need and could facilitate a significant consolidation of aged signage assembled over recent decades.

A thorough review of signage undertaken through a post graduate research grant that looks at all signage in the core City Centre would be a very useful exercise; in the era of SatNav and attempts to reduce traffic levels the finite level of signage that can be placed without visually detracting from the built environment should be rebalanced towards pedestrians i.e. those that are visiting the City to drop cash and support retail/leisure.

@onq wrote:

Suspending a license to practice might be acceptable where the matter was not directly related to the profession and could be considered a “crime of passion” thatwas unlikely to occur in normal client architect relations.

Now I’m getting you confused with your French architect mate!!!

I think a suspension while he underwent psychiatric supervision for a year may have been more appropriate; had it been a client or contractor he was supervising or even a supplier then game over; it does however show how the media and in particular printed media love to stereotype people according to their careers or abodes; although in that regard a Croydon based architect is a bit of a contradiction….

I think it is curious that in the various discussions about the bus lanes in from the south that the issue of having to reroute the buses away from Todds (because we’re going to have a pedestrian only O’Connell st. at that point hasn’t been raised. The opportunity is there to connect the city buses with the regional services at the station if we’re going to move from Todds as the main city centre stop.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

Total rubbish. PPPs are not the reason Ireland’s bond spreads are so high, it’s the banks which are causing that. Market uncertainty at the cost of the Anglo and INBS bailouts are driving up interest rates and if we don’t put together a convincing and viable plan to sort out these two banks, Ireland will be paying 5.5% interest on bonds Metro North or no Metro North. At least with the €416 million spent on the Convention Centre Dublin you will get a billion euro in business tourism for Ireland. €416 million to Anglo just gets you more angry taxpayers. It’s money down the drain.

For a start 5.50% is no longer available its now well north of 6%; secondly the overall tourism business is worth €1bn a year; the conference centre if it were a €1bn euro business wouldn’t need any subvention. This is not about dealing with the governments abject failure to deal with the banking sector when the bubble was inflating it is about ensuring the same attitude of ‘a sure the figures will look after themselves in time’ attitude is banished from power for decades. Something is viable or it isn’t and at a time like this everything must be viable day 1.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

I don’t need to ask the passengers – I am one of them and I can tell you that a system of underground rail tunnels would be a lot better than Luas. A Luas line to the airport would just hold up the traffic on the northside and negate any benefit it would bring.

A TGV to Cork would be a lot better than the existing but because it isn’t viable it won’t be built. The traffic impact of a conversion from segregated Luas to semi-segregated Luas would be the minimal extension of Luas from the top of OCS to not even Broadstone and St Mobhi Rd.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

Furthermore, I’ve been on the Red Line as it goes through the Heuston and Conolly stops and the amount of people who get on fills the trams up to full capacity regularly.

But I thought the red line was a failure? Outside peak times when Hueston filters an entire commuter rail hub onto shortened trams Luas is far from capacity.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

Given that the Airport is a much bigger station than these places you would have to employ Japanese-style crushers at the airport to fit everyone into the trams.

Kings Cross 60m tube journeys a year (rail hub) Heathrow roughly 8m tube journeys were made in 2008 or a mode split of roughly 12% of total air passengers.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

A 90m-long Metro train is much better in these circumstances. This is because Metro has the capacity to take the surges in passengers which will occur at the Airport. Luas simply does not.

Surges in air passengers occur much later than the morning commuter peak; therefore the passsenger load imposed is a bonus to a network and not a significant supply consideration.

Can I take it your submission is on the location of the Inchicore Works Station location?

Please keep us posted on day to day developments

@teak wrote:

A bird‘s eye view (see bing.com)of O’Connell Avenue from Punch’s Cross to St. Joseph’s Church reveal to me that most of residents (not all) have some form of parking to their homes (rear or driveway). Some have even got together and blatantly converted their front gardens into a car-park, thus destroying its residential character.

Those O’Connell Avenue residents that are blocking the bus lane proposals are holding the city to ransom!

Nonsense.

Walk round the back lanes — if there are any — and you’ll see that a lot of the houses have elaborate extensions into the back gardens.
But whatever about that there is no reason that a householder ought be expected to give up his backgarden for the greater good. The amenity value of front gardens on this road is already nil owing to the noise, pedestrians and litter.

To me the solution is very simply this.
The biggest component of O’Connell Ave traffic is the trans-commuters, i.e. people simply using it as their habitual through-road to their destinations in the city or in southern suburbs/county.
These trans-commuters may readily be encouraged to use Prospect Hill, Hyde Road and Roxboro Road routes that will lead onto the new city orbital route.
That would remove at least 70% of the existing O’Connell Avenue traffic.
After that there would be no need for a bus-lane, even if the number of buses doubled.
Since the 2 existing lanes are quite broad, the present ability of motorists to tuck in on both sides to allow an ambulance to pass is retained. (With an additional bus-lane this capability is lost as the 3 lanes would then be minimally sized.)

It really defies belief that, in all this controversy, no one seems to question why the trans-commuters ought not move.
It is always either the residents ought move on their parking retention; or the council ought move on their green route proposals.
Why should the habits of trans-commuters take priority over residents to the extent that they lose their parking or lose any bit of garden that they may have ?

One thing is clear.
If a bus-lane is brought in, then families will start to move away from O’Connell Avenue.
We all know what will happen then.
Homes will be converted to cheap flats/offices.
Neither tenants nor landlords will maintain these fine old buildings and the whole area — one of the best areas architecturally — will become run-down.

This thing about ambulances is interesting, how do ambulances work at present with only one lane and parking?

As for the trans commuters, how exactly would they practically be encouraged to use other routes?

It is clear to any observer of the process that MN was conceived as a transport corridor to extend development growth into North Dublin City and a narrow belt of Fingal. Its existing route had a density that could just about support a Luas route when the Airport was included. When assessing population growth the best place to start are housing completions as public transport is primarily about moving people from home to work to night out etc.

Housing completions in the Greater Dublin Area increased by 6% over 2000.
Completions totalled 16,498 housing units. Within this statistic there was an
increase in the Dublin Region of 2% and in the Mid-East Region of 12% over the
2000 completions. Construction has commenced on a number of large schemes in
the Metropolitan Area.

So we take the 2001 figures used in the 2002 RPG

Table 6 House Completions by County and Regions GDA (1996 – 2001)
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Dublin City 4,125 3,427 3,777 2,804 2,362 3,091
DL-Rathdown 1,053 712 549 886 860 1,166
Fingal 2,024 2,707 2,618 4,296 4,044 3,602
South Dublin 2,244 2,479 2,013 2,049 2,139 1,746
Dublin Region 9,446 9,325 8,957 10,035 9,405 9,605
Kildare 1,900 2,095 2,509 2,419 2,366 2,426
Meath 1,154 1,318 1,422 1,480 2,303 2,553
Wicklow 1,168 1,147 1,335 1,294 1,484 1,914
Mid-East Region 4,222 4,560 5,266 5,193 6,153 6,893
TOTAL 13,668 13,885 14,223 15,228 15,558 16,498

This displays a total of 6,693 homes across all of Dublin City and all of Fingal; which should be fairly representative of the upper end of medium term trends given the regional figure is 16,498; however it must be said that MN traverses a small section of Dublin City much of which would be served by the existing Drumcoundra Rail Station. Fingal’s largest town is Blanchardstown and the coastal towns would have at least equal weight to Swords. You might therefore estimate the route provides a 1,000 homes a year.

Clearly the figures used to support MN are flawed as the above simply would not justify a €3bn single route.

I don’t mean the underground route options, there is a separate sections for alternatives such as street level Luas.

I don’t believe it was adequately assessed; there was a presumption from the macro side that growth rates would be much higher than they have turned out to be. If the project were looked at again on the basis on the current estimates of declining population and once the long painful deleveraging process completes far lower population growth figures are assessed then clearly a Luas line is what would be decided upon.

I think you’re making the mistake of assuming a straight line crash trajectory for the irish economy, the same mistake made in reverse during the bubble years.

A negative outlook would be that todays 6% ten year debt rate would continue for a prolonged period and that no public transport investment were possible.

What I advocate is that the Interconnector be built and that future population growth be accomodated over the next 20 years along its superior development corridors

1. Hazelhatch
2. Maynooth
3. South Meath
4. Coastal Fingal
5. Greystones

I also fully support a Luas route on the proposed MN route as it could be delivered for about a third of the cost if that much; that is adjusting to the end of the boom and ensuring the fiscal situation is in a robust enough state to put money into areas such as education. To advocate that €3bn be borrowed 6% with repayments of €180m a year for this is simply not realistic.

I am perplexed as to how you can equate the post below with what you have written

Hard not to welcome their submission as the third rail is clearly the only way to limit the signficant visual clutter produced by a vital public transport project. Yes it costs more money however it preserves the architectural integrity of a number of important historical buildings and with a consolidation in signage this area could be restored to a traffic calmed and pristine heritage environment that adds greatly to the amenity of the CC.

1. Traffic calmed = less busses
2. In previous posts I was the first person on this forum to use the phrase ‘shit goods’ which relates to guess what type of product?

You have ruined this thread so I will continue the post on the other one.