Andrew Duffy
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The opposition is because the motorway will go through the valley (“destroy it”, of course), avoiding everything. Some protestors are concerned that the legendary five roads from Tara will be disturbed – come on, people! Will we never tunnel or bridge the Straits of Gibraltar for fear of disturbing Atlantis?
A stretch of the M6 in the lake district in Britain won National Trust awards for enhancing the landscape. A well built road meandering through a beautiful valley can be stunning in itself, but it also opens the beauty of the area up to hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise never have seen it.
I notice also that there are no provisions for cycle lanes on harcourt street
Cars to be banned from Harcourt St due to Luas:
That aside, what did happen to the plans to put a cycleway beside the lines?
Funnily enough, the M3 design is recent enough that the busy interchanges are properly designed.
The save Tara campaign has a pretty bad website here:
Find the working links – it’s fun! Not only is the proposed scheme not described, neither are the campaigners’ suggested alternatives, if they have any.
http://www.dublincity.ie/traffic/sign_guide.htm
Edit: just to make it clear, in the first case (sign 1), the orbital route continues straight ahead; but in the second case (sign 3) it continues to the left. The white signs indicating that you are approaching an orbital route work better.
The order of the panels is always the same, regardless of which direction the orbital routes go. They are close to useless as orbital route signs, and not very good as general signs.
The signs don’t tell you which direction stays on the orbital route. They are pretty useless without the map that is available in really tiny form on the Dublin City Council’s website.
The M50 is supposed to be an orbital motorway; the final part will go partially underground from Sandyford to the port tunnel. The South Eastern motorway being built (sporadically) at the moment will be called the M50 until it is presumably renamed M11.
It will be called the M50, as will presumably the small stretch of M1 between the tunnel and the current M50/M1 junction, which will hopefully be upgraded by then to prioritise through traffic. Tolls will be charged for cars and bikes, whereas trucks will be free since they will not be allowed on the quays. Whether overheight trucks will be banned or the tunnel heightened we haven’t been told yet.
Back on topic 😉 –
Does it cost that much more to install lights at a junction that to dig up and redesign for a roundabout?
Roundabouts, or at least the real ones and not those little bumps that are really for traffic calming, cost significantly more than traffic lights, but have about twice the capacity. I know that is hard to believe, but it is the case.
Two quickies:
US roundabouts – there are plenty, and there are also loads of a horrible device called a traffic circle that appears designed to cause accidents. Check this out:
http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/fall95/p95a41.htm
You should check out the terrible interchanges that exist between freeways and surface streets in the US as well. Try the single-point urban interchange (scroll down a bit):
http://www.kurumi.com/roads/interchanges/spui.html
… or this take on the most common motorway-motorway interchange in the UK, the three-level stacked roundabout:
http://www.kurumi.com/roads/interchanges/volleyball.html
… and there is of course the most common full interchange in the US (and Germany), the cloverleaf – poor capacity, low speeds and weaving traffic all in one. It’s probably better than this though:
… and any other interchange design with overtaking-lane exits, of which we are getting a few along the M50.
Italian autostrade – these are not world-class; they have extremely narrow lanes, no hard shoulders and poor interchanges. When combined with Italian driving, they are amongst the most intimidating roads you’ll ever encounter. In fact, people who have experience of excellent British or American motorways and dismiss ours as pathetic may be surprised by the poor quality of much of Europe’s network.
Bear in mind that O’Connell Bridge House is forty years old this year, so we already have some indication of how time will affect people’s feelings about it. I quite like it (although I hat the beer advert), a lot don’t, but I imagine most people don’t really care because it’s been there so long.
Which one is HOK’s building on Nassau Street?
It’s not really Irish Rail’s fault that the Sandyford estate was built beside the Harcourt Street train line and UCD wasn’t. There is a line planned to go past DCU, isn’t there?
Completing line B would make it viable if the proposed Ranelagh-Airport metro line were built – the tram would go from Ranelagh to O’Connell St., which is about three miles or so. As it is, if that metro line takes over line B south of Ranelagh, the digging up of Harcourt St. has been mostly in vain.
Incidentally, I have read that EU law prevents dual running of trams and heavy-rail trains on the same track – is this correct? A tram is, after all, still a train.Which one of the four surfaces is used depends on whether traffic needs to share the line:
Tarmac – if traffic needs constant access to the line, usually at crossings of for access
Dark cast concrete – if traffic must be able to mount the tracks to pass an obstruction
Cobbles – if traffic is never allowed on the line
Light cast concrete (pretty shoddy, imho) – when a footpath crosses the lineI think the tracks on the reservation of the Naas Road and along the M50 are just tracks, as are the raised tracks on the southside. Is this the case?
This is the same building. It was described in the planning application as being 16 stories over a 3 storey podium, but its really 13 over 3. I doubt the planners had any problem understanding the mistake.
Agreed. It’s better than what’s there, but he could have tried harder. The other large buildings are much better – The Civic Centre is particularly good, the nearing-completion Gateway apartment buildings are OK and the shopping and sports centres under construction are both decent.
How is Dublin, with its dereliction, vomit, litter, vomit, poor arcitecture and unfriendly populace any different to any other city its size? The buildings are shorter, but that is not something that makes it special. Rather, a lot of the architectural mistakes are a result of the decades of interesting developments being crushed because of scale or appropriateness breeding a set of developers who build the cheapest box to contain the desired amount of floorspace possible, because anything out of the ordinary is too much trouble. Now, I can understand not wanting interesting modern architecture in the heart of Venice or Rome, but what is special about Dublin?
Mixed up Hankcock Center and Trump Tower, but both are fine examples of the hermetically sealed skyscraper apartment (or mixed-use) building – and of how money doesn’t necessarily buy a good quality of life.
Firstly it is a public project and it will contain social housing
My oh my, you are a snob.
Someone here has never lived in an apartment building:
– You are not allowed place advertising boards on the building. This is why for sale boards are all clustered together around the entrance to the development. You aren’t allowed repaint the exterior or hang washing on it either.
– An apartment needs a few things that an office doesn’t necessarily; namely windows that open and let in as much light as possible – most apartments only have windows on one of four sides. Balconies are also very desirable. Therefore, it is not possible to build a practical apartment building without visible floors. The Hancock Tower in NYC is not a practical apartment building.
Finally, damning an unbuilt modern building by suggesting it will have the same build quality and suffer from the same lack of maintenance as a 1960s system-built social flat complex is pathetic. Ballymun is not the definition of high-rise architecture; its buildings are not even tall, and the design is certainly never going to be repeated.
Diaspora, if you want to be treated respectfully you could try answering people’s questions respectfully. Responding to a query about a very poor joke you made regarding Tom Parlon’s agricultural background with some nonsense about not understanding the subtleties of it is not respectful. Furthermore, wondering in type how people graduate is not respectful. I hold a first class honours degree – do you?
In the meantime, if anyone finds more information about this development, could they post it here?
