ctesiphon
Forum Replies Created
- Posts
The choice isn’t between corporate-sponsored banners and tatty clingfilm-and-sellotape. It is possible to erect shrouding that doesn’t look tatty but that equally doesn’t scream ‘you need this cologne’. Didn’t anybody see the pope’s funeral on tv? One of the buildings facing onto St Peter’s Piazza was fully shrouded with a simple but decent replica of the building it was shrouding. Probably somethng to do with a city council that values the environment of which it is the guardian and, more importantly, one that is resourced sufficiently to carry out its tasks.
And anyway, I kinda like the current shrouding- sort of a Christo feel to it.
And there’s no shame in doing work to a building and thus using standard shrouding.I think it’s unfair to say we ran our shrouding friend out of town- he seemed to leave of his own accord. Also, I got the distinct impression he was touting for business on these threads- his lack of input into non-shrouding related threads gave me this notion. You might say no harm in that, but it does tend to colour one’s impressions of a person’s opinions. And I’d debate the fact that his shrouds were:
@jimg wrote:visually pleasing
Eyecatching certainly, but Calvin Klein ads make me feel a bit queasy. All that wholesomeness…
A PhD student in the Dept of Planning and Environmental Policy in UCD (used to be Dept of Regional and Urban Planning) did a thesis on parking in Dublin. I think his name is Andrew Kelly. It was on parking pricing afaik, but it might have the info you require, or at least some useful leads.
Excerpt from an Irish Times article by Paul Cullen from early June (forgot to note the date on my cutting).
TRANSPORT AND TRAFFIC CHIEFS CLASH OVER PROMOTION OF CYCLING IN CITY
The head of the Dublin Transportation Office, John Henry, and the director of traffic at Dublin City Council, Owen Keegan, have clashed over the city’s efforts to promote cycling.
Mr Keegan yesterday criticised the promotion of cycle lanes, saying they had failed to achieve their primary objective of halting the decline in cycling.
Promoting cycle lanes was the most controversial traffic measure promoted by the council, with “huge levels of opposition” from the general public, he told the Velo-City conference on urban cycling.
Mr Henry said Mr Keegan was being pessimistic and expressed confidence that “we’ve turned the corner” in relation to cycling numbers. Increased investment in recent years in a 300km network of cycle lanes around the city would eventually encourage more people to use bicycles as a means of transport.
Mr Keegan said an exclusive reliance on improving cycling infrastructure “does not work”. While the publichad accepted and were often enthusiastic about improvements in pedestrian and bus facilities, this was not the case with cycling infrastructure.
Reducing the number of car lanes to facilitate the installation of cycle tracks at busy junctionshad resulted in massive opposition.
Local politicians stood for election every five years and there was a limit to the number of “unpopular interventions” that could be imposed on them, Mr Keegan told a conference debate on transport in Dublin.
“We have failed to sell the cycling project to the general public. They have bought into other aspects of traffic management but not into cycling.”
Cycling was suffering a haemorrhaging of young users and if this continued, “there won’t be any cyclists because young people won’t know how to cycle”.
I said it in my first post to this thread, but maybe it bears repeating- cycle lanes must be provided in the interests of cyclists (rather than to facilitate motorists) and they must be maintained. It’s poor design, lack of respect by other road users for the lanes, broken glass, parked cars etc. that are off-putting for potential users. Solve those problems and I’d venture a change will come. It’s not a case of providing the bare minimum, it’s a case of making it an attractive option- a viable alternative.
Even if people get a bus from home to town, they could still use a bike for around-town travel. This might interest IBEC- there’s an economic advantage to be gained from bike lane provision, not just the economic problems they see in reduced car access to the city centre.…and all the buildings/works in Britain that were built by Irish migrant labour.
If they British lay claim to monuments on foreign soil, they should uphold their duty of care- it would solve many of our funding problems.Quite right, PDLL. Time has moved on.
Cripes Morlan- that sure is a fine example indeed. And not just concrete anti-terrorist blocks in the way, but well-meaning photographers too. 🙂
Devin-
Those are some good examples of locations for contra-flow lanes. However, each has a couple of problems. First, it would take more than just laying some red tarmac to turn them into bike lanes. The junction leading to each would also require a comprehensive redesign to allow bike traffic free passage onto the lane. I’m thinking specifically of the Bleeding Horse, where one or other traffic stream is always moving, and where bikes would have to cross four or five lanes to access any contra-flow.
Secondly, installing a bike lane at all of the locations mentioned would require permanently removing kerbside parking- what are the odds?
As you said yourself, nothing short of a comprehensive redesign would suffice. I think we’ve established by now that this piecemeal intervention mentality of putting in bike lanes only if they fit (and don’t upset the cars) has not worked.
However, as long as Eoin Keegan is in charge at DCC I think it will be an uphill battle. I get the feeling that cycling provision is too much of a headache for him- witness his Velo-City comments in May about the bike lane network having failed. No, Mr Keegan, it is you who has failed.
Maybe DCC need a cycle planning officer?I’ll say it again- it’s one thing to have a neutral effect on behaviour, quite another to create the conditions for subconscious self-endangerment. The designers made a mistake. It’s not a case of dictating to them, it’s a case of them observing some basic environmental-psychological facts.
There’s no reason to presume that a new paving scheme would be any less well cared for than you think the current one will be.I’m guessing he means the Lutyens War Memorial at Islandbridge?
I note from the quote Paul chose that the wording is
…AND WHAT WE SHOULD SACRIFICE, VOLUNTARILY
So it’s by choice rather than by force of nature, at least in those cases.
Interesting premise for an article, and questionable use of a tragedy for such ends. How would one ‘save’ Tara (or any other fixed-location entry on the list) from a Katrina-like event? Encase them in concrete a la the Wax Museum? :rolleyes:
You wouldn’t be trying to patronise me there by any chance, TP, would you?
When I write something in a post it is carefully considered, so I resent being told what it is that I mean. For the record- No, I don’t mean “people who deliberately ignore traffic lights and then choose to use lame duck excuses”, I mean exactly what I said originally (see above)- I mean that features of the environment in O’Connell Street have created cicumstances whereby people who would normally not walk out in front of a moving bus do so because those environmental features not only are not as legible and unambiguous as they should be, they also cause much of the behavioural confusion by virtue of their design, i.e. they aren’t just failing in their task of assisting law abiding citizens to adhere to the rules of the road, they are in fact actively encouraging people to engage (subconsciously) in dangerous behaviour that other designs would not. Or, put yet another way, some people choose to jaywalk, some people have jaywalking thrust upon them. That is what I mean.
Re. your second point- I was being mildly facetious in my original post about dreamers, but this arose as a result of your use of the phrase “the head in the clouds division”. This phrase, in my experience, is normally reserved for society’s dreamers, and I do firmly believe that without dreamers, by which I mean people who look at the world and see it not as it is but as it might be, our society would long ago have stagnated. I don’t deny that the balance is more towards perspiration than inspiration, but without the initial spark the perspiration is worth far less than it otherwise would be.
To take your original point seriously, I still disagree. Society must take into consideration the “the head in the clouds division”, if by this you mean those who have been distracted by the environment. Had you said that society should not take into consideration those who wilfully ignore the rules or environmental cues with which they are familiar, then I would be in agreement with you. It is not, nor will it ever be, possible to legislate for every eejit me feiner who, say, knowingly dices with vehicular traffic when it has right of way.I don’t know whether the women last week deliberately and knowingly crossed while the traffic had right of way, but I do know that many others have done it accidentally.
Incidentally, sad to report that the badly injured woman passed away last night as a result of this incident.
And he makes the mistake (as many others have done) of calling the Spire a memorial sculpture. It’s not- it’s just a sculpture. To be a memorial, it has to be in memory of something, no?
Though why we’re even dignifying this nonsense with our ire is beyone me. He was a force for good once, but I fear those days have passed based on this evidence- almost as if he rang his mates and asked “What do the plain people of Dublin not like these days?” Is he thinking of running in the local elections or something?
@newdecade wrote:
Do you know anything else about the tower in Malahide? Was it sold? Is it the one near Sutton?
There’s another Martello Tower currently undergoing renovation (though that word falls short of describing the extent of the works) on Killiney Hill Road near Ballybrack village.
@newdecade wrote:
Is the house between railway and canal just before you get to Marino? It’s green and white little cottage???!
And Harry Crosbie, who lives at Grand Canal Docks warehouse, is that the warehouses near Bolands Mill?I think the lady of the Happy Ring House moved out so they are no longer residents of O Connell Street….
The little house is on the left as you go out of town over a bridge- you’re probably right that it’s the Marino road, but I can’t be sure.
I think Harry Crosbie’s place is on the spit of land that separates Grand Canal Dock from the Liffey, facing onto the dock (Hannover Quay?). Boland’s Mill is on the other side of the dock.
I heard on the radio recently- Pat Liddy interview- that the lady was still living on O’Connell Street, though it could have been recorded some time ago.Lest anyone thinks I’m giving away personal details of the above owners, all of this info is not only in the public realm, it has been broadcast on the radio in the last couple of years too. I’m no stalker. 🙂
Most countries that are snow-bound for 4 months of the year have developed means to deal with this fact. If Ireland was snow-bound it might be a different story, though…
In New York, for example, it is the responsibility of building owners to maintain the pavement outside their buildings- I believe if someone slipped on the pavement the fault lay with the owner for insurance purposes. The first sight that used to greet me on leaving my building on a snowy morning was our maintenance man dilligently shovelling snow into banks, so there was always a buffer between path and street, with gaps left in the banks at crossing points and junctions. If anything, it made walking safer as there were fewer places at which to cross the street and there was that buffer between people and traffic.I think you could double or treble the lights at this O’Connell Street junction and still not solve the problem- it is so much more than just that. As I said above, it is the designed environment that confuses the users, rather than simply users choosing to ignore the green man.
If society catered for the head in the clouds division all the time nothing would get done
There is a counter argument to this, which is if society didn’t listen to dreamers then no progress would ever be made (and O’Connell Street would never have changed, women would never have got the vote, the world would still be flat, &c. &c.). 🙂
@kefu wrote:
The great hall in City Hall
Been done before, Kefu. Richview Ball 2005. Sorry. 🙂
Apologies for the quality, but it’s an ‘enhanced’ version of a too-dark pic.
They’re planners’ heads in the foreground, architects to the rear. (As it should be! :rolleyes: )Sure thing, TP.
The ‘confusing ground treatment’ is the granite paving that runs across the carriageway (as shown in Graham’s pictures, above, particularly his last one of 20th Sept), giving people coming from North Earl Street the impression that they have right of way, which as we have established is not the case.
The ‘visual distraction’ is the Spire itself, as I said in my original post. This was a reference to an earlier post which mentioned that The Spire was designed to draw the eye of the approaching viewer upwards as they got nearer- the original words coming from Ian Ritchie himself, I believe.
This combination has probably contributed a considerable measure of confusion to much of the pedestrian activity in the vicinity of the Spire.Paul-
In this case, it seems that it is the fault of Urban Capital rather than the client. If anything, this decision is designed to expedite a result rather than further postpone one. From the little I have gleaned from media reports, it would seem that DLHC might be happy to proceed with the ‘victorious’ scheme using different project managers. But as I say, it’s from the media that I have got my info, so there could be ulterior motives that are bubbling below the surface- who knows.So I see 22nd September is EU car-free day. I see also that Dublin is not participating. Presumably they think nobody can be “In town, without my car!” for a day, or even a few hours. Congrats to Cork and Dundalk though, for at least trying.
I guess we’ve done alright without DCC’s help for long enough now, one more day won’t hurt. Are they afraid it might give us… y’know… notions?TP-
You seem to think that “driver/pedestrian/cyclist behaviour” is independent of environmental stimuli? Surely behaviour is a result of cues in the environment? What has been said above is that pedestrians have been misled by a combination of confusing ground treatment and visual distraction (in the form of the Spire)- a theory I would fully endorse.
What is it about College Green / BoI that has caused the accidents, if it’s not “driver/pedestrian/cyclist behaviour” you cite in the case of O’Connell St? I can’t place the blind spot you mention. In fact, can a curved building have one? 😉
I’d think that, if anything, the behaviour:environment ratio would be leaning more towards the behaviour in College Green than in OCS, i.e. it’s less the ‘fault’ of the designed environment.Graham-
Instructive pictures indeed. I’m usually paying too much attention to the traffic and trying to stay on my mount to notice such effects as that perceived from North Earl Street. And what about those discreetly placed service hatches? Such subtlety.
But what are the chances of DCC admitting their error? Or risking further alienating the public with more works?Shhhhhhh jimg, you’ll blow my cover! 🙂
That’s a very good point about general danger. I fully agree with you about the examples cited, i.e. left-turning cars, cars exiting from side roads and doors opening (on the last one, I think tinted/reflective windows, and maybe even oversized headrests on seats, should be banned, as they obscure a cyclist’s view of the driver or passenger who might be about to open a door). I’d add to your list cars coming in the opposite direction and turning right across stationary traffic- bikes on the inside will still be moving, especially if there’s a bike lane, but cars just sail on through. My brother ended up on a car bonnet on Pearse St a couple of years ago for just this reason.
And your point about behind/in front is spot on too. I’ve often wondered what the value of a back light is (and I do have one)- wouldn’t we be better with two front ones?When I mentioned black spots, I was thinking of specific locations that are particularly bad- we’ve established by now that city cycling is a dangerous habit. Not to knock your suggestions, Richards, all of which are on the money, but more along the lines of your Stephen’s Green one was what was on my mind. I guess what I was thinking of was trying to establish a kind of catalogue of spots at which we must pay extra attention.
Turning right from Leeson St onto SSG- the merging is a disaster, so I usually lurk among the ‘bollards’ between the two streams until a break occurs.
As you mention, jimg, Pearse to Dame requires a brass neck and a (speed) kick like a mule.
