Devin

SHORT-SIGHTED APPROACH TO LUAS DOES NOT WORK IN THE LONG RUN
Garret FitzGerald

On several occasions in 1997 I wrote in this column about Luas, Dublin’s light-rail tram system.

I argued that because of the volume of traffic that would be generated by the proposed line from Stillorgan (and eventually from Bray) to Stephen’s Green and onwards towards the airport, it should be designed and built as a full-fledged metro (i.e. underground) rail system through the city centre rather than as an on-street tram.
I based this argument on official traffic projections made in the early 1990s which I modified to allow for the implications of the Celtic Tiger ……..

……….. In addition, continuing it on-street to O’Connell Street would greatly congest the difficult Dawson Street/Nassau Street corner and the narrow street between Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland ………

In 1997 there was immediate strong opposition to my suggestion that the Luas project should be reviewed in the light of these facts.

However, after that year’s election, the PDs, returning to government after five years’ absence, grasped the half of my argument about congestion in the city centre. Yet they apparently did not grasp the even more crucial element of my case about traffic volumes.

As a result the new government was then persuaded to adopt a short-sighted, half-measure by stopping the Luas tram at Stephen’s Green instead of converting it into a metro running in a tunnel from just south of Ranelagh and onwards through the city centre.

As I predicted, Luas traffic volumes have already been much higher than planned.
Indeed, despite the termination of the tram service at Stephen’s Green, there have from the outset been problems of capacity shortage at peak hours ………

……….. Instead of taking the opportunity to create now a through metro service between south Dublin, O’Connell Street and the airport, the current plans involve spending money on the construction of two almost parallel Luas and metro lines between Stephen’s Green and O’Connell Street.

However, duplicating the new metro between Stephen’s Green and O’Connell Street by extending the over-ground Luas even further into the city will disrupt the whole south city centre for several years and, when completed, will slow the passage of two-thirds of our city bus services.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

hard on

Eh?

You do realise there was a fatal shooting there not too long ago, ctesiphon?! 😮

[align=center:28r90pyl]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/align:28r90pyl]

http://www.irish-architecture.com/news/2006/000061.html

Just on this ‘SoHo’ thing, there was a recent ‘Times architecture page devoted to all the new development in the Coombe area, which I found to be surprisingly approving in tone.

There is some good, appropriate new development alright, especially at the upper (Dolphin’s Barn) end of the new road. The 12-storey building by FKL Architects (above) looks brilliant – I am sure they are thrilled with it. It shows you how good a mid-tall building can be in the right place.

But the area around the Ardee Street crossroads at the lower end is a complete write-off in terms of the relationship of the new buildings with each other, and, more particularly, the marriage of the new buildings with the old – and needless to say the older buildings have come off worse. Protected Structures have been overwhelmed and dominated by huge new buildings in direct proximity to them. The former industrial brewing and malting character of the area has been all but wiped out by this aggressive new development. The argument of Dublin City Council planner Kieran Rose (as quoted in the piece) that the scale is needed to “contain” the new street is seriously deficient when applied to the sensitive Ardee Street area.

The Department of the Environment issued guidelines to planning authorities a couple of years ago, giving detailed advice on the considerations that need to be made when assessing proposals for new development affecting the curtilage and setting of Protected Structures, but it is doubtful these guidelines were so much as glanced at by Mr. Rose & Co. when processing plans for the Ardee Street part of the Coombe bypass.

I don’t know what the situation was with regard to 3rd party involvement, if any (I wasn’t around myself when most of it went through planning), but I’m pretty sure that the worst of these schemes would not have had such an easy time from An Bord Pleanala, had they been sent there.

If there is an upside to this, Ardee Street will stand as an example of how not to develop a historic corner of the city.

The HKR building at the northwest corner of the crossroads is gone even higher than before. Here it is with its original 6-storey design printed on the banner. But they’ve since gone back for one more storey (doubtless when they saw how monstrously big the KMD 7-storey one across the road was). This extra storey is under construction at the moment behind the scaffolding.

Designing a 6-storey composition then arbitrarily adding one more storey on top because the building across the road is gone up to that does not make good urban design!!
(Having said that, the internal areas and courtyards of the HKR scheme don’t look too bad.)

The new height of it now makes Ardee Court (foreground, discussed earlier) – which is quite a substantial development – look undersized. You can be sure the Ardee Court developers are pulling their hair out now wishing they’d tried to get one or two more floors than they did! Another 4 or 5 apartments maybe? All that missed lolly! 😡
What a mess!
(The Georgian houses on the extreme left and right were once huge in relation to most buildings in the area.)

Where having a number of different architects working on the redevelopment of an area should be a virtue – as for example at the West End of Temple Bar – here, it has just resulted in a retarded, uncoordinated mess.

This one right at the very bottom of the bypass is fine; it’s not bullying any historic buildings.

And what of the last undeveloped (southeast) corner of the Ardee Street crossroads? The approved scheme is a sensitive, appropriately-scaled one, and would have been a model for all the new development in the Ardee Street area. But will they be back for bigger heights now that most everything else around is gone so big? – It won’t surprise me.

I would like to see this idea getting the mass thumbs-down like the NCAD idea did.

Re: State of O’Connell Bridge:

Let’s face it though – improvement works to the bridge probably won’t begin until Luas comes across it (and it seems most likely that it will) – there would be no point in starting until then.

The Luas link is going through its red tape at the moment. It could be another year or two years before work begins. In the meantime, fill in the missing baluster with a concrete replica maybe ….!

I was there for the afternoon part of the conference.

Michael Collins (a former councillor?) gave an entertaining presentation on the ‘Sutton-to-Sandycove’ cycle lane around Dublin Bay, saying why it is a good idea and why it is needed etc. But – the million dollar question – he didn’t say what stage it’s at now or when it would be likely to proceed. This project has been on the cards now for years – it’s badly needed. How much more ‘adopting’ does it have to go through?!

When Collins was finished speaking and questions were being taken, some guy erupted from the sidelines. I couldn’t really make him out very well but he seemed to be a Sandymount resident savagely opposed to creating any more promenade at Sandymount (like the 1km stretch that is already there). What was his point? Anyone know? Every city in the world has promenades / esplanades / walkways beside the sea. It is typically Irish that you should just have a vicious road and nothing else right beside the sea.

Sutton-to-Sandycove website:

http://www.s2s.ie/

@StephenC wrote:

Changing the name seems such an easy way of covering over the less savory aspects of an area rather than actually dealing with them.

Ever noticed the way areas that are brutalised by traffic have more than their fair share of institutions for the disadvantaged? The two seem to go hand in hand. So in the immediate vicinity of Christchurch you have the Back Lane Homeless Shelter, the Castle Street methadone & traveller’s welfare centre, the Lord Edward Street medical card office and the Merchant’s Quay drug treatment centre. Grafton Street wouldn’t want them anyway!

I am in the area most days and I don’t actually mind the junkies and the winos – they have a humanising effect on the area (the opposite effect to the traffic). The junkies are quite a benign sort – not likely to mug you. But obviously it’s not an ideal way for anybody to be, and it doesn’t look good in front of the tourists.

But I think that the social problems in the area are nothing compared to the traffic problems.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Above all though, I just cannot believe for a second that Trinity would even think about attempting to do this, in spite of their record elsewhere on campus. These windows are its most prized asset outside of the Library building – it’s akin to cutting the pages of the Book of Kells down to size beacause they won’t fit in the display case.
Hence I remain fairly optimistic that nothing untoward is going on, and that all the glass dates from a variety of periods – however naive it may be…

A hi-profile instance of replacement of Georgian sashes/old glass with new sashes and fake-old glass would not be unknown, for e.g. in the rear bows of the National Gallery Georgian house:

(Re Trinity work: an inspection has been made by DCC Conservation Office – that’s all the info I have at the moment)
.