GrahamH

One thing I would just want to say is that I hope any of the images don’t come across as jumping on the reactionary ‘outrage’ bandwagon. Having used the North Earl St junction most mornings since it was laid, it was instantly notable how vague the paving parameters were and potential for danger.

It must be said that when standing on the median side, individuals are much more aware of the roadways by definition of having had to cross a carriageway on one side of the street to get onto the median in the first place; hence these pedestrians are much more cognisant of the traffic lanes. Saying that, there is still room for improvement by redefining the roadway.
For some reason approaching from Henry St seems to be less of a problem than from Nth Earl St as people do tend to stop here – yet to figure out exactly why. It could be the huge volume of people at this GPO corner that makes pedestrians more aware of the crossing.

Perhaps the use of the term ‘ripping up’ was unwise earlier – essentially all the job would involve is the lifting of a small amount of granite cobbles and their replacement with simple tarmac, in line with the rest of the roadways.
It seems to me one of the main reasons this granite was laid down was to cover up the fact of just how narrow the median is around the Spire – so small infact that the Spire base fills the entire width of the median, even forcing the bollards beyond where is desirable. Having same granite paving on the roadway conceals just how narrow the space really is…
Not sure what could’ve been done about this though.

On the related issue of buses, I have never seen a more ridiculous scene in all my life as I saw at 9.30 this morning on O’Connell St. No less than at least 25 buses were inching along in a slow-moving procession down one side of the street alone! – the eastern southbound carriageway. ONE side of the street! Crossing over from the bridge outside the Irish Nationwide there you could see them stretching far into the distance the whole way along the thoroughfare, all piling up at various traffic lights. It was unreal!
The vast majority of course being Dublin Bus, with about 4-5 private operators, all forming a two-storey broken yellow and blue wall between us and the other side of the street. It really has got beyond a joke.

Also had the amusement yesterday of seeing this driver pull out outside Eason’s only to rip his mirror off on the parked bus in front – much to the delight of passers-by 😀

The driver meekly scurried out, picked it up and chucked it back into the bus and continued on 🙂

Whereas I’d agree with your frustrated sentiments on a broader level PDLL – in the case of O’Connell Street DCC have been very astute and forward-thinking in planning underground service provision during the IAP works.
Indeed this is what is making so much of the project take so long: the roadways are being gouged downwards to a depth of several feet to cater for the renewal of most if not all services. There are still cast-iron water mains down there believe it or not (as with much of the city) all of which, along with telecoms and gas, are being renewed with sturdy plastic equivalents which hopefully will last another 100 years with any luck.

Regarding the pedestrian crossing, clearly TV3 News will have a piece on it this evening:

There is quite a lot of interest amongst the public at the crossing now, with people looking along the ‘kerbline’ etc.

This is the view presented to the individual when approaching from North Earl St – yoo can see how there is confusion:

Indeed even as I was standing there for about 30 seconds, no less than two women walked right out onto the roadway without even noticing and then jumped back in again!

The visibility from the other side is a little better given the bollards and the nature of the median, but still isn’t great:

From certain angles the different areas are simply invisible:

The difference with the Plaza is the marked increase in levels which makes the roadway stand out more, whereas at the crossing the pavement just flows right into it.

And just another pic of that pointless granite paving on the roads – sorry but it really bugs me! It’s just thrown down for the sake of it and erodes the otherwise strong lines of the paving scheme on the street – blandly ‘plazafying’ it.

Rip it up and lay down tarmac; the existing border of the pink granite and basalt(?) around the Plaza is more than adequate a ‘buffer’ between the two.

It is a problem, though with older people it seems rather than the population at large (not that this makes it any less a problem). Also dare I say it’s a female ‘issue’ too – sorry but women do tend to walk about the place with their heads in the clouds, nattering away or moving from one shop window to the next 🙂
Of all ‘incidents’ I have seen or heard of on O’Connell Street, they’ve all been women…

But I fully agree that you do have to have your wits about you in urban spaces, especially in a major civic location like outside the GPO in the heart of a capital city – you expect ‘unorthodox’ paving schemes! The Plaza, whilst somwhat awkward in the context of an avenue-like street, works well overall and the paving on the carriageways and median is beautiful.

Peter and Frank I don’t mean replacing the Plaza paving with tarmac (are you mad? :)) – rather these ridiculous stretches of wishy washy granite slapped down on the carriageway either side of the Plaza:

It is this utterly pointless paving that causes so much confusion at the Spire junction, and likewise to a lesser extent outside Clery’s.
Not only is is unsafe, it dilutes the potential stark contrast between the street’s liner roadways and the civic plaza space as they merge. Hence the Plaza tends to spew out bloatedly beyond its lime-treed boundaries into the rest of the street.

Rory makes a good point I think about the Pillar – blame the Trustees for the congestion at the current crossing (still going I think!). It really is something that just has to be put up with, though it could be made safer by laying tarmac instead of that granite to define the pavement and median from the carriageways.

I think you have it spot on about the Spire in the middle of the crossing – more in a sec.

But regarding the safety of this crossing, the ‘issue’ here is essentially where do you draw the line between personal pedestrian responsibility and that of the authorities in a busy urban environment like O’Connell St. It’s a difficult distinction to make, especially with the scheme that is now extant in the middle of the thoroughfare; not only do you have the Plaza to blur the lines, you have the mini-square as it were of the Spire too. It all makes perfect visual sense when walking along O’Connell St, but suddenly arriving at it from the exclusively pedestrian areas that are Henry and North Earl Streets a little more is needed than pedestrians having their wits about them. They need to be expressly informed.
I think an indication of the CC’s acceptance of this being a dodgy place is the reactionary painting of arrows and eyes onto the kerbline many months if not over a year after they were laid.

As Greg says, there’s a perfectly simply solution – put a kerb back in and lay black tarmac as present on the rest of the street – it not only makes the arrangement so much safer, it is more pleasing to the eye.

I find it somewhat ironic that the ‘boulevard effect’ was singled out in the IT article as the cause for the confusion – in fact precisely the opposite is the case. If the CC were not so intent in swathing the street in granite ‘because it looks expensive’ and instead focused on maintaining the coherent linear design of the street, i.e. a proper ‘boulevard effect’, by laying black tarmac and kerbstones in tandem with the rest of the traffic lanes on the street, the current delineation problem would not be an issue.

It’s not necessarily fair to put all the blame on the City Council given the very difficult unique nature of this major intersection, but has anyone else found it slightly ironic that the world’s tallest sculpture is plonked right in the middle of one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in Europe?!
It’s a major problem I think, not in light of the recent incident, but having watched how this crossing operates nearly every weekday since it was first built.

You have a wide stretch of pedestrians both walking towards each other on the median but they are forced to funnel themselves to either side of the Spire. As a result they often cannot see where they are going, and often continue on walking past the kerbline on the other side – the Spire as an obstacle and all the bollards help generate this confusion.

Then there’s the hoards of tourists and young people standing around, leaning against the Spire, standing about in the way, taking photographs by the hundred etc etc – all contributing to the confusion, and all happening right in the middle of a major crossing! At times it is nothing short of disasterous when there’s big crowds – refusing to move, standing around in face of swarms of people trying the make both sets of lights either side.
Also the bollards get in the way when there’s large crowds – even knowing they’re about the place I’ve still split myself on them with the other people concealing them, yet another aspect of the Spire that ought not to be in place in the middle of a busy crossing – would you line them along the O’Connell Bridge junctions?! Or what about a string of bollards on the kerbline of College Green?!

In the evenings when it is dark and it is busy, I have found the Spire crossing to be downright dangerous – it can be chaos in the winter, and especially if it is raining and you’re trying to avoid slipping on the lethal base of the Spire. You cannot see the kerbline, you cannot see the bronze base, there’s people milling everywhere and the bollards disappear in the dark
But above all what ought to go I think is the Spire base – it is filthy by day, trip-overable by night, and a deathtrap in the rain.
It also adds further confusion to the paved area around the Spire. You might as well run paving right up to it anyway – make it ‘rise from the ground’, whilst preserving the sanity of pedestrians using what is a pedestrian crossing.

It’s a difficult thing to control though admittedly – it’s become a ‘hang out space’ and major tourist attraction right in the heart of a major (and small) intersection. No wonder so many people elect to jaywalk the Plaza.