jamesmcbennett

Presuming you’ve heard of google earth, if not just type ‘google earth’ into google and click 1st link, follow promts till you get the program sorted, and then just find Temple bar, if not just go into UCD Arch library but you have to pay for them.

Firstly the idea of not doing things correct in the past is no reason for not doing anything in the future. Yes, in this country the M50 was decades over schedule, the port tunnel was not correctly planned, the red cow roundabout is a joke, but ireland can learn from its mistakes just like anyone can and move to tommorow.

Now to address the PD’s proposal,
It is very very ambtious, but I don’t have a problem with that, many projects in history of the world have been very ambitious, to give an example of something in my head, the london underground was decribed as radical back then as us travelling in flying cars today. Ambitious and radical ideas can be very good, that is never a negative point as some of you mention. If it’s not feasible that is another thing, It would be uneconomical for our govt. to splash out on a Mag-lev billion euro train Dublin-Cork in less than an hour when the population does not support it. This proposal is possibly unfeasible in its present state.

In Saudi Arabia, one very good move by cities was that truck traffic was banned in city limits during hours of daylight, this forced the truck traffic to travel during night, and kept traffic flow moving during the day, It was an extremely sucessful. The proposal to move the port would have the benefit.

The port tunnel would not be redunant or dead weight, as if ‘manhattan’ appeared on the docklands, the traffic flow would need a high level of infrastucture.

The current Transport 21 plan faces so many problems by going through the city centre, if dublin revolved more around the docklands, we could for the first time plan ahead and make an underground, without bearing a fraction of the 34bn needed for transport 21

The georgian dublin would remain, and be part of history in 100 years time, and not be dotted with high-rise blocks needed for dublin’s expansion. (the listed buildings would remain, but beside them new places would be developed and on large-scale) The city is growing and it has to grow somewhere, it will probably grow vertically in the city centre, ruining somewhat of what is there. This could be saved if the docklands land became available.

As previously mentioned, dublin port is near full capacity, and will be at full capacity by 2008, we are a growing city and a growing economy.

Most importantly, why is the port in the city centre? Purely and simply for reasons that are historically based. It would save time for truck drivers, essentially delivery costs to port should drop dramatically and access is much easier, city traffic would flow better. Nowadays, transport has improved, and there is no reason to have such valuable land taken up by a land use that is transferable, I wonder how the new port would change north dublin, but its impact on dublin city centre would be extremely positive.

J