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Read this report if you want to be depressed about the sprawl. The population of county Dublin is actually falling at this stage – all the growth is in the rest of Leinster.
Tuskar tunnel, Shannon deep port and HSR
At least they made some attempt to stetch cost v. benefits of moving Dublin port and present some numbers for debate.
The Tuskar tunnel is an undergraduate civil engineer’s fantasy which simply could never be justified. Comparisons with the Channel Tunnel are not just naive – they make no sense at all. The latter connects two of the most populous countries in Europe and links, in a direct way, two metropolitan areas each populated by about 14 million people – and thats ignoring the other mainland destinations like Brussels. It makes about as much sense as the campaign by the 46 inhabitants of Inis Biggle for a cable car connection to Achill Island.
Neither does building TGV make any economic sense – we simply do not have the population concentrations in this country to make such a service viable. Maybe in 40 years time when the population of Dublin within the M50 is 4 million and that of Cork is 2, it might make economic sense to consider such a line. Given the real problems this country has regarding infrastructure in general, these fantasy proposals obfuscate the real issues in my opinion.
That’s terrible news. The last Georgian terrace north of O’Connell St. is going to be destroyed. Rutland St. is one of the last streets with Georgian integrity in the city. Even though half of them are gone, Patrick St. at least along that side still has a strong Georgian character too. Half of the other side of Patrick St. has been f*cked by a remarkably similar development 20 years or so ago (Arthur’s Quay shopping centre). The similarities are striking – a development company acquires 60 or 70% of an entire Georgian block of buildings, demolishes them and builds a shoping centre. The result will also be the same; in twenty years time people will be looking at old photos of the Rutland St. terrace wondering what sort of idiots thought that it would be an improvement for the city to replace half the terrace. Or it’ll be like the Dunnes centre on Sarsfield St. Handing over an entire city block to a single developer has a terrible history in Limerick. I can’t see any objections from the council offices at all given how hungry they are for rates.
crestfield, I believe there was plenty of indignation expressed concerning filling in the dock in the earlier thread. I think it’s a dreadful decision. I never go to Abbey productions anyway (and I normally see four or five plays a year) so I’m not as concerned about the precise location of the new Abbey but I hate the idea of filling the dock.
Sorry about that Graham. I often don’t attribute my quotes at all – I did in that case because I wanted to address a particular question to you.
If you get your wish and the B route is chosen, you will end up with the worst of both worlds – an angled bridge ruining the “water space” between O’Connell bridge and Butt bridge AND poles and wires on college green a few years later when the Lucan Luas gets built (coming down Dame St.)
I don’t think they will go for the insulated third rail system initially for financial reasons (as Morlan points out) but at least you’d have the option of installing such a system in the future (when the 2025 IAP for College Green is proposed). The bridge will be there forever.
Some of the most picturesque and admired of Irish towns and cities were planned so I don’t really buy the idea that the (effectively) unplanned expansion is what gives Irish towns and cities their “charm”. The complete opposite is the case in my opinion. I find that the unplanned outer ring of most Irish towns and cities is generally unattractive and that the small urban cores are the attractive and interesting bits. The latter in most cases were planned to some degree or other.
As a matter of interest, have we built any townscapes/city scapes in the last 100 years at all? All development in the country seems to have been once-off rural, suburban or infill in existing urban centres. This is simply unsustainable. We need to relearn how to build towns and cities like the continentals do.
I’m trying to switch the Luas discussion back here from the poll discussion as it’s becoming fragmented.
@Graham Hickey wrote:jimg I could not agree more with you about the bridge, it’s a horrible idea.
Graham, given that you voted B, are you saying that the poles and wires would cause more aethetic damage than rail bridge running at 65 degrees across the river east of O’Connell bridge? Such a bridge would be a permanent blot, like the loop line bridge while poles and wires have come and gone on the streets of Dublin.
It might sound dirigiste but you should use transport infrastructure to send people where you want to send them not where they want to go!
I disagree very strongly. If the government are spending money on any infrastructure, then it should maximise utility. Transport infrastructure has utility by allowing people to get to where they want to go. As for the idea that the Luas will transform Pearse street/Westland row into shopping streets, that’s a fantasy. The reason Pearse St/Wesland row are the way they are is because the buildings are owned and used by Trinity; running the Luas around them will do nothing to change this. And if you did change this, the nearby presence the Luas would be irrelevent. The Luas has hardly “regenerated” Abbey St. as a shopping destination, did it? It’s the same as it ever was – as are Harcourt St. and the other streets the Luas currently passes through.
The discussion on routes is now starting to become split between here and ‘Luas Central Corridor’.
Yes I agree. I will move to the other thread for further discussion.
By the way, one thing I noticed was that the three online polls on this subject (here, boards.ie and platform11 before it went belly up) had the same curious pattern of voting; the ‘A’ option led ‘B’ for a week or so initially until a sudden surge in votes for B put it ahead. I know internet polls are just a bit of fun but does anyone else find this a little bit odd?
Referring to aesthetics:
@Graham Hickey wrote:It’s an important consideration
So you’d be prepared to sacrifice whatever is left of the view of the river from O’Connell bridge? Do you not think that another rail bridge over the Liffey will (in combination with the bridges already there) in very close proximity to O’Connell bridge will completely destroy the arterial feel of the river. Also the bridge will have to be at a funny angle to join Hawkins st with Marleborough street. In terms of aesthetics, this will have a far more serious impact on the city centre than some overhead wires and poles. Seriously, how much do the crossing wires already on O’Connell St. hurt the aesthetics of the street? Hardly at all would be my opinion.
The funny thing is that there aren’t actually that many options when you think about it. Ok, we could have the Green line veer away from the city centre completely (who’d want to travel there anyway :rolleyes: ?) but if you want to offer those on the Green line city centre destinations, then you’re constrained by a limited number of choices of how to cross the Liffey. I actually hate route B because of the new bridge – an extra rail bridge in such close proximity O’Connell bridge doesn’t appeal to me at all. I think that having too many bridges will ruin the linear/arterial feel of having a river running through the centre of town. The loop line is ugly enough; the combination of a new bridge, the loop line, Butt bridge will almost completely hide the river from O’Connell bridge. However, I’m not sure why they didn’t consider routes over Grattan bridge or Butt bridge. The former, in particular, had many supporters in previous discussions about the link up. The latter I guess is part of the most central and important South-to-North traffic artuary in the city. I’m still strongly in favour of the A route but would prefer a route over Grattan bridge than the B route which is longer, slower and more redundant (given that the east end of the city centre is already well served by rail).
I’d be interested in seeing how a poll restricted to actual Luas users would turn out.
Wasn’t this announced ages ago? They’re going to fill in George’s Dock (I think? – the one that has that barge on it where they had the Footsbarn tent a while back) and build it there.
I looked briefly, Feargal. First of all your motivating assumption I think is wrong. Westmoreland St. and O’Connell St. are the widest in the city. A two track tram line uses the road width of one and a half traffic lanes. Westmoreland St. has six traffic lanes in parts, so claiming that running a tram line down it would take up all the road space is not even an exageration – at most it would lose 25%. Secondly I don’t agree with your priorities; your objections to the use of various streets seems to be on the basis that the street is required for cars and you propose instead to take entire streets from pedestrians along the Fleet St. axis (these are genuinely narrow streets, you’ll barely have room for a footpath).
Apollo house isn’t even in the picture and cannot be seen from college green.
If the building to the right with the “To Let” sign is the An Post building and the green building to it’s left is Hawkins House, what is the building behind Hawkins House towering over it?
Actually Graham, in my opinion, that “looming picture” highlights the fact that it’s the An Post office building and Apollo House (which I vaguely recalling hearing had contracted some sort of concrete disease a few years ago and was due – at the time – for imminent destruction?) which are the real “loomers” in that block. Hawkins House almost looks elegant and refined in contrast to them which is some acheivement.
Would those two buildings be the most brutalist buildings in the centre of Dublin?
Just replacing Hawkins House wont do a huge deal for that area of town. The An Post office building is, in my opinion, just as ugly and visually damaging. Hawkins House is mostly “contained” on its site. While I’ve a soft spot for the Screen cinema because I was a frequent patron, the way it’s set back from the street destroys the screetscape from many angles. For example, it would be just about possible to visually “terminate” Fleet St. if there was a properly shaped corner building on that the screen site. A curved corner building would have symmetry with the Garda Station, Doyles pub and the ever changing corner resteraunt at the Townsend end of D’Olier Street. I know currently there’s a vital traffic artery running through it but, who knows, maybe in a decade or so, that “square” of Dublin could be pedestrianised.
I won’t be chaining myself to Hawkins House if the wrecking balls arrive but I would have like to have seen one of the Ballymun towers refurbished and retained.
Ya Graham. Steel windows look great in a modernist way but they are not great functionally. I lived in a house with some steels and some sashes (which must have been 50 years older than the steels at least) and the old wooden sashes were in far better shape. The steel windows had no tolerance for rust or overly generous coats of paint (both of which seem to be inevitable after a couple of decades); either they jam shut or they’re impossible to close properly.
High rise (over 50m) will change the skyline so we must justify it – it should be in the right location and it should be a piece of art – (or perhaps in the opposite order?) otherwise what is the point?
For me, covering more of Leinster in unsustainable car-bound suburban semi-detached housing or building city centre apartment blocks which will be impossible to replace for hundreds of years should require far more justification than the building of a tall office building which will change the skyline. The former will be with us for 10 generations or more while the latter can be corrected within one.
The problem is, the crusade, or ‘higrise hard-on’ as Paul (administrator) has called it, prevents real debate on high buildings in this country, which would be very worthwhile.
Describing people who do not share your views on what heights are appropriate for development in the docklands in terms suggesting sexual perversion or religious fanaticism, hardly advances the debate on the subject, does it? The debate stops when people start generalising about the people they are arguing with or speculating about the motives and you’ve done this on a number of occasions in this thread. It goes nowhere. I could start a message starting with the claim “opponents of high-rise in Dublin want the city to continue to sprawl outwards” and continue in that vein but it wouldn’t do anything to improve the debate. Claiming that “proponents of tall buildings in Dublin don’t understand the difference between high-rise and high density” doesn’t do anything for the debate either.
They are fronting onto Pearse Street itself past Macken Street. They may be 6 stories to be honest, I’m not sure. It’d be nice to attach photo’s but I just saw them from a taxi and I don’t have a digital camera anyway. It’s the balconies which I found particularly jarring. If it wasn’t so cold, I’d consider cycling down that way this evening to give myself a chance to develop a proper sense of indignation and dismissiveness.
