jungle
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@lexington wrote:
Walking across the McGarry Ni Éanaigh Architects designed Shandon Bridge, it was disheartening to see a structure, which opened to so much fanfare last year (2005), has become the subject of inexcusable vandalism in the form of graffiti and ill-maintenance. The 2 canted 273mm diameter CHS arches have been blanketed with a variety of “Karen and Jason 4ever” slogans (among the more legible stains).
Sadly, it’s not just this bridge. The new pedestrian bridge at the Mardyke is blighted with graffiti already.
I mentioned this in an earlier post, but someone has spray painted on to the new plaza in front of the Red Abbey. Considering the cost of both these developments, it’s pretty disheartening to realise that there is no maintenance plan for either public area.
The spray painting by the Red Abbey wouldn’t even be that difficult to remove, yet it’s been there for a number of weeks.
Aside from the physical damage done, graffiti can lead people to feel less safe in an area and if Cork City Council are serious about revitalising inner city areas, they’ll need to consider a systematic programme to deal with it.
It turns out it’s been there for three years
http://www.utvinternet.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=73142&pt=n
I hate to take away from Lex’s thought provoking post there, but I’d like to make a further point on CIE.
They are currently sitting on a pretty large, central site in the form of Capwell Rd bus depot. Selling this could free up valuable land close to the centre of Cork, enable them to move the bus depot to a more suitable location and the spare cash could be invested in renewing and expanding the city bus fleet.
@Radioactiveman wrote:
Cork City Council have refused Murrayforde Developments Ltd., permission to refurbish 37 and 38 Shandon Street and convert to 6 x i bed apartments with ground floor shop. In effect, the proposal was to remove party walls throughout the two buildings and to provide for one large retail outlet at ground floor.
No open space of any kind was proposed for the apartments, which were all under the required floor area (45 sq m).Are those the two dilapidated buildings you see as you look over North Gate Bridge?
@Saucy Jack wrote:
Also the ammount of unused poles on pavements etc. all over the city is multiplying.
And there is no attempt to rationalise their use. The ugliest of the lot are the CCTV poles. Is there no way these cameras could have been put up using existing poles or attached to the side of buildings?
If we’re going to get onto the subject of visual nuisances…
Does anyone make any attempt to control the amount of roadfront signage put in. It seems to be particularly bad along the Kinsale Rd. It would make you wonder why anyone pays for legitimate advertising space.
And the adverts themselves are unsightly. I’ll think particularly of the signs along Southern Rd and attached to the Southern Star. They are just too big for their location. I believe some North American cities (Vancouver from memory?) have much smaller permitted sizes than the ones we see around Cork.
Is the AA building retained behind that tree in the Emmet Place photo? If not what’s going between the Examiner Facade and the “doll house” building.
The paranoiac in me reckons that tree is hiding something…
@ewankennedy wrote:
:p Thanks PTB but the Grand parade plaza is the Frinilla scheme there near the monument, the old Grand parade hotel…they demolished it put up boardings and sold the apartments, excavated the site and a year later and nothing is happening!!!!! I know they bought the pub next to them to increase the size of the scheme but ya’d still think they’d have started some building work by now.
Talking of the monument…
Before main drainage, it was surrounded by grass and flower beds. Now, it’s surrounded by tarmac. Are they wwiting for Grand Parade Plaza to be built before they put it right? Is there some other plan? Or is it just going to be left like that?
BTW I also notice that we now have graffiti sprayed on the new stonework in the small square in front of the red abbey…
There’s a few factors they’ll take into account when deciding whether to build a station for AMGEN.
- Will the extra passengers gained be greater than the lost passengers because of the extra journey time to Midleton?
- Will it still be possible to get a train to Midleton and turn it round in 1/2 an hour? If they can’t it would mean buying extra trains.
- How will it affect the ability of trains to pass on the Midleton spur? The line from Glounethaune to Midleton will be single-track only. The current plan is to have a frequent service with trains passing in Carrigtohill station. On this plan a 15 minute frequency could be maintained. An extra station could scupper this idea
I’m sure Irish Rail could add a few more to those as well.
If they can get a satisfactory answer to all those questions, then it’s likely that the station will be built with funding coming from the overall development. The cost of a railway station is not extortionate. Monasterevin cost £2.5million for the entire fit-out with car-park and wheelchair lifts etc. Obviously, this figure will have risen, but it’s small money in the context of the overall proposal.
@A-ha wrote:
I can’t wait for the next big shopping development to open up in Cork, especially as they seem to be opening up in the city centre, rather than the suburbs. Habitat, H&M, TKMaxx and more shops that fit the Bershka, Jane Norman and Zara type profile are all expected to open up in either Cornmarket St. or else Academy St. It’s true Marks and Spencer were supposed to open up in Ballincollig, but I believe they were outbid by Dunnes (lucky us). I think Douglas Court has always been top of the list for best suburban shopping centre, even more so since Esprit and the like have opened up there. Blackpool is a very well designed shopping centre with a good mix of shops, especially since the retail park opened up next door. When are PC World, Currys and Halfords due to open up in Mahon Point?….. I thought they were to open in January.
It’s not the mix of shops that I have been complaining about with regard to suburban shopping centre deveopments.
Consider Douglas Court. Pedestriand access is appalling and people are unlikely to combine a trip to Douglas Court with a trip to the rest of Douglas. Partially, this is because of the still undeveloped land that lies between Douglas Court and Douglas East, but even if this was developed, Douglas Court will still be set back across its car park with two internal roads for pedestrians to cross in addition to the main Douglas Relief Road. Similarly, I can’t imagine anyone popping across to Blackpool village from Blackpool SC. Both developments are in their respective suburbs, but are not part of it.
I’ll give Mahon Point the benefit of the doubt, because it doesn’t have a significant suburban centre to connect to.
I can understand why developers would want this set up. After all, why would shopping centre operators want to provide free parking when people go and shop elsewhere. However, that’s where the planning report should come in to force more integration into existing retail environments.
On a side note, welcome back Lex, it’s good to see your information here again (albeit temporarily).
@Saucy Jack wrote:
Douglas has 2 large shopping centres across the road from each other which is a disaster.
Just to clarify.
I certainly wasn’t citing Douglas in general as how shopping centres should work. My point was that Douglas Shopping Centre has an entrance which opens onto the main street in Douglas. As such, it becomes a part of the suburb. Douglas Court is up there with Bishopstown Court for the title of worst suburban shopping development in Cork.
@POM wrote:
Was visiting Mahonpoint today and it struck me the car centric shopping complex (I wish the corporation had shown some foresight getting a rail line from the docklands through here and out to Carrigaline) though finished nicely inside with a good build quality, the biggest fault of its design is its failure to utilise its wonderful waterside location. Its a pity the centre wasn’t orientated to avail of what are essentially stunning views over the Atlantic Pond instead of providing its best window frontages facing a car park and traffic clogged road.
I’ve menioned it before, but I find the way shopping centres have been developed in Cork to be very poor. With the honourable exceptions of Ballincollig and Douglas, they do not integrate into the areas that they serve. They have all been allowed to develop into places that are only practically available to cars. Any pedestrian is forced to trek across massive car parks to get into them. It shouldn’t be too difficult to have the shopping centre opening onto the street with the car park behind it.
And that’s before the design is taken into account (Definitely no honour for Douglas SC there 😀 ).
I don’t think Trolley Buses offer any great capacity increase compared to a normal bus, so presumably their advantage is that they are electrically powered and cut down on pollution. Even so, I’d like the first priority to be having enough buses to operate every 10 minutes on the main routes.
As for rail expansion. possibly the most practical expansion would be to construct a spur off the Cobh line into Glanmire, Riverstown, Sallybrook etc. Of course, if land had been set aside when all the new estates were being built, it would have helped. Instead, it would now have to find a way through all the houses and the pretty hilly geography around there.
If they’d thought about it before building them, some kind of cut and cover tram lines could have been provided on the Blackpool bypass and the South Link Road. Now, it would probably cause too many headaches during construction.
Gradient depends on the route taken. A system that went out to Douglas, through Grange and up to the airport would not hit the direct gradients up the hill to the airport.
However, there are more practical destinations for light rail – Ballincollig, Mahon – that would attract more users, so the airport should be a longer term goal.
As mentioned, the bus to the airport need sorting out first. It needs to go at least every 15 to 20 minutes to be practical. It shouldn’t just head to the bus station, it should loop around the city centre, serving UCC and the railway station as well.
It should also be possible to get a bus from places other than the city centre. How about creating a 6A bus route and sending every third No 6 up to the airport. Douglas and Grange would get a service every half hour to the airport. A similar thing could be done for the number 9 from the Ballyphehane side (although that bus scarcely runs).
It’s important to remember that a large number of people who would use the airport bus service would be employees at the airport or the business park. A lot of those people live in the Grange area.
But then, come to think of it, when did Cork last get an increase in the bus fleet? Even the newest buses seem to have 2002 or 2003 plates on them.
According to RTE, the Mardyke pedestrian bridge has finally been opened today
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0201/cork.html
Is this for everyone to use now, or was this just a formal opening with the bridge still restricted to UCC staff and students?
Some others may be
Bombay – The Gateway to India
Agra – The Taj Mahal (Although how many people know the city?)
Rio de Janeiro – The statue of Christ the Redeemer
Edinburgh – Edinburgh Castle
Munich – The Olympic StadiumStrangely, when I was asking myself the question, I came up with the Fernsehenturm for Berlin, although on reflection, the Brandenburg Gate is a better answer.
Within an Irish context, would people say outside Dublin
Cork – Shandon Steeple
Galway – The Spanish Arch
Limerick – King John’s Castle
Waterford – Reginald’s Tower?
@Maskhadov wrote:
Its a shame that all the space isnt used up as much as possible. Most of country is low dentisty and we have enough green spaces. It probably wont but Cork has the potential to become a city of high rises (well only a few and compared to dublin). We really need a counter balance in this country to dublin and cork should be it !
I’ve no problems with high-rise (including buildings that are much taller than proposed). If anything high-rise should allow for some open space between buildings. Although the country as a whole has a large number of open spaces, they are a rarity in the centre of Cork (more so than Dublin even).
Also, from large cities like London or Paris to cities more similar in size to Cork, like Cardiff or The Hague, you’ll find that the areas of cities that have significant green space available are the ones with the highest value residential and commercial properties.
@Maskhadov wrote:
It all seems pretty low dentisty. There is a lot of green space.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There will have to be some allowance made for green space in the southern docklands. That’s more likely to happen in an area reserved for a public institution that in land for commercial development, where the developer will understandably be looking to maximise returns. The only pity would be that it’s at the extreme eastern end of the docklands, close to the existing park at the Atlantic Pond. It would be nice to counterbalance somewhere further west (although Victoria (Kennedy?) Park is pretty close to the western end of the docklands.
@Radioactiveman wrote:
I’m reliably informed that the oldest bridge in Cork is that one to the west of the existing St. Vincent’s pedestrian bridge (i.e. on the former Irish Distillers site).
I didn’t think of that one, although it certainly fits all my criteria even if it is a very small channel of the Lee.
It looks very old. Do you have any idea when it was built?
Incidentally, travelling 50 km out of the city, the bridge at Glanworth dates from the 13th century and is reputed locally* to be the oldest bridge in Europe that is still used for everyday traffic.
*Read into that what you will
@A-ha wrote:
Anyone able to hazzard a guess of how old Cork’s oldest bridge is?
All bridges or just the pedestrian ones? And presumably only ones over the Lee and only the current construction of the bridge.
As a complete guess, I’d say Clark’s Bridge is the oldest and that it dates from the middle of the 18th century.
