Keen
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Cable cars over the liffey? Where do we think we are, Barcelona? Please please do not let this go ahead, the river is narrow, filthy and would ruin our view of the quays completely.
All i can picture is an RTE news report outside the Four Courts with Cable cars whirling past and passengers waving and gurning from the windows…
Build more LUAS lines pleeeeease@CC105 wrote:
Bit off topic here but was looking at Italian rail system on the web. High Speed rail (250km per hr) from Rome to Florence takes approx one and half hours. In an Irish context I am thinking that would be Dublin to Kerry in the same time. It has been said before that other countries have been building these kind of projects for years and we still cannot prodcue a very minor metro system.
Madrid to Barca high speed train is close to 300 kph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid-Barcelona_high-speed_rail_line
And the ICE train that covers most of Germany / Switzerland cruises at 270kph…i’ve been on both and talk about luxury train travel.
I was talking to our accuontant at work and she was miffed at what was spent of our infrastructure now that the boom is over. And for the life of me i could not figure outhow a €180 Billion a year economy would not have developed a world class transport network in 10 years? I mean, what have we been spending the money on?
The motorways i understand and i have only good things to say about the LUAS…but the tunnel was an overpriced fiasco, no sign of the LUAS extensions and interconnector 4 years since the first LUAS line started running, and the Metro takes 6 years (for one line) so, are we just bad at this sort of thing?@jdivision wrote:
well you first mistake was getting the 16a to the airport, should have changed in town and saved yourself 20 minutes each way at least
in all fairness, there’s little difference with changing in town and changing at the airport. It’s sad that the airport is only served by one bus rout for the entire southside. I normally get the Aircoach on Leeson street if i need to go to the airport, which is normally very very early if going to the UK and therefore requires a taxi direct to the airport. The last time that cost me €35 from Terenure. I really don’t want to be paying that…it’s an embarrassment to public transport. At least the taxis are cleaning up
I had to go to good old Swords last weekend from Terenure with Public transport. I practically needed the afternoon off to do it! 16A to the Airport and then a 41 bus to Swords…and back. Yourney time…4 hours. There were some Germans on the bus who got on in George’s street and were quite content until we started approaching Beaumont house and i could tell they were getting flustered. They mentioned something on O’Connell street that they would love to come back (i can eavesdrop German :P) but by the time we reached the airport they were thinking ‘get me the f**k out of here!!!’
My point is, people already need to traverse the city by Public transport, my french flatmate needs to go from Terenure to Ballsbridge every day, via the city centre in rush hour traffic. Public transport is ubiqitious and necessary in most cities…is that hard to believe? People depend on it. Just make sure that when the metro is built to the airport that it is marketed to the last in tourist spots, travel offices and hotels so that travellers do not need to go sightseeing in Saturday afternoon traffic on the top deck of the 16A!
Public transport is here to stay, and the LUAS passenger number increase year on year proves that.Walked past the whole development today on my way down Castleforbes road. This is a damn big project, about 8 piles in the site, some underground parking is starting to take shape and there is still a huge hole where there tower should be, lots and lots of work going on. The point is half stripped, only the front facade left, and some huge steel beams going up behind it already. I took a pic with my phone, Apologies for the dodgy angle! 😛
The refernce to rising sea levels almost made me barf. I think of Rotterdam which is much more prone to flooding and it’s FULL of skyscrapers with 32 storeys or more. Maybe the Dutch are more proactive with holding back the North Sea, but god i wonder how so many great projects get built there. Hmm the Dutch seem to pride themselves on their architecture and engineering ingenuity…maybe the U2 tower should move to holland as well??? 😡
I love the vision of the Harbour in Rotterdam (much is already U/C)
They even build skyscrapers IN water on reclaimed land 😮
I’m confused. I was on the loop line bridge this morning and saw some concrete piles nearer the river with different cranes to the ones in this photo…2 piles i think and they were about 10 stories tall guessing that they were taller than that Spencer dock building by about 2 floors and were poking up behind it. Is this anything to do with the point otherwise what could this be? Looks to be where the tower is planned but you can’t see them in those traffic camera shots?
@mcdanish wrote:
Lets be realistic here, although the docks has been a missed opportunity in many respects it is far from the finished article.The watchtower and the U2 tower will give a new dimension to this area and other on going projects will bulk up the area.
Dublin is no Dubai or Shanghai and is never going to be.We have had a boom here fair enough but on a world scale it is insignificant. If Irelands economy imploded the world economy wouldnt even blink.Dublin has changed hugely in 20 years for the better but to expect this to compare to Shanghai or Dubai is crazy.Regarding the U2 tower the delays are incredible.Also anyone know whats happening to the site beside it where contruction has been halted for some timenow?
Ireland’s economy was the fastest growing economy in europe in 2000 something line 9% and we are one of if not the fastest growing country in Europe in respect to population. Our economy is larger than Nigeria’s for christ sake (Population 120 million). , and our economy is larger than the UAE – that must be hard to swallow? Our economy ranks arouns 50th in the world based on GDP, not even taking into account population.
In the terms of pace of development, we must be one of the slowest in the world…
We could have made something out of the boom we had for sure, we threw a few competitions, we marketed a few changes, then there was the NDP plan – but we always seems to hit on mediocrity??? Where is our ambition, and then the follow ups to make it happen? This U2 farce is just boring at this stage. It’s a pity because the tower got a lot of us excitedWow, Lots of construction going on in this pic, that’s a lot of concrete shafts for the district centre, how many stories is it supposed to be anyway? And we have a tower crane up!
Does anyone have an update on this? Very little coverage on this. I passed by the site last Saturday but did not get a chance to see what they were actually doing. Just a bit interested. Also i didn’t see any 50 foot Elvis poster??
SOC wrote:Did anyone else see this in Monday’s Irish Times?The headline was “U2 bid to develop tower named after them” by Frank McDonald.
It said:
Rock band U2 are bidding to develop the tower that will carry their name on Britain Quay in Dublin’s Docklands, in partnership with Ballymore Properties, The Irish Times has learned.However, the Dublin docklands Development Authority, which owns this pivotally-located site, has assured the rival bidders that members of the band “will not have any role or involvement, directly or indirectly” in assessing bids for the project.
After concerns were raised by other bidders about potential conflicts of interest, the authority’s lawyers, A&L Goodbody, wrote to them last week saying that “neither U2 nor its representatives have had any role” in setting ground rules for the contest.
The solicitors’ letter said the docklands authority would “enforce a very strict policy on conflicts of interest” in assessing the four bids and that it wished to “remind bidderst hat any conflict of interest should…be disclosed to the authority”.
To “underpin the independence” of the assessment process, the authority has appointed Chris Wilkinson of Wilkinson Eyre Architects: Amanda Levete, of Future Systems Architects: and Michael O’Doherty, former principal architect at the Office of Public Works, to advise it.
Apart from Ballymore Properties/U2, the bidders are Mountbrook Homes, controlled by developer Sean Dunne]
Thanks for the news on this, nice to see the run up to the tower’s construction heating up
@paul h wrote:
Cork city – pop.119.143 (2006 census)
metro cork – pop.274,000Belfast city – pop.277,391 (2001 census)
Belfast metro – pop.579,554Dublin City – pop.505,739 (2006 census)
Dublin metro – pop 1.6 million (estimataed by CSO to reach 2.1 million by 2021)So in summary:
Cork = teeny tiny
Belfast = tiny
Dublin = small to medium
😀 😀eh, Dublin doesn’t have a metro yet..that’s a whole other thread LOL
ok sorry :rolleyes:
I don’t think the last render looks too bad, as long as the cladding and quality turns out alright. As it’s a residential tower i’d like to see the interior as well and the quality of the apartments, it’s a far cry from some horrible overdesigned resi towers built around the place that turn out poorly finished (i would love someithng like Eureka or Q1 in Dublin though…:cool: )
“However the idea of this failed european experiment in bicycles for the masses is probably marxist enough to have the support of the environmental lobby”
Have you been to Holland or Germany much and if you did, tell me what you saw to think this?
@malec wrote:
Looks OK but I also prefer the original. True, it hasn’t suffered too much.
Progress on the elysian:
WOW! The Elysian is fast and the picture of the Cork cityscape is so mystical…
@Pepsi wrote:
i wonder was this skyscraper featured on the news recently? i saw nothing. i thought ireland’s first skyscraper would be in there somewhere.
Thats because this is something you just expect to find to find in a 21st century city. I was in both Brussels and Amsterdam recently and for cities not even the size of Dublin i was constantly looking up at their glassy towers. The recently built Dexia tower in Brussels in particular
I am happy of the prospect of a large shopping centre in this area as i live in Fairview this would be the nearest especially if it is served well by busses. I would not knock the tower just yet as altough it is just a glass box by design, these can have appeal in the skyline. It will be more than likely built of steel and therefore built in the 14 month timeline. The whole area will be a magnet and create a larger city centre, which is just what dublin might need. At present the city centre is very small compared to the greater Dublin area it is supposed to be the centre of.
@malec wrote:
Eglinton St development progress:
Crane being put up:
wow i was just wondering about the progress here! Have you any update frmo up close? Is the foundation already poured?
It sounds like the building it sticking to 100M at the ‘shoulder’ but the 10m will be added to the rooftop feature which is a substantial part of the overall building. I think it would look great though, and make it a real icon for the city centre especially if it was lit up and a lot of detail was put into the roof feature. And more importantly it now surpasses Hueston gate’s height of 123.55M!
