markpb
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@Alek Smart wrote:
As for the OC Bridge Taxi Rank,well….. what can one say….It now provides Taxi drivers with a raison d`etre for barging through from the INSIDE (Left-Turn Only) lane on Westmoreland St.
Do you guys mean the taxi rank is in the left-lane of OCB north, the part which was previously marked off with hashed-lines? That’s going to be a disaster for cyclists….
@GrahamH wrote:
Well the plinth has arrived. It’s located to the northern end of the taxi rank, at the junction with Cathal Brugha Street.
I’m sure it’ll improve when the work is done but right now it’s almost completely impossible to walk past 🙁
The saga continues:
New public square planned for site off O’Connell Street
The Carlton cinema site: the site covers over four acres and links OConnell Street to Moore Street and the Ilac Centre
A city square is to be built on the site of the former Carlton cinema on O’Connell Street, after many years of legal wrangling, writes Jack Fagan .
Plans to create a new public square on the site of the disused Carlton cinema to link Upper O’Connell Street with Moore Street in Dublin 1 are to be unveiled this autumn as part of a long delayed rejuvenation scheme for the area.
Dublin Central Architects, representing three architectural practices, have apparently agreed on an overall design for a new shopping, leisure and residential area covering more than four acres between Upper O’Connell Street and the Ilac Centre.
The square will become the centrepiece of the new quarter which will cost more than €500 million to develop and will directly link O’Connell Street into the retail core of the city.
The Ilac centre is undergoing a major remodelling and upgrading and on the opposite side of Henry Street, Arnotts is gearing up for a massive redevelopment that will greatly enlarge the shopping areas.
The scheme is expected to include about 6,503sq m (700,000sq ft) of double-height shopping with a heavy emphasis on restaurants, bars and other leisure facilities to attract tourists.
Planning permission will also be sought for a high quality hotel with 150 bedrooms and a wide choice of apartments to attract both single people and families.
The overall success of the development will be strengthened by the City Council’s proposed rejuvenation of the adjoining Parnell Square where the planned opening of a new Metro station is expected to generate a huge increase in pedestrian traffic.
Joe O’Reilly’s Chartered Land, nominated by the City Council to handle the regeneration of the Upper O’Connell Street area, has been coordinating the overall plans which are being handled by three architectural firms, BKD, McGarry Ni Eanaigh and Donnelly Turpin.
Although it will be 10 years next month since the Carlton site initiative was first announced, it has been repeatedly held up by legal wrangling between the Carlton Group of landowners and the City Council and also between the owners.
The council put a compulsory purchase order on the site in December 2001, after determining that the Carlton Group, which had secured planning permission for the site in 1999, had neither the finance nor the expertise to advance the project.
A challenge to the CPO by architect Paul Clinton, a member of the Carlton Group, was dismissed by the High Court and is now on appeal to the Supreme Court.
Although the lengthy legal process has prevented the redevelopment of the site, the saga involving the Carlton and the vacant site beside it has gone on even longer. The site has been vacant since 1979 and the cinema has been closed since 1994.
Since then the cinema has been suggested as a venue for a national conference centre, now under construction at Spencer Dock, and as a site for the Abbey Theatre.
Since this thread has dropped from the front page and is at risk of dying, I thought I’d drag it back up here by pointing out that the area north of the spire was cordoned off this morning, presumably to allow them to replant the trees that were removed during the spire cleaning. Only took them 30 days…
@PVC King wrote:
But lets not lose sight of the fact that the main use at this site is Bus Eireans maintenance depot which should be in Blanchardstown or Clondalkin
Absolutely. If the site is ever re-opened as an IC terminus then, like Rory W said, we should be aiming for a Luas / Bus / Rail hub with proper interchange facilities. There’s no reason why the DB depot couldn’t be retained under that use although obviously the road layout would have to change.
@notjim wrote:
Why is “close to the city center” a useful criterion for bus depot locations: they are a very low intensity land use and they don’t have much of a planning gain. The problems of priority and terminus areas is separate from the location of the depots.
I guess that depends on what functions you view as depot as having. If all you want is somewhere to store buses overnight, then an out of city location is fine. If you want to remove waiting-up buses during the day, clear them off city streets, etc. then somewhere close to the city centre, like other cities do, is preferable.
@PVC King wrote:
And what is wrong with paired up cross city routes?
Because in Dublin, they’d be a disaster. Have you tried to get through the city centre on a bus at rush hour lately? The complete lack of predictability and priority makes it almost impossible to run effectively without…. more buses waiting-up on streets and crippling them.
@PVC King wrote:
Why should the choice be CIE spend €100’s of millions doing it up a station or mismanage it as a bus garage?
Boring as buses might be, they do need garages. One of the problems with this city is the lack of emphasis given to buses: no priority, no terminus area in the city centre, etc. Those two problems leave us with the smog filled O’Connell St, College green and Dame St during both rush hours and streets like Marlborough St and Parnell square that are nothing more than bus terminii for most of the day.
Broadstone, regardless of it’s other virtues, its close to the city centre and serves well as a boring old bus depot. Perhaps as a compromise, OPW should be tasked with maintaining it while DB and BE operate out of it, along the lines of the GPO?
@PVC King wrote:
However buying the bridge at 2 or 3 times its value is a suspicious transaction given the creation history of the arrangement. What was not considered was to develop a public transport network prior to sanctioning
This is Ireland: Roads = Votes. Public transport = No votes. Cullen could promise all the (public transport) wonders of the world – half the people wouldn’t believe anything he says and the other half won’t care anyway. Building a few roads and making people think tolling will get better is a much more efficient way to get elected.
What disgusts me almost as much is Bertie’s statement saying yesterday that the M50 would remain a single tolling point, even after the buyout, change to automated tolling and road widening.
@StephenC wrote:
Also…even though it planting season there is no sign of those 10 missing trees from OConnell Street. Or the kiosks.
They were planting trees at the southern end of O’Connell St when I passed there yesterday afternoon. Not sure how many though, I only saw one poor tree sitting in the claws of a JCB.
@markpb wrote:
I emailed planning enforment yesterday, guess I’ll have to wait and see what they say but from what you said (a boyle), I won’t be expecting a reply anytime soon. Here are some (low quality camera phone) photos of the place.
I finally got a letter from DCC Planning Enforcement about this. They issued an enforcement order against them on the 16h. I wonder if it’ll make any difference.
Have Eurocycles changed their front yet?
@Urban_Form wrote:
Does anyone know what that large up-right vent is on the central median of O’Connell Street?
I think its something to do with the power supply to the Luas line above it. Initially it was meant to be incorporated into a kiosk so it wouldn’t be quite so ugly but nothing has happened with those yet.
It is appauling awful 🙁
@weehamster wrote:
Humm…I dont remember but was bikes locked to trees and poles a part of the design? :rolleyes:
Pretty it aint but there’s a hugh shortage of cycle parking in the city centre. There have been more than a few evenings when I’ve gone in to find all the spaces beside the GPO full. And OCS is relatively well served compared with the Grafton St and Stephens Green area.
@kefu wrote:
The gantry must have a purpose though, aside from hanging flags.
It’s so mundane I must be wong but I assumed it was for window cleaners?
It’s absolutely sickening to see this happen but it sums up, in one incident, the way this country has been run over the last twenty years. Decisions are made to suit developers to the detriment of everything and everyone else.
Thomond Park wrote:Buses are effective if you want to serve urban sprawl infrequently]Buses, Irish style, are only useful for serving urban sprawl. There are lots of things that can be done to make them just as effective as a tram system with half the cost and much more flexibility.
A completely segregated bus network (not the bits of auld bus lanes that we have in Dublin) with articulated buses with three sets of doors (all of which actually open, unlike Dublin) can be built for almost nothing compared to a tram system. It’ll also carry vastly more people at the same speed as a tram.
For an area under IAP like O’Connell street, there really should be stringent penalties for obvious breaches like that. A Planning Enforcement officer should walk around the area once a day, every day and note anything like that. The company should be notified and be fined, something like €1,000 per day starting from the day it was noticed. Companies will only stop abusing OCS if DCC start getting tough with them.
I’ve also submitted a complaint to DCC PE, as of yesterday afternoon.
I see Burger King have their huge adverts draped over the front of the building 😡 I could have sworn they did the same last year and were told to remove it, I can’t believe they did it again.
Edit: Crappy camera-phone photo
