Cars to be banned from city centre

markpb

I can't find a link to back this up so you're all going to have to believe me

Q102 News is reporting this morning that a plan is being presented by DTO to Dublin CC to designate Westmoreland St, Dolier St, College Green and parts of Dame Street to be public transport only. It'll be put before the council in the "near future" and, oddly enough, has the backing of Dublin Bus.

I think this it's a fantastic idea and will do wonders for public transport. Which means of course that it's unlikely to happen.

KTRIC

How the hell are we supposed to get through the city ??

kaizersoze123

KTRIC wrote:

How the hell are we supposed to get through the city ??

bus

Saruman

I think O'Connell street should be pedestrianised. Not even any buses. The Luas should be the only thing allowed. Even though i use O'Connel street sometimes to bypass Beresford place i would rather have it for pedestrians.

Kinetic^

This would be cool..........just me and moped in town

KTRIC

Kenny 5 wrote:

This would be cool..........just me and moped in town

Will they be allowing bikes / bicycles ?

SickCert

There was a show on rte1 at about 1130 or so last night going on about similar (eco eye) and in a nut shell Naff off to all cars between Fleet st and Dame st.

mikemac

Kenny 5 wrote:

This would be cool..........just me and moped in town

Seconded!

Hagar

Excellent idea. Everybody can just use the alternate public travel services. The Luas can whiz you all around the city in double quick time. The frequent city centre shuttles and the handy free supervised park and ride carparks dotted around the city centre will easily accommodate the parking needs of the erstwhile motorists. The cheap, friendly and efficient taxi service will play it's own colourful part in the joyous tapestry that is Dublin Transport.

GrumPy

Cool idea. Ireland needs to catch up to European counterparts!!

El Stuntman

fantastic idea imo

I'm just speaking from the point of view of an ordinary (car-detesting) punter but other measures that I would love to see are:

parking spaces supplied by work (yes I'm looking at you, civil servants) in the city centre being made liable for BIK at the top rate of tax
(parking €25 per day * 200 days = €5,0000 * 42% = €2,100 of a tax bill). This should be sugarcoated with extra incentives to use public transport, cycle etc....

a congestion charge for all private traffic entering the zone between the two canals. It worked in London, why not here?

are either of these ideas feasible or am I totally off my trolley? it just drives me nutso when I visit somewhere like Barcelona, Copenhagen or Amsterdam and then come back home ands see the total shambles that is our traffic-choked city centre ....

MicraBoy

In fairness O'Connell St is pretty much already a bus gridlocked thoroughfare any way.

A RADICAL proposal to totally eliminate cars from the heart of Dublin city centre is to be shortly put before the city council.

If councillors approve the plan, College Green, Westmoreland Street and possibly O'Connell Street bridge will be closed to private motorists.

It would also mean that all vehicles except public transport would be prevented from driving down Dame Street from Christchurch to Trinity College and around the front of the college from D'Olier Street.

College Green would become a "public transport gateway" with only local access provided, and commuting motorists would be forced to use alternative routes in order to travel from one side of the city to the other.

The plan, which was drawn up by the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO) and Dublin City Council with an input from other agencies such as the Railway Procurement Agency, has already been approved by Dublin Bus.

Computer models have been used by the DTO to determine what effect the proposal would have on traffic flow in the capital.

The plan arose during talks on the future of the College Green area, which is a favoured route for the eventual link-up of the two Luas lines.

Congested

The area is already heavily congested as it is one of the main pick-up and set-down strips of Dublin Bus and transport officials believe it makes sense to remove cars from entirely.

Senior official and project manager of the Quality Bus Network, Ciaran de Burca said: "It makes sense. Measures have already been taken to reduce traffic flow in this area. This is just the next logical step."

Treacy Hogan

100% Reliable Linkage

markpb

I'm sure DCC would scream at this but if O'Connell St and possibly Dame St are completely closed to traffic, it might be possible to build parallel bus boarders on part of the street. It would free up a large part of the street from bus loading and stop buses having to manoeuvre in and out around each other.

Mitch Connor

If, for instance, you need to travel from outside of Dublin to Temple Street, or any of the hospitals around there, its gonna be a nightmare.

markpb

Tauren wrote:

If, for instance, you need to travel from outside of Dublin to Temple Street, or any of the hospitals around there, its gonna be a nightmare.

I guess someone has to find a balance between the relatively small number of people who travel from outside Dublin to Temple St and the thousands of people who pass (slowly) through the city centre on public transport or are inconvenienced because their bus was delayed in the city centre and was late getting to the suburbs.

It's never going to be easy but if the traffic models hold up, it's well worth doing.

The Swordsman

SickCert wrote:

There was a show on rte1 at about 1130 or so last night going on about similar (eco eye) and in a nut shell Naff off to all cars between Fleet st and Dame st.

Saw that, but I got the impression that the proposal was for a mainly pedestrian area with perhaps only the luas using the area. Now that would be something.

TBH, with the number of buses that actually use the area, I can't see banning cars doing a whole lot to alleviate the congestion problems. If you want to solve gridlock problems in the city centre, you need to also get a lot of buses off the roads and replace them with metro,Luas etc.

Unfortunately, this is a few years off. At the moment, the only public transport option for a lot of people in Dublin is the bus. Buses do not get people into the city centre efficiently - where I come from, it takes over a hour to make this journey even at non peak times despite Bus Lanes etc. Cars are a lot more efficient.

So how do you address the imbalance? Give car drivers a reasonable alternative and most will take it. Get proper public transport in place and then, and only then, should you start thinking about banning cars, congestion charges and BIK for car parking.

Life is too short to be spending so many extra hours every week on buses. I personally would rather spend it with my family.

Beelzebub

SickCert wrote:

There was a show on rte1 at about 1130 or so last night going on about similar (eco eye) and in a nut shell Naff off to all cars between Fleet st and Dame st.

Ever so slightly off topic...
What I'd like to know is how he(Duncan) found a Luas with plenty of standing room.
I haven't experienced that yet, it's always sardines in a can!

markpb

The Swordsman wrote:

Buses do not get people into the city centre efficiently - where I come from, it takes over a hour to make this journey even at non peak times despite Bus Lanes etc. Cars are a lot more efficient.

That's hardly true during peak times though, is it? I know most bus routes are very slow, mostly because the bus lanes are poor but I find it hard to believe you can compare to similar routes and say that a car is faster in the mornings?

So how do you address the imbalance? Give car drivers a reasonable alternative and most will take it. Get proper public transport in place and then, and only then, should you start thinking about banning cars, congestion charges and BIK for car parking.

There definitely has to be an element of carrot and stick but sometimes the stick has to come first. Like you said, Luas and Metro are the way forward for the bulk of passenger movements but they're years (if not decades) away so right now the best thing we can do is prioritise buses. If that means restricting turns off the arterial routes so bus lanes don't have to end at junctions, or segmenting sections of bus lanes to let buses move freely, or even closing entire roads to cars, they have to be done because right now, the primary reason buses are slow is because of cars.

Drivers will (rightly) point out that the bus is too slow and they won't change until it improves but they resist any attempt to let it change if it hurts them. Carrot or stick?

D'Peoples Voice

The Swordsman wrote:

Buses do not get people into the city centre efficiently - where I come from, it takes over a hour to make this journey even at non peak times despite Bus Lanes etc. Cars are a lot more efficient.

I used to live on the Westside a few years ago, buses DID take 2-3 times longer than a car ONLY becos they were made to drive through various housing estates to MAXIMIZE the area they covered before they reached the city centre.
If the bus could have kept to the bus lanes on the main road, I personally believe it would have reached the city centre in a third of the time it would take in a car. I guess the problem is, we don't have enough buses, so the limited number we do have try to please everyone and end up failing almost everyone!

Calina

markpb wrote:

There definitely has to be an element of carrot and stick but sometimes the stick has to come first. Like you said, Luas and Metro are the way forward for the bulk of passenger movements but they're years (if not decades) away so right now the best thing we can do is prioritise buses. If that means restricting turns off the arterial routes so bus lanes don't have to end at junctions, or segmenting sections of bus lanes to let buses move freely, or even closing entire roads to cars, they have to be done because right now, the primary reason buses are slow is because of cars.

Drivers will (rightly) point out that the bus is too slow and they won't change until it improves but they resist any attempt to let it change if it hurts them. Carrot or stick?

The only reason that a stick has to come first is because of lousy planning up first. When Luas was being planned, it was accepted as the "easiest" and shortest term solution to transport needs in Dublin. We are now getting Metro North and West ten years after they should have been planned in the first place - mainly because our attitude is to do as little as we can possibly get away with. Nothing has changed really. My issues with buses, incidentally, are not linked to the lousy buslanes in places like Drumcondra because the single worst bus delay I have experienced had me stuck in an Aircoach for more than 30 minutes to get from North Frederick Street to O'Connell Street. Private cars are not allowed down that road, so making life hell for cars isn't going to fix that. The only think that will is a decent mass transit system such as Metro North and this was foreseeable 15 years ago.

I am sick to the teeth of reading people say that the only solution is to provide a stick. Do you seriously think people want to a) stay stuck in Dublin's gridlock and b) pay an insane amount of money for parking to the carpark exploitation companies and c) deal with the idiotic one way system we have in Dublin? They don't. They already have sticks galore.

Ultimately what it boils down to is this: all over our city is evidence of the powers that be doing as little they can get away with. This whole stick thing is evidence of the same.

Dublin is a huge bloody mess. Screwing around with the cars is going to fix nothing until you actually stop screwing around public transport and that is largely what happens here.

As for pedestrianising O'Connell Street down to Grafton Street - I believe it should be done as a matter of priority but if it does get done then lighting on O'Connell Street needs to be reassessed urgently. I drove northbound along it last night and I am appalled by how dark it is, compared, for example, to Drumcondra.

Other issues we have with that zone is that we don't really have the right commercial mix of shops in that area to make it a really viable pedestrian area. Compare it to the centres of most European cities and then reconsider Westmoreland and D'Olier Street. There needs to be a whole lot of redevelopment to prevent them from turning into ghettoes after dark.

Additionally, we really are doing it cheapskatish in terms of moving traffic around the city. There's a super inner ring road/system of tunnels in Brussels. I don't think something identical is possible in Dublin, but we could look at doing something similarly imaginative.

The Swordsman

markpb wrote:

That's hardly true during peak times though, is it? I know most bus routes are very slow, mostly because the bus lanes are poor but I find it hard to believe you can compare to similar routes and say that a car is faster in the mornings?

Well the quickest bus into town into the mornings is the 41X. I left this morning at around the same time I would leave if I was getting the 41X (in fact I went past the bus stop as it was beginning to load up. I reckon I was in work approx 45 mins before I would have been if I took that bus this morning. You could possibly add another twenty/thirty minutes on top of that if I had to depend on the plain old 41.

Granted, I don't work in town, but I'm not far from it (near Ballsbridge).

Going home in the evening is even worse.

markpb wrote:

There definitely has to be an element of carrot and stick but sometimes the stick has to come first. Like you said, Luas and Metro are the way forward for the bulk of passenger movements but they're years (if not decades) away so right now the best thing we can do is prioritise buses. If that means restricting turns off the arterial routes so bus lanes don't have to end at junctions, or segmenting sections of bus lanes to let buses move freely, or even closing entire roads to cars, they have to be done because right now, the primary reason buses are slow is because of cars.

Drivers will (rightly) point out that the bus is too slow and they won't change until it improves but they resist any attempt to let it change if it hurts them. Carrot or stick?

Carrot, please.

As someone who spent years getting the bus in and out to work, I've seen the bus lanes going in, I've seen Swords Bypass being bypassed, I've seen more and more people getting on buses all the time and I've seen extra busses being added to cope with the demands. All these things should make the journeys go quicker. But they haven't really. I've come to the conclusion that no matter what is done you can't make a slik purse out of a sow's ear and bus travel is a sow's ear.


Calina and dpeople. Just seen your posts and you made some great points. sorry if I repeated them but I can't be arsed editing this. I'm too slow on the keyboard.

bk

Calina wrote:

Other issues we have with that zone is that we don't really have the right commercial mix of shops in that area to make it a really viable pedestrian area. Compare it to the centres of most European cities and then reconsider Westmoreland and D'Olier Street. There needs to be a whole lot of redevelopment to prevent them from turning into ghettoes after dark.

There are big changes coming to the area soon, Arnotts is spending about a billion euros buying up and redeveloping into a major shopping district, the entire block behind the GPO, between Henry and Abbey St. It is one of the biggest commercial developments in Europe.

Clerys, Irish Life and Permanent and some other major developers have being buying up all the buildings along and just off O'Connell St. There is going to be major redevelopment and it will likely turn into the cities number one shopping district, replacing Grafton St.

AlekSmart

Calina is OBVIOUSLY female,as she appears capable of using several bits of her brain simultaneously in stark contrast to the rest of us here....
She is spot-on-the-money with her observations re Sticks and other motorist beating items.
This City Centre Traffic Ban proposal has been around for a lone time and it`s genus can be seen in some of DCC`s little graphics produced before the O Connell St Project began.

These graphics majored on scenes of urban tranquility with nuclear 1.7 child familes and perhaps a car or two in the sunny background just to keep a little balance.

I feel that its a good idea in principle but one which should have been implimented at a far earlier point in the Capital`s development.
Calina also makes the very salient point regarding the ACTUAL atmosphere which pervades An Lar after the working day ends.

It IS all about Street Lighting,Commercial vs Resedential and finding some way to make the City Centre a less threatening place in actuality.

It`s also worth reminding those who espouse the London Congestion Charge model that Mayor Livingston actually put great thought into his original plan.

For example he dramatically increased Bus frequencies on core central routes as well as introducing extra cross-zone routes.

This involved the introduction of c 600 EXTRA buses on TfL routes in less than 12 months and all done BEFORE the CCharge began.
Additionally the entire London Central Zone Bus service was given a good shake out in relation to dwell times and customer inspired delays.
NO on Bus cash transaction being the single greatest weapon here.
I see NO mention in our lads proposals of any dedicated Police Unit to work with the Bus Service providers in keeping core Routes clear ?
An oversight perhaps...?....Or just another realization that for mass structured movement omlette to work we must firstly break a few eggs ....

I see no evidence of any great joined-up thinking here.
It appears the concept has been revealed and we now embark on the usual round of horse-trading which will eventually result in an Irish solution to our Irish problem...albeit a solution that will only half solve the problem......

On the other hand we could always lobby for the return of Domestic Rates,Local Taxation and a Self Financing City Authority with Elected Officials.......OOOps now that would certainly be a threat to our Irish way of doing things.....:rolleyes:

JaysusMacfeck

Hmm, does this mean that the Luas link can go ahead afterall seeing as there wouldn't be as much disruption to DB with private cars gone.?

John R

The Swordsman wrote:

Well the quickest bus into town into the mornings is the 41X. I left this morning at around the same time I would leave if I was getting the 41X (in fact I went past the bus stop as it was beginning to load up. I reckon I was in work approx 45 mins before I would have been if I took that bus this morning. You could possibly add another twenty/thirty minutes on top of that if I had to depend on the plain old 41.

Granted, I don't work in town, but I'm not far from it (near Ballsbridge).

Going home in the evening is even worse.




Carrot, please.

As someone who spent years getting the bus in and out to work, I've seen the bus lanes going in, I've seen Swords Bypass being bypassed, I've seen more and more people getting on buses all the time and I've seen extra busses being added to cope with the demands. All these things should make the journeys go quicker. But they haven't really. I've come to the conclusion that no matter what is done you can't make a slik purse out of a sow's ear and bus travel is a sow's ear.

It is understandable why you have reached that conclusion but you are wrong. Bus travel can be made to work it is just that in the case of your route (and most others in Dublin) the required work hasn't been put in.

Yes there have been bus lanes but they are not continuous, they are not wide enough and they are not present in many of the worst congestion areas.

There have been more buses put on but again not nearly enough, for the likes of Swords and similar suburban centres there needs to be a high frequency (proper) express service to link it to the city centre as well as high frequency local and radial routes to keep short-hop traffic off the express routes.

One of the major problems for the likes of Swords and Blanchardstown is the design of the majority of the housing estates, not only are they perfect for creating traffic bottlenecks (without any available roadspace for bus priority measures) but they are also a nightmare to service.

You either end up with frequent bus routes that spend 30+ minutes just doing a tour of the estates before they even start heading for the city or fragmented low frequency routes split to seperately serve the different areas that are unattractive because of the long wait times.

Hotblack Desiato

El Stuntman wrote:

other measures that I would love to see are:
parking spaces supplied by work (yes I'm looking at you, civil servants) in the city centre being made liable for BIK at the top rate of tax

Why are you looking at civil servants - most don't have car parking. That's certainly not the impression you'd get from reading the Indo, though.

mackerski

El Stuntman wrote:

a congestion charge for all private traffic entering the zone between the two canals. It worked in London, why not here?

Try looking up the earlier posts on this topic and you'll find out. Unless you already know the answer, that is.

diamonds&cream

Anyone heard how the disabled community from in/outside Dublin who need to travel into Dublin city on the suggested banned areas will be able to access the city without the use of a car.

Will they have to park on the outskirts and hope for the best. Even though there is accessible public transport in Dublin, not every disabled person can access/use/avail of the services.

Some disabled drivers/passengers can only travel by private transport for all sorts of reasons.

I hope they will not be left out in the cold if the new plans are implemented

El Stuntman

ninja900 wrote:

Why are you looking at civil servants - most don't have car parking. That's certainly not the impression you'd get from reading the Indo, though.

because I don't like them!

oh OK, I stand by my original point anyway - tax parking spots! There was a missed opportunity to do it in the budget this year

and I wouldn't read the Indo if you paid me to do so....:)

Calina

El Stuntman wrote:

because I don't like them!

That's not actually a rational starting point. I got my tax credit certification today. Tell me who do you think is going to issue them if we've no civil servants?

It irks me in this country the way begrudgery and snobbery works. You cannot have a functioning country without a civil service end of story, and looking down on people because they are civil servants is a bit shabby.

I'm also annoyed by the tendency to assume that making life harder for drivers is a viable way of getting them out of their cars. It's a viable way of getting them to consider working somewhere with a better quality of life though.

When this city has a comprehensive integrated and functioning public transport system then look at things like parking spaces and cars. But not before.

markpb

Calina wrote:

When this city has a comprehensive integrated and functioning public transport system then look at things like parking spaces and cars. But not before.

You have some good arguments but I still think it's a blinkered way of looking at it. Yes, Dublin has had some truly awful planning and yes, the high cost of houses (and people's obsessions with semi-d + garden) has made people move further away from the city. It's a pity those things happened but that's the city we have and we have to work from there.

Because of its low population density, Dublin will probably never have more than two decent metro lines (Metro north and a later one running south or west from the city centre). On-street tram lines are a compromise but not a great one. They're better than buses because they're slightly segregated but, as you can see from the red line, where there isn't already an alignment it's hard to build a decent tram line.

So that leaves us with.... substandard expensive tram lines and buses. And, like the film says, there aint enough space in this city for the two of us so someone has to suffer. Unless you can find a better solution, that someone is going to be car drivers. I agree with what you're saying - they're are some people in this city who would use public transport if it was better but given the resources we have and successive governments unwillingness to spend real money on public transport, what choice do we have?