Clonsilla Station Area Plans

Skyhater

Just saw this in the Platform 11 Website. Looks interesting.... Pay parking is not a good thing, but may manage demand?? Plans are detailed (take a look at the PDF's)

Thanks to Platform 11 www.platform11.org

OTK

Skyhater wrote:

Pay parking is not a good thing

What other kind is there? Who do you think pays for 'free' parking spaces?

Skyhater

OTK wrote:

What other kind is there? Who do you think pays for 'free' parking spaces?

Everybody who parks their car there at the moment!!!!

But yea!! Clonsilla is not a good example.... It's not meant Park and Ride station, and pay parking is necessary to manage demand. (Kinda wrote that without thinking too much)
But in good Park & Ride systems WW, the parking cost is included in Monthly/Yearly tickets. This encourages people to use the P&R facility.

spacetweek

Skyhater wrote:

Plans are detailed (take a look at the PDF's)

Need a login there...

Victor

spacetweek wrote:

Need a login there...

Works for me. Are you banned?

dodgyme

My suggestion to numerous local politicians is that the area between the canal and the road should be used as a bus corridor with entrance to the station over a footbridge from the back of the station. You could also fit a set down area for cars to collect people etc. The buses should be run from dunboyne or Damastown and take in littlepace and ongar and castaheany with more that one route. Another route could be hartstown huntstown. I do not think that parking should be provided since latency would dictate it would not be enough. However I think lazy politicians will not see the better environmental option of dedicated buses and would rather og the option of paid parking. When I mentioned the latency aspect of providing parking, a local politician couldnt answer me, which really pee'd me off. It would turn into coolmine where all the parking is gone early oh and we have to pay as well. Should be local bus services to the station. plain and simple.

Skyhater

dodgyme wrote:

Should be local bus services to the station. plain and simple.

Totally agree with you. For Local stations like Clonsilla/Coolmine, etc feeder bus services are the only real solution. This would have a dramatic effect on road traffic levels and if we had excess rail capacity (which is still the peak time constraint), increase the take-up on public transport.

Having had a chance to take a look at the plans, at least they will help take the "abandoned car" look away from the area.
However i can't understand why they are adding traffic lights, etc to the junction. Surly they should prioritise the building of the planned canal/rail over-bridge (further west of the Rail station), and close the LC. Then they can modify the junction so that the Clonsilla Road runs directly into the Hansfield Road.
The decision to modify the junctions gives us a real indication as to when the new bridge will be build.....Long way off!!!

murphaph

Skyhater wrote:

However i can't understand why they are adding traffic lights, etc to the junction

You answered that yourself. The bridge over the railway will likely be as part of the ORR from Ongar to the Spa at Lucan. This is a fair while off and the junction can't wait that long. All it takes is one right turning vehicle heading from Clonsilla to Portersgate and your snookered. The junction is very dangerous for non-car users too. No footpaths or anything. Imagine a blind person trying to negotiate it. Traffic lights and footpaths etc. are needed here as a matter of urgency. Hopefully the woeful signage will also be sorted, though given the awful signage on the brand new Ongar distributor road, I won't hold my breath.

markpb

Skyhater wrote:

Totally agree with you. For Local stations like Clonsilla/Coolmine, etc feeder bus services are the only real solution. This would have a dramatic effect on road traffic levels and if we had excess rail capacity (which is still the peak time constraint), increase the take-up on public transport.

I totally agree but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest one of the reasons there are are no proper feeder bus services is because there's so little spare capacity on the train services. The last DB internal review said pretty much that feeder services would be useless without a marked increase in trunk capacity.

Of course we all know the real reason is that CIE management don't and the government would rather IR and DB compete with each other than provide complementing services.

joolsveer

zaph wrote:

While any work to improve access to the station s worthwhile, they should have a serious look at putting pedestrian access through Portersgate so people can get to the station.

Portersgate does not border the Ongar Road. I think it is Mount Symon and there is a link road from Ongar Road to Clonsilla Road and a link road from Hartstown to Ongar Road. I suspect that parking on the Ongar/Clonsilla link may be curtailed in the future though.

murphaph

The locked gate into Mount Symon was supposed to be open once the Ongar Road was complete. I have complained to the local councillors to no avail abou this. I am bitter about this as it denies quality public transport to Hartstown residents unless they take the longer route along the link road. Why should we? Hartstown residents walked across fields directly to the station long before any of those estates were built yet now they have locked gates preventing said access. It's bang out of order. Opening the gate would cut the walk from 15 to under 10 minutes by my reckoning and if you live further out (like Zaph) it'll make it a waste of time and you'll drive.

Victor

dodgyme wrote:

When I mentioned the latency aspect of providing parking

What do you mean by latency?

markpb wrote:

Of course we all know the real reason is that CIE management don't and the government would rather IR and DB compete with each other than provide complementing services.

Then let IR / subcontractor run the feeder bus as integral with the train service.

tenandtracer

joolsveer wrote:

I suspect that parking on the Ongar/Clonsilla link may be curtailed in the future though.

Might be a good idea - got off the train this evening to find our car without any wheels on that very same road this evening:mad:

fletch

tenandtracer wrote:

Might be a good idea - got off the train this evening to find our car without any wheels on that very same road this evening:mad:

Was that the Avensis I saw being lifted?.....scumbags!

tenandtracer

fletch wrote:

Was that the Avensis I saw being lifted?.....scumbags!

Certainly was Fletch, now some other scumbag has our alloys!

fletch

tenandtracer wrote:

Certainly was Fletch, now some other scumbag has our alloys!

Any damage done to the brakes/suspension? Did they leave it on bricks or on the ground. Amazing how in the light of day, they can get away with something like that! Really annoys me! :mad:
And I wouldn't have thought the alloys on an Avensis would be that desirable to thieves.

dodgyme

tenandtracer wrote:

Might be a good idea - got off the train this evening to find our car without any wheels on that very same road this evening:mad:

What are you going to do about it? and if you contact the police can they tell you has this happened before. My mate had his car broken into on the clonsilla road?

joolsveer

A lot of the rail commuters park in local housing estates and reduce the risk of having their cars vandalised. The residents of these estates, however, are very unhappy about the lack of access for Council bin lorries and fire engines etc. It is rumoured that pay parking is to be introduced shortly.

Dr.Bunson

murphaph wrote:

The locked gate into Mount Symon was supposed to be open once the Ongar Road was complete. I have complained to the local councillors to no avail abou this. I am bitter about this as it denies quality public transport to Hartstown residents unless they take the longer route along the link road. Why should we? Hartstown residents walked across fields directly to the station long before any of those estates were built yet now they have locked gates preventing said access. It's bang out of order. Opening the gate would cut the walk from 15 to under 10 minutes by my reckoning and if you live further out (like Zaph) it'll make it a waste of time and you'll drive.

Murphaph, this gate was opened, but there were too many Hartstown scumbags coming into our estate vandalising our houses, gardens and cars. The residents had to campaign hard to get this gate closed. I understand your plight, but we don't want our property damaged anymore.

daymobrew

zaph wrote:

I don't have time in the mornings to walk all the way around, so I end up driving to Coolmine and leaving my car there for the day. I'm sure I'm not the only person on the "wrong" side of the road affected by this, and a little bit of proper planning would have kept even more cars off the road.

How long does it take to drive, park and get to Coolmine station? Where do you park (station car park, Riverwood road, adjacent housing estate)?

According to DTO Journey Planner it takes 21 mins to walk from Willowwood Grove to Clonsilla station. A (cheap) bike would do that in less than half that time. How does this compare to your current trips to/from Coolmine (I'll ignore the petrol costs and CO2 emissions).

Contact Fingal's Transportation Department to ask about pedestrian access, but as Dr.Bunson mentioned, such access is often closed off because of the scumbag minority. If we could only sterilise them and their parents...

Marathon_Man

Dr.Bunson wrote:

Murphaph, this gate was opened, but there were too many Hartstown scumbags coming into our estate vandalising our houses, gardens and cars. The residents had to campaign hard to get this gate closed. I understand your plight, but we don't want our property damaged anymore.

Even more importantly the gate faces a green area where children play. Allowing direct access to a very busy road from here is just asking for a child to be killed.

dodgyme

daymobrew wrote:

According to DTO Journey Planner it takes 21 mins to walk from Willowwood Grove to Clonsilla station. A (cheap) bike would do that in less than half that time....

Is a bike your solution to everything?
As discussed in the other threads this is not an answer to most peoples travel criteria.

markpb

dodgyme wrote:

Is a bike your solution to everything?
As discussed in the other threads this is not an answer to most peoples travel criteria.

There's a difference between being unsuitable and undesired. Most people don't want to cycle but that doesn't mean they can't. In fact, there are very few people who truly can't cycle. I'd limit that to extremely young children, pregnant women, injured and, at a push, people who have things to carry that are unsuited to bikes.

For the average person driving to an average office job, bikes are more than adequate. In any event, he's not suggesting people cycle all the way to work, just to the nearest train station. All he's trying to point out is that if walking is too far and driving isn't practical because there's no parking, then cycling is a decent alternative.

dodgyme

markpb wrote:

For the average person driving to an average office job, bikes are more then adequate
.

I disagree, Cycling is fine when you dont need a suit, its not raining, and you dont have a laptop/files, and distance dependant you dont need to stink all day or have showers at work... or a woman in most office job since it is not practical with business work clothes.

I spent at least 40% of my time cycling to clonsilla station over the last 5 years and walking from the destination but I was lucky even with that etc, however the other 60% required a suit at work, it was bucketing down, I put up with a bitta of sweat til I got the Lynxs out at work.etc. and I am not a woman, my missus could never do this (work clothes), anyhow for starters she is frightened cycling where people nearly knock you down each day and the road is narrow. To be fair 40% of the time for someone who wants to cycle every day to the station is not the type of stats you need to get to work with a particular form of transport and if you read the other threads I have made this point in many differnet ways.

murphaph

Dr.Bunson wrote:

Murphaph, this gate was opened, but there were too many Hartstown scumbags coming into our estate vandalising our houses, gardens and cars. The residents had to campaign hard to get this gate closed. I understand your plight, but we don't want our property damaged anymore.

When was it open? It hasn't been open since the distributor road opened AFAIK. You can find council minutes online that show the gate was supposed to reopen once the road was opened but that never happened (sure they never even surfaced the ground outside the gate-it's just soil). In any case, what's to stop 'Hartstown scumbags' hopping the (shorter) boundary beside gate? The boundary is a 4' high wall with 3' flat-topped (ie, no razor wire ir spikes etc.) fence. I could hop that fence in 5 seconds, I'm sure anyone intent on damaging your property could do the same. Hartstown scumbags could also just walk around through the other way if they really wanted to do damage. Perhaps if residents are really concerned, the council could install CCTV covering the gate area.

Marathon_Man wrote:

Even more importantly the gate faces a green area where children play. Allowing direct access to a very busy road from here is just asking for a child to be killed.

This is nonsense I'm afraid. Do you believe a child will be killed just across the road on the Hartstown side where there is a direct access from the green space there? You can clearly see a foot/cycle path in the Mt. Symon side which traverses the internal roads in that estate. I bet you a child is injured by a car at one of these traversals before one is injured coming out from Hartstown onto the distributor road as there are guard rails to prevent perpendicular encroachment onto said road. In fact, there's loads of places where busy roads are connected in such a way to playing fields and green spaces and there are no higher levels of accident than anywhere else. Very young children should just be supervised. Older children will face greater dangers walking to school than at this location. Those unfamiliar with the area can judge from the aerial image below.....