Knocklyon/Firhouse road improvements

nottooxabi

A big "congrats" to the dublin county council/their sub contractors or who ever was involved in the upgrade to the Firhouse Road (knocklyon side of the M50...)

Having only moved out that direction work has been ongoing since last september... although according to residents for at least a year before that...

I've never seen such a basic project take so long... working one week not working the next... it seemed to drag on forever.. (oh and its not quite finished yet)

Some one needs to get in there and give the project manager a big kick in the hole ...

Lets bring back the polish and the job would be done in a 1/4 of the time for half the price...

neilthefunkeone

Tell me about it.. My GF lives just there in Monalea.. She said you wouldn't see anyone at the site for 2-3 weeks at a time then suddenly a burst of work then off again...

Have not been up there in about 2 months since moving so interesting to see how finished it is!!

nottooxabi

I'd be interested in hearing what was going on....

I imagine they were way over budget as seemed to be sub contracting the work..

It was an absolute joke...I would imagine the residents(house on the main road) were well pissed off..

delta_bravo

There has been some of road works from the Old Mill to the Blue Haven for not far off the past 5 years I think.

nottooxabi

delta_bravo wrote: »

There has been some of road works from the Old Mill to the Blue Haven for not far off the past 5 years I think.

yeah they are still not fully finished down across from the blue haven pub
and the cycle path is still not complete heading towards firhouse..
I wonder how much tax payers money was wasted yet again by the inefficiencies ..

Luckycharm

Yep it seemed to take forever. On the other hand they put in a cycle lane and path in record time on Stocking lane beside prospect manor - could not believe how quickly they did it- seemed to only take a couple of weeks.

seamus

The anecdotal word on the street was that there were a team of 5-10 men assigned to the entire contract (budget cuts doncha know) and they were told that there was no pressure to finish within any kind of timescale.

Stocking Lane, by contrast, had to be closed so they had to finish within the time allotted.

Quite unbelieveable how long it toook to widen a bloody road. At one point on the Ballycullen road, all the periphery works had been done - grass verges gut back, kerbs installed - all they had to do was lay the new tarmac. And so it sat like that for 4 months, barriers up.

BanjoSpanner

If I were an insider in SDCC or for the contractorhere's what I might say about it

Shortly after SDCC signed the contract with the contractor, SDCC started to run out of money. SDCC wanted to halt the project and when they told this to the contractor he deliberately proceeded with the work to the point of no return (against the explicit instructions from SDCC who told him to stop work) so that SDCC would have no option but to proceed with the project to completion.

There were two main reasons for the stop/start nature of the work. One was that the contract specified periodic payments were to be made to the contractor based on stages of completion. So the contractor would proceed to a certain point and then down tools until he got his money for that bit. SDCC paid up as soon as they managed to scrape the money together each time.

The second reason was that the contractor had multiple jobs going on, too many, and wanted to cover them all using a crew that was too small. This meant an additional headache to SDCC to try and get them to stay on the job .... in fact, many of the other jobs the contractor was doing was on behalf of SDCC as well. So SDCC had multiple headaches with the contractor in many different locations. To compound matters, the workload pissed off the workers and they would randomly go sick of a day.

Everything added up to what seemed like the greatest f**k up of a relatively monor road and junction realignment in the history of such things.

Unfortunately I doubt anyone in SDCC learnt anything from it. Not will there be any significant penalties to the contractor. :rolleyes:

nottooxabi

well there was a small crew working on the island at the traffic lights last night on the firhouse road parallel to the spawell roundabout..
I think they finished about 12:30...

"A lot done...still not completed" :rolleyes:

Clanket

BanjoSpanner wrote: »

Unfortunately I doubt anyone in SDCC learnt anything from it. Not will there be any significant penalties to the contractor. :rolleyes:

You're right. It's disgraceful the crap that goes on with public money.

nottooxabi

To quote a mate of mine :

If SDCC can’t write a proper contract that allows for halting a project then we are rightly focked – it aint that hard

Staged payments is standard stuff as well and I can understand the contractor holding off for payment before doing the next bit – I do the same myself on occasion with sh*t clients

Contractor not having enough staff should be covered in the bidding process and if they fail to keep up enough staff then you can dump them off a job.

Luckycharm

Anyone know when the new bus routes are coming into place, the new routes for the 15 and 15b instead of the 74/74a

Clanket

Is that definately going ahead. You a link to a source?

seamus

Clanket wrote: »

Is that definately going ahead. You a link to a source?

http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Network-Direct/Network-Direct-Phase-2/Swords--Santry--Rathfarnham--Terenure1/

You can go out to Santry tomorrow if you wish to "discuss" the "proposed" changes, but I suspect it will just be a desk with a few leaflets detailing the changes and a couple of guys answering, "How will I get to X questions". If you actually have a comment or complaint to make about it, I suspect you fill out a form and it goes in the bin.

Did anyone go down to Ballyroan NS to check it out?

I don't actually mind the changes. It means more frequent busses for me (every 10 minutes for the 15 -v- every 30 minutes for a 74/a). The route down Knocklyon Road will be marginally slower than down the Firhouse road though.

The 15b will be a bit of a joke. On a bad day, you could 30 minutes on the bus from the Terminus before you even get to Templeogue Bridge. You'd walk the route directly in the same time. A more sensible solution would have been to start the 15 at the junction of Stocking Lane/Stocking Avenue, going towards Ballycullen and terminate the 15b at the bottom of Edmondstown Rd. There'd be no compromise on service or insane routes then.

Clanket

So does that mean there will no longer be any bus going down the Ballycullen Road onto the Firhouse Road?

So in effect, they've gone and built expensive bus lanes, but there will be no busses using them

seamus

Clanket wrote: »

So does that mean there will no longer be any bus going down the Ballycullen Road onto the Firhouse Road?

So in effect, they've gone and built expensive bus lanes, but there will be no busses using them

The 49/a will still use the Ballycullen/Firhouse Rd route and the 75 will comes down the Firhouse Rd.

SDCC appear to have known all about this for a long while - you'll notice that there's no bus lane on the Ballycullen Road between the new lights @ Knocklyon Gate and the turn off for Ballycullen Drive (right?)

IrlJidel

Clanket wrote: »

So does that mean there will no longer be any bus going down the Ballycullen Road onto the Firhouse Road?

So in effect, they've gone and built expensive bus lanes, but there will be no busses using them

The 49s will still go down Ballycullen Road (from Ballycullen Drive) onto the Firhouse Road.

Luckycharm

Will be happy enough with the changes though the 15b route is a bit all over the place - will it no longer be going to Whitechurch?

A Frequent 15 will be good - shame none of the routes will be going near Rathfarnham village/yellow house as that was handy.

Paschcom

so what bus will go down Ballyboden rd to Rathfarnham village and on into town? Will there be any?

LXFlyer

Luckycharm wrote: »

Will be happy enough with the changes though the 15b route is a bit all over the place - will it no longer be going to Whitechurch?

A Frequent 15 will be good - shame none of the routes will be going near Rathfarnham village/yellow house as that was handy.

The 15b will no longer serve Whitechurch. It will be covered by the new route 61 and the current 116 and 161.

Paschcom wrote: »

so what bus will go down Ballyboden rd to Rathfarnham village and on into town? Will there be any?

At the moment (subject to changes arising from the consultations) the 15b will still serve Ballyboden Road as it does now, i.e. between Taylors Lane and Ballyroan Road.

The remainder of Ballyboden Road and Willbrook Road will be served by the 161 which will then continue to Dundrum LUAS stop.

That section will no longer have a direct service to/from the city.

However, that could change based on the feedback from the recent consultations.

Paschcom

Thanks, so if the 161 is going to the Luas stop, does that mean they will have interchangeable tickets.........I think I know the answer already.!

LXFlyer

Just to note that revised plans are now on the Dublin Bus website here and here.

Basically the changes are:

Route 65b will now be retained and will be rerouted to serve Ballycullen Road - full routing will be:

Citywest >> Fortunestown (Luas) >> Blessington Road >> Killinarden Heights >> Firhouse Road West >> Killininny Road >> Ballycullen Road >> Firhouse Road >> Templeogue Road >> Terenure >> Rathgar Road >> Rathmines >> St Stephen’s Green >> Eden Quay

Route 15b will now not serve Templeogue but after Marian Road will operate via Rathfarnham and Bushy Park Road. Full routing will be:

Stocking Avenue » Scholarstown Road » Ballyboden Way » Ballyboden Road >> Ballyroan Road » Marian Road » Butterfield Avenue >> Rathfarnham Road » Bushy Park Road >> Rathgar Road » Rathmines » St. Stephen’s Green » College Green » Britain Quay.

Route 61 will now serve Ballyboden Road and then operate to the city via Nutgrove, Dundrum, Milltown and Ranelagh. Full routing will be:

Whitechurch » Taylor’s Lane >> Ballyboden Road >> Willbrook Road » Nutgrove Avenue » Churchtown Road » Dundrum Road >> Milltown >> Ranelagh » St Stephen’s Green » Westland Row >> Townsend Street.

Route 161 will now operate via its current route but extend from Nutgrove to Dundrum

Clanket

15b is an improvement anyways

seamus

Yeah. It was a little bit of a joke that it would double-back to Templeogue Bridge before going into town. Still a winding route, but not much more of a diversion from the old 74a and 15b routes.

Still no dates though. "Autumn 2011".

LXFlyer

They now have to get driver rosters agreed - hence no specific dates.

Tragedy

I'm a little bit worried about how rush hour traffic in the mornings will affect the 15's coming across the m50 bridge.

Patrick2010

Passed by this morning and they seem to be digging up a lot of the inbound section near the bridge now, whats all that about after only a few months?

Clanket

One word - morons. I'm sick and tired of that happening. You get a brand new stretch of road/path/cycle lane only for some crew to be digging it up within a few months. And most of the time they do a half arsed attempt at fixing it up when finished.

crab_eyes

Patrick2010 wrote: »

Passed by this morning and they seem to be digging up a lot of the inbound section near the bridge now, whats all that about after only a few months?

near that huge pipe eh?

seamus

Yep. Beautiful smooth road, even a half decent piece of cycle lane and it's been destroyed now just a few weeks after it was completely finished. Unbelieveable. Back to cycling in the bus/main traffic lane on that section for me, the cycle lane is unusable again.

I understand that it's a water issue after the recent heavy rains, but there should be some kind of requirement about the standard of repairs.