Cars to be banned from key Dublin City Centre streets; priority to walking, buses etc

Banjoxed

Seriously, if you are earning a living writing "why oh why" Daily Mail style articles you can afford a taxi.

_Kaiser_

MrMorooka wrote: »

Truly awful article in the Indo about this : http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/restricting-access-to-the-capital-will-not-solve-traffic-chaos-31348668.html

She has a point - actually several of them... but once again this will be shouted down by the consensus that demands we completely reconfigure the city centre to appear like grown-ups (because shure isn't that they way they do these things in Europe?) and because of an inferiority complex that demands every form of public transport in a small low-density city (where the residents are being forced further and further out because of a housing/rental crisis).

Unless phase 2 of the plan IS to address the outer-city transport methods as well, and do something about the hoardes of methadone addicts roaming the inner city, closing down the tacky amusement arcades, endless fast food joints, and phone repair/accessory shops, then all these plans will do is inconvenience those who HAVE to travel into the city (for work or education) and push those who are doing so for leisure or shopping to suburban alternatives.

I genuinely would have no reason whatsoever to go into the city centre 99.9% of the time anymore. Shopping is handled by the suburban centres or online, food, drink and entertainment likewise - and I certainly don't need the hassle and expense of parking, or wasting the day taking the "scenic route" on public transport.. when it shows up that is!

The ONLY way this nonsense would be a good idea is if it was integrated with plans for those who come into the city from outside D3/D4 (maybe P&R facilities that are free or integrated with the fare - eg: in Cork there's a very successful P&R that for a fiver gives you parking and a return fare in and out with very frequent buses), revisal of planning permissions and incentives to encourage development of enough secure high-rise, high-density, euro-sized apartment complexes to drive rents down and make city centre living financially viable and attractive for those who don't WANT to spend hours commuting to a 3-bed semi-D in the middle of nowhere.
Alongside that of course is a requirement to crackdown on crime and get the junkies and beggars off the city streets.

Do all that and maybe this plan would work.. as it stands though it'll just make life harder for those with no alternatives (as usual) and push the traffic issues further out as people stay local instead.

MJohnston

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Unless phase 2 of the plan IS to address the outer-city transport methods as well, and do something about the hoardes of methadone addicts roaming the inner city, closing down the tacky amusement arcades, endless fast food joints, and phone repair/accessory shops, then all these plans will do is inconvenience those who HAVE to travel into the city (for work or education) and push those who are doing so for leisure or shopping to suburban alternatives.

I genuinely would have no reason whatsoever to go into the city centre 99.9% of the time anymore. Shopping is handled by the suburban centres or online, food, drink and entertainment likewise - and I certainly don't need the hassle and expense of parking, or wasting the day taking the "scenic route" on public transport.. when it shows up that is!

Sorry, but this part of your post I have to say I think is anecdotal nonsense - you're applying the standards of what you want from an inner city to the rest of us.

If you can point to any suburban centres (perhaps Ranelagh or Stoneybatter might the closest competition) that offer the range of superb food and drinking options that are available in the city centre in areas like South William Street, or Fade Street, or Liffey Street, or Georges Street, or indeed the boutique shopping options available on Exchequer Street, Dawson Street, and adjoining areas, well then you might have a point, but in my opinion, and surely in the opinions of the thousands I see in these areas every night of the week, there is absolutely reason to travel into or to the city centre.

beauf

A lot of people meet socially in the city center as its central for them, and has the most options for public transport for people coming from different directions.

nowecant

7AM to 7PM Bus Gate from August to November. Or will they keep it in place longer?

http://www.thejournal.ie/dublin-major-traffic-luas-works-cross-city-2206095-Jul2015/

Thinkingaboutit

MrMorooka wrote: »

Truly awful article in the Indo about this : http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/restricting-access-to-the-capital-will-not-solve-traffic-chaos-31348668.html

If they cannot afford taxis, the Indo journos should cut down [mod: we'll leave it at that]

Anyhow banning cars now will simply wreck city centre commerce. Alternate ways of getting there are barely adequate. Maybe later.

cgcsb

Thinkingaboutit wrote: »

If they cannot afford taxis, the Indo journos should cut down [mod: we'll leave it at that]

Anyhow banning cars now will simply wreck city centre commerce. Alternate ways of getting there are barely adequate. Maybe later.

what kind of a mad loon drives into town to go shopping anyway?

Macy0161

There was an interesting piece on Utrecht on the ITV Tour De France rest day show yesterday. Contrary to what I thought, it was a conscience decision in the 70's in the Netherlands to move away from cars towards bicycle and pedestrian friendly cities, and it actually reinvigorated the city centres rather than kill commerce. In the 60's there were demolishing buildings to make bigger and wider roads, and now they're having to build multi-storey bike racks to cope with the amount of bikes!

Cookie_Monster

Macy0161 wrote: »

There was an interesting piece on Utrecht on the ITV Tour De France rest day show yesterday. Contrary to what I thought, it was a conscience decision in the 70's in the Netherlands to move away from cars towards bicycle and pedestrian friendly cities, and it actually reinvigorated the city centres rather than kill commerce. In the 60's there were demolishing buildings to make bigger and wider roads, and now they're having to build multi-storey bike racks to cope with the amount of bikes!

plenty of talk about it on the opening day too. Newest bikepacrk will have space for 5,000 bikes (maybe it was ten?)
It's all very impressive.

nowecant

cgcsb wrote: »

what kind of a mad loon drives into town to go shopping anyway?

My housemate! Or at least he claims that he should be able to whenever he wants. This is a guy who wont go into the city centre for a pint from just outside the canal because he claims all the pubs are too full.

He still wants to be 'able' to drive down Grafton street if he wants to....

Seriously there is no satisfying some people

cgcsb

nowecant wrote: »

My housemate! Or at least he claims that he should be able to whenever he wants. This is a guy who wont go into the city centre for a pint from just outside the canal because he claims all the pubs are too full.

He still wants to be 'able' to drive down Grafton street if he wants to....

Seriously there is no satisfying some people

such people can be congestion charged back to reality.

ClovenHoof

Are newspaper journalists aware that Dublin has more than 2 streets?

Irish Steve

Nearly 200 posts in, and no one has mentioned that for a city centre to work, it has to have a number of different factors, all of them working in some degree of unison.

Most of what's been talked about so far is public transport, cycling, and car usage. The missing factor in this is that city centres need residents if they are to remain viable and active, and those residents need support services for things like deliveries, some of which have to be made during normal working hours. There are also the requirements to be able to deliver to business premises, but not to deliver goods that will be used as part of the business activity.

Yes, it's specific, and I know a lot about it because I used to be very closely involved, and that's things like delivering fresh flowers. That might be a bouquet to a person for a special occasion, or it might be flowers for a business like a hotel, or it may be a lot of flowers to somewhere like a church for a wedding. In order to make those sorts of deliveries, the vehicle has to be able to get access to the area, and to be able to park for however long is appropriate to make the delivery. For a retail delivery, that might be as short as 10 minutes, for a large wedding in a church, the preparation time could well be several hours, and access to the vehicle is needed on a regular basis to collect the stock and related material that are needed for that work.

Whatever about making the city centre flow, there is also a requirement to make it accessible to the business community that makes it work, and that means that there has to be access and acceptable parking in the centre so that these activities can be carried out, and all too often, there is NO planning or serious thought given to making these essential services possible. Days like Valentine's day were a nightmare, because finding parking within reasonable distances from the delivery address was often just not possible, and if you've 20 deliveries( or more) on the vehicle, you can't spend 20 minutes walking from some distance away because there's no local parking closer to the address that you need to go to.

Keeping cars out of certain areas is probably the right way to go, but removing all vehicles from an area doesn't make that area work, and it can and does cause significant problems for service providers who need to be able to get access to the area during "normal" hours.

Changing the subject slightly now, why is it that we still don't have good, accessible large park and ride facilities in the area of the M50, with regular extended hours fast non stop links from those park and ride into the areas of peak demand? If it can work for cities of 100,000 people, then I'm sure it could be made to work for a city the size of Dublin.

Leap card, bluntly, too little, too late, too slow, too messy, and the problems with short stage journeys have already been rehearsed by others. The system in Amsterdam works, we were there a long time ago, and I was recently in Istanbul, and they have a similar system to LEAP there, but it's simpler, quicker, and cheaper to use, and it works well. Why can't we do it here, is it that there are too many vested interests that don't really want it to work well? I don't know, but somehow, there has to be fundamental change that makes things like LEAP a viable and faster option than the way it works now.

For me, the focus of too many of these reviews and reports is too narrow, and too much focussed on being anti commuter, with the result that the end product causes major problems for other users that have just as much right and requirement to be able to use the centre of the city. Removing all vehicles from some streets may solve some problems, but you may be sure that it will cause others, which may not even have been thought of, and fixing them can be a lot more complicated.

It will be interesting to see how this works out going forward.

monument

Irish Steve wrote: »

Nearly 200 posts in, and no one has mentioned that for a city centre to work, it has to have a number of different factors, all of them working in some degree of unison.

Most of what's been talked about so far is public transport, cycling, and car usage. The missing factor in this is that city centres need residents if they are to remain viable and active, and those residents need support services for things like deliveries, some of which have to be made during normal working hours. There are also the requirements to be able to deliver to business premises, but not to deliver goods that will be used as part of the business activity.

How does anything planned so-far block deliveries to residents or businesses in ways which can be overcome and which many cities have already overcome?

Irish Steve wrote: »

Yes, it's specific, and I know a lot about it because I used to be very closely involved, and that's things like delivering fresh flowers. That might be a bouquet to a person for a special occasion, or it might be flowers for a business like a hotel, or it may be a lot of flowers to somewhere like a church for a wedding. In order to make those sorts of deliveries, the vehicle has to be able to get access to the area, and to be able to park for however long is appropriate to make the delivery. For a retail delivery, that might be as short as 10 minutes, for a large wedding in a church, the preparation time could well be several hours, and access to the vehicle is needed on a regular basis to collect the stock and related material that are needed for that work.

Whatever about making the city centre flow, there is also a requirement to make it accessible to the business community that makes it work, and that means that there has to be access and acceptable parking in the centre so that these activities can be carried out, and all too often, there is NO planning or serious thought given to making these essential services possible. Days like Valentine's day were a nightmare, because finding parking within reasonable distances from the delivery address was often just not possible, and if you've 20 deliveries( or more) on the vehicle, you can't spend 20 minutes walking from some distance away because there's no local parking closer to the address that you need to go to.

There's no planned massive loss of loading access or loading bay space. The percentage of streets with major restrictions planned is small. But I agree it has to be handled well and loading needs to be better planned.

Generally speaking: Individual deliveries of flowers to residents etc on Valentine's Day or any other day is not an essential services and such activities should be ranked lowly in overall terms and even in terms of goods/loading access.

As with many types of changes, sometimes businesses should adapt, not everybody else. Adapting might mean walking / hauling goods that little bit further or switching to cargo bike. There's scope for business and city to look at options, like allowing Cargohopper services to access suitable pedestrian streets, bicycle-only streets, and bus only streets.

Irish Steve wrote: »

Changing the subject slightly now, why is it that we still don't have good, accessible large park and ride facilities in the area of the M50, with regular extended hours fast non stop links from those park and ride into the areas of peak demand? If it can work for cities of 100,000 people, then I'm sure it could be made to work for a city the size of Dublin.

The Red Cow is one example that's there and is well-used, Navan Road will likely work when the station is served by Dart, and, within the city centre plan, there's P&R planned for Heuston Station.

Irish Steve wrote: »

Leap card, bluntly, too little, too late, too slow, too messy, and the problems with short stage journeys have already been rehearsed by others. The system in Amsterdam works, we were there a long time ago, and I was recently in Istanbul, and they have a similar system to LEAP there, but it's simpler, quicker, and cheaper to use, and it works well. Why can't we do it here, is it that there are too many vested interests that don't really want it to work well? I don't know, but somehow, there has to be fundamental change that makes things like LEAP a viable and faster option than the way it works now.

Agreed.

Irish Steve wrote: »

For me, the focus of too many of these reviews and reports is too narrow, and too much focussed on being anti commuter, with the result that the end product causes major problems for other users that have just as much right and requirement to be able to use the centre of the city.

Anti commuter? What?

And can you elaborate on: "other users that have just as much right and requirement to be able to use the centre of the city" -- what users on what modes are you talking about?

Irish Steve wrote: »

Removing all vehicles from some streets may solve some problems, but you may be sure that it will cause others, which may not even have been thought of, and fixing them can be a lot more complicated.

That's so vague that I can safely say that, on balance, the positives to the city and its people and visitors likely outweigh any negatives.

Spanish Eyes

The LEAP card needs to be FANTASTIC value for money. It is not. I put €50 on it recently and it just disappeared. That admittedly was using bus/DART or bus/LUAS. only once or twice a week. I know there is a cap, but it is just very expensive for what you get.

And it is cumbersome as already mentioned. Interraction with the driver is crazy, so time consuming and terrible for those who can just use the validator. The times I have been sitting on a bus for nearly ten minutes for loading the thing where the driver is involved is unreal.

Anyway, first things first. Flat fares. How does the Oyster system work on the buses in London with all the zones? I used one there last year and the cap was the trick. Just use the validator. But over here? A journey into and out of town on a 2.05 fare means interraction with the driver twice.

Should the cap be reduced?

Apologies, I am just rambling here while having a cup of tea with one eye on the TV and the other on the laptop. I must concentrate on the issue in hand a bit more before I rant!

pclive

The hours of operation of the College Green bus corridor will be extended on the 10th August. The bus corridor will then operate 07:00hrs to 19:00hrs Mon - Fri

LXFlyer

Not before time. The works are causing significant bus congestion on Pearse Street and coming from O'Connell Street and the Quays.

Calina

lxflyer wrote: »

Not before time. The works are causing significant bus congestion on Pearse Street and coming from O'Connell Street and the Quays.

This happens even when the bus corridor is in operation. It took 20 minutes for me to get from Rosie Hackett to Dame Street on a bus one morning last week. This is not because cars can use the area. They can't at that time.

Sure the works are causing serious bus congestion but extending the bus corridor isn't going to fix the problems at times of high usage because the corridor is already in place. Personal view is that the number of buses needing to stop on D'Olier Street is a serious chokepoint for cross city buses which is just exacerbated by the works on College Green.

cgcsb

A City the size of Dublin shouldn't be reliant on buses for Centre-Suburb commuting, there should be high capacity rail routes along major corridors with buses to fill in the gaps, accommodate orbital travel and act as a feeder service.

Our collective stupidity is why buses are bumper to bumper from Smithfield to O'Connell Bridge every morning. Extending the hours of the bus gate is welcome but is not going to solve our infrastructural deficit.

LXFlyer

Calina wrote: »

This happens even when the bus corridor is in operation. It took 20 minutes for me to get from Rosie Hackett to Dame Street on a bus one morning last week. This is not because cars can use the area. They can't at that time.

Sure the works are causing serious bus congestion but extending the bus corridor isn't going to fix the problems at times of high usage because the corridor is already in place. Personal view is that the number of buses needing to stop on D'Olier Street is a serious chokepoint for cross city buses which is just exacerbated by the works on College Green.

Of course it won't solve the problem, but it might help somewhat. There is only so much that can be done when traffic is restricted to one lane in either direction.

Off-peak congestion in the area can be worse than peak times.

MJohnston

lxflyer wrote: »

Of course it won't solve the problem, but it might help somewhat. There is only so much that can be done when traffic is restricted to one lane in either direction.

Off-peak congestion in the area can be worse than peak times.

Peak taxi time is usually horrible, because they're such chaotic drivers.

nowecant

I walk past college green almost daily. i see lots of private cars going through there during the bus gate hours. People seem to be ignoring it.

Spanish Eyes

I was at Busgate on Thursday last around 5pm, OMG it was chock a block. Absolutely choked.

In fact an ambulance with lights flashing and the odd siren, could not get through from Pearse Street. A Post Office van had to go on the pavement outside Trinity to help it through. (they have to pick up post from the post boxes so I suppose they are exempt). I could not believe it.

I got on the bus that was about 100m away from the stop and it took 10 minutes to get to said stop. It is horrendous. I know LuAS works don't help but this is ridiculous.

Am I alone in thinking the stretch from outside the Garda Station on Pearse Street towards Grafton, Dame and Westmoreland Streets is absolutely off the wall.

The buses that can go down the quays should go down Tara Street and then go left up the Quays. Someone has to do something.

And this is the Summer, what will it be like when everyone is back from the holliers, the students are back and the kids are back at school.

Dyr

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Am I alone in thinking the stretch from outside the Garda Station on Pearse Street towards Grafton, Dame and Westmoreland Streets is absolutely off the wall.

The buses that can go down the quays should go down Tara Street and then go left up the Quays. Someone has to do something.

And this is the Summer, what will it be like when everyone is back from the holliers, the students are back and the kids are back at school.

In fairness the gardas do need half of that road to park their personal vehicles outside the front door of work.


Another only in Ireland thing

hmmm

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

Am I alone in thinking the stretch from outside the Garda Station on Pearse Street towards Grafton, Dame and Westmoreland Streets is absolutely off the wall.

The buses that can go down the quays should go down Tara Street and then go left up the Quays. Someone has to do something.

Yep, that stretch is a problem at the moment. You have two bus lanes on Pearse Street which is great, but then most of the buses get shoveled into a short stretch full of taxis, private cars and the shortest and slowest green traffic light in Western Europe. The LUAS works aren't helping, but I think there's a more fundamental problem there - and the only solution I can see that would improve bus transport is to ban taxis from the area.

zanardi

Bambi wrote: »

In fairness the gardas do need half of that road to park their personal vehicles outside the front door of work.


Another only in Ireland thing

Not forgetting that they can avail of free public transport on production of a Garda ID.

Geuze

Spanish Eyes wrote: »

The LEAP card needs to be FANTASTIC value for money. It is not. I put €50 on it recently and it just disappeared. That admittedly was using bus/DART or bus/LUAS. only once or twice a week. I know there is a cap, but it is just very expensive for what you get.


Anyway, first things first. Flat fares. How does the Oyster system work on the buses in London with all the zones? I used one there last year and the cap was the trick. Just use the validator. But over here? A journey into and out of town on a 2.05 fare means interraction with the driver twice.

London bus fares 2015, using 1 euro =70p

Cash = abolished

Oyster = 1.50 stg flat fare, or 2.15 euro approx

Oyster Daily cap = 4.40 stg, or 6.30 euro

Weekly cap = 21 stg, or 30 euro

Carawaystick

cgcsb wrote: »

A City the size of Dublin shouldn't be reliant on buses for Centre-Suburb commuting, there should be high capacity rail routes along major corridors with buses to fill in the gaps, accommodate orbital travel and act as a feeder service.

Our collective stupidity is why buses are bumper to bumper from Smithfield to O'Connell Bridge every morning. Extending the hours of the bus gate is welcome but is not going to solve our infrastructural deficit.

Well having the main train station up the river from the centre isn't helping anything...

LXFlyer

Carawaystick wrote: »

Well having the main train station up the river from the centre isn't helping anything...

Actually the "main" railway station is in the city centre - Tara Street is the busiest station on the network.

Dublin is far from being alone in having the principal InterCity station a bus/tram ride away from the heart of the city centre - many cities in Britain are the same as is Paris.

Carawaystick

I was being a little bit tongue in cheek. If the heuston rail line served the city centre, then a lot more commuting traffic would use it and there'd be less demand for busses to bring people down the quays.