How would you improve Dublin?

[Jackass]

Dublin is a great city...it's my home nd i'm proud of it.
But I think everyone who lives here would agree it could use a lot of improvement. So what would you change??

Here's mine:

For a city famous for it's night life....it's actually pretty crap. I think some great changes could be made to make it a great night city, looks great, and has a party atmosphere, and completely different to a great social, trendy and business city during the day. We should have 24 hour everything....we're a major European city ffs...we should have 24 hour Darts, Luas and Bus... and not in a night link service (although that's actualy pretty good), but a every 5 minutes service. Like London, Paris, NY etc...

Also, 24 hour pubs and clubs, not for a piss up element, but so people can come and go as they like, when they like, and i think it would take away the binge drink mentality of get it all down you before 2am, go for a kebab, get in a fight, then find a bird on the street or in the taxi rank and go home!

We should have a more cosmetic approach to the city. Tax levy on all burger joints, packets of chewing gum, soft drink cans etc...5c on each will pay to have massive clean-ups every night, and have the city sparkling during the day.

The spot lights into the sky on O'Connell street were cool, with a big screen also gave the street a great atmosphere, there should be more of that kind of stuff around the city permanantly.

During the summer, open up places like St.Stephens green for small free open air concerts. A small stage in the corner of the park, with local bands would have a good party event each weekend from the early evening to about 10pm.

Make the Carlton into a 4 story casino. It would get away from the crappy small casinos we already have, and with the other things, make O'Connell street a great party focal point like temple bar.

Inflation has gotten ridiculos...government needs to get some balls and take control. Price caps on everything. Max price on pints: €4.50, guide line prices on property and rent which must be followed within a certain bracket.etc. etc.

What would you change about Dublin city or Dublin Life in general?

stag39

Make the carlton into anything better than the crap facade that has been there for how many effing years!!!! it our main street so come on people in the know do something about it!!! :mad:

Stark

Expansion of the LUAS/Dart system and vastly improved cycle network.

As for all the 24 hour stuff, how's the 24 hour lifestyle going to be funded/staffed? Dublin Bus doesn't make that much money off the NiteLink service as it is. And I don't want to see a night-shift culture in Dublin.

dub45

A decent system of sign posts is very badly needed. Dublin must be one of the worst capital cities in Europe in this respect.

Dublin is increasingly becoming a city of rattling manhole covers. For anyone living beside one of these as thousands of cars and lorries rattle over them every day life can be hell.

Dublin has some lovely parks but have you ever noticed how many of them have most of the gates locked?

On a general level the city is pretty filthy.

A traffic police unit is very badly needed - for instance there now seem to be more motorists on mobile phones than off them driving in the city.

Areas like the boardwalks are all well and fine but drinking in the area should be outlawed and strictly enforced.

Stark

dub45 wrote:

Dublin has some lovely parks but have you ever noticed how many of them have most of the gates locked?

That is seriously irritating. I live right next to a park that I need to pass through regularly. They actually get people to come out and lock/unlock gates totally at random. Sometimes you cross the park to find a gate is open, sometimes it's locked and you need to climb over it.

What's the point? Keeping undesirables out? It's the people you want keep out that are the people who can easily climb over the gates. It only serves to discriminate against those less physically able. And if I got into trouble in a park, I'd much prefer to have an easy escape route.

KillerShamrock

TBO level the whole city and rebuild it staring with the infra stucture.
Try weed out all the people that make that place look bad and give it a bad rep.
Dont get me wrong i love dublin it can be great. i know these are extreme measures and will never happen, they are just my two cents

Sarsfield

Cleaner streets.
Cleaner buildings.
Better street lighting (including more floodlit buildings)
More rail-based public transport including the Heuston-Spencer Dock interconnector.
More cycle-friendly facilities including the Sutton-to-Sandycove cycleway.
Better traffic policing.
Quieter manhole covers (I'd never have thought of it, but now you mention it!)
Better road surfaces in general rather than the current patchwork quilt caused by poorly completed roadworks.
A 'theatre district' - theatres and cinemas are too spread out meaning there's no real cultural district. This will never happen as the Abbey won't be moving to O'Connell St.
Chinatown.
Some more ambitious architecture. And build higher in designated areas (with good public transport links).
Improvements/additions to inner city public swimming pools & leisure centres - apart from the Markievicz the city centre is poorly served.
Later city centre shop opening.

I'm sure I'll think of more.

Stark

The city centre shop opening times are very annoying. In Cork, some shops open late on a Thursday night and practically all shops open till 9:00 on Friday night. Having the Friday night shopping facility makes such a difference. I'm living out in Blanchardstown at the moment so it's handy that a lot of the shops in the shopping centre open till 9PM a lot of nights

dub45

Stark wrote:

That is seriously irritating. I live right next to a park that I need to pass through regularly. They actually get people to come out and lock/unlock gates totally at random. Sometimes you cross the park to find a gate is open, sometimes it's locked and you need to climb over it.

What's the point? Keeping undesirables out? It's the people you want keep out that are the people who can easily climb over the gates. It only serves to discriminate against those less physically able. And if I got into trouble in a park, I'd much prefer to have an easy escape route.

I actually wrote to DCC about this some time ago and managed to extract a reply from them after about nine months!! At that time as 'an experiment' they were going to open an extra gate in the park beside Patrick's cathedral.
My attention had been drawn to the number of gates that are regularly closed on this park by a number of English tourists who were standing outside one day and could not figure how to get into it. I think they may have thought it was some form of open prison as there were lots of people inside just no easy way in. The main gate to a lovely park in Pearse Street is closed and so on and so on.

dub45

Get rid of those stupid kiosks on Capel Street Bridge.

Stop the increasing tendency of people to park cars fully on footpaths. (my attention was only recently drawn to the inconvenience this presents to blind people, old people etc etc.).

There is an increasing tendency on the part of DCC to regard us as subjects rather than citizens.

RandolphEsq

i say add more bright,flashy colours to the city. the bridges should be painted in rainbow colours and walls painted in colour as well as trees,buildings etc. u see where im going

Kinetic^

I would knock down crumlin shopping centre

grimloch

In the perfect world, get rid of the Dublin scum, let people have a bit of safety/peace of mind on their way home.

Obviously make it cleaner, make streets wider so people don't moan so much about the foreign student during summer.

Finally finish O'Connell Street.

Somehow lower rent/insurance so that we could all avail of lower prices.

_Turismo4

grimloch wrote:

In the perfect world, get rid of the Dublin scum, let people have a bit of safety/peace of mind on their way home.

Obviously make it cleaner, make streets wider so people don't moan so much about the foreign student during summer.

Finally finish O'Connell Street.

Somehow lower rent/insurance so that we could all avail of lower prices.

Yep, Well said, Also elect better politicians.

Bam Bam

If its possible to get the scum out of the liffey and have a clean river running through the center of the city.

Also skyscrapers surrounded by small parks, Dublin City needs to start building up instead of out, the spidersweb of roads in the city is choking it to death with traffic.

Zaph0d

Build a weir at the mouth of the liffey so it's at high-tide level all the time.

Dave!

Exterminate all the goddamn junkies

[Jackass]

I agree it's time for high-rise buildings. There isn't enough room in the city for the demand of accomodation and office space, and Dublin city is very restricted by the space it can grow outwards as it is surrounded by sub-urbs. My favourite building in Dublin is the millenium tower beside pearce st. bridge. I love that whole dockland development infact...the whole area is excellent, i have to admit it's one thing the government did manage to get right.

I like the idea of a culture quarter (although some people would argue temple bar is supposed to be just that...but Hen nights aren't exactly culture. )

A proper, full on China town would be great. Has anyone been to the asian market? It's brilliant, I would love to see that on a bigger scale.

Infrastructure is a massive problem...we need several light rail lines, expand the dart line, and i would welcome a cycling culture greatly also, but i would be strongly against a congestion charging system simlar to London!!!

Sarsfield

Have a standard livery for taxis.
Have (and enforce - always our weakness) a reasonable minimum standard for taxi cabs and taxi drivers.

dub45

DaveMcG wrote:

Exterminate all the goddamn junkies

While I like to think I am the 'liberal' type have to confess the junky issue brings out the right winger in me. It simply baffles me that the authorities have allowed the open selling of drugs in Thomas St to continue for so long. Thomas St itself is in dire need of a major overhaul particularly given the number of Tourists who frequent it now on their way to and from Guinnesses.

Ithink I read somewhere that the Guiness Visitor's Centre is one of the most visited tourist spots in the country and yet the vast majority of visitors will access it via one of the most run down areas (in every sense) in the entire city - seems incredible.

Funkstard

Hold creamfields in Ballymun and convince Al-Qaeda to hijack a plane full of package holiday tourists going to Majorca and fly the thing straight into the middle of it all. Kill about 7 birds with the one stone.

There's nothing more I'd like to see than some sort of ethnic cleansing for scum. People above a certain income bracket should have the right to a shoot to kill policy

DublinWriter

1) Proper joined up Metro system

2) Functioning Lord Mayorship with real civic power, elected by the people and not the disgraceful junket it now is.

3) Joined up urban planning, i.e. Adamstown, the population of Drogeha on a plot of land the size of an 18-hole golf course without any schools or amenities.

That's it, basically.

AndyWarhol

Maybe finish the O'Connell Street project before the end of the year? This would be a good start.

kawaii

Plant a giant forest around the city...

grimloch

AndyWarhol wrote:

Maybe finish the O'Connell Street project before the end of the year? This would be a good start.

Ha, it's taken two years to get halfway up the street.

Flukey

Public transport is the big thing that needs addressing. Things like more Luas lines and rail links to the airport. Another good thing for Dublin would be to do more things for the regions, to get more people to move out of Dublin and reduce congestion and many other problems.

AndyWarhol

kawaii wrote:

Plant a giant forest around the city...

You mean reinstate the Pale?

grimloch

Flukey wrote:

Public transport is the big thing that needs addressing. Things like more Luas lines and rail links to the airport. Another good thing for Dublin would be to do more things for the regions, to get more people to move out of Dublin and reduce congestion and many other problems.

Maybe get a bit of an underground system going. I'm not entirely sure but I hear we have a pretty extensive tunnel system under the sity for some reason.

kawaii

AndyWarhol wrote:

You mean reinstate the Pale?

No walls or anything... Just a giant impenatrable forest.

With dinosaurs.

Seriously though, a bit of woodland around the city would be very attractive imo

smarties

definitely increase the height of buildings in the city centre, urban sprawl is out of control when i was 2 and moved into my house, there was a farm beside us, now theres **** loads of apartments and and no farm and im 17.
dont think their will ever be big concerts in stephens green, like theyre so into keeping the grass and flowers nice and keeping it clean, and i appreciate that. a cultural area wud be great. we definitely have enough chinese people to make a chinatown! theres so many things that need to be knocked down and redeveloped, going to boarding school on the luas line makes public transport great for me, but it definitely needs a lot of improvement. and just clean up the city in general its pretty filthy.

Dave!

kawaii wrote:

No walls or anything... Just a giant impenatrable forest.

With dinosaurs.

Seriously though, a bit of woodland around the city would be very attractive imo

It would, but because of the rate at which the city is expanding, you'd be cutting the trees down not long after planting them.

grimloch

DaveMcG wrote:

It would, but because of the rate at which the city is expanding, you'd be cutting the trees down not long after planting them.

Not if we build upways.

kawaii

Well you could have a belt of trees and then some more buildings...

It's not impossible

Dave!

Yeah true, but if everyone's trying to get into the city there'll have to be a load of roads running through the trees, and that might (a) cause more congestion, and (b) defeat the purpose of the trees, because there'll be a load of concrete and tarmac and cars and noise and pollution and the likes running right through them. I'd love a forest, I like trees, but I don't know if it's practical.

kawaii

We've just got to be organised about it and build sufficient roads using as little space as possible...

Sarsfield

Add a boat or 2 to the Dublin City Council cleansing dept fleet and keep the rivers and canals litter free. They have tremendous amenity value and are spoiled in certain areas by unsightly litter build-up (especially around the canal locks and the Liffey boardwalk).

chillywilly

Funkstard wrote:

Hold creamfields in Ballymun and convince Al-Qaeda to hijack a plane full of package holiday tourists going to Majorca and fly the thing straight into the middle of it all. Kill about 7 birds with the one stone.

There's nothing more I'd like to see than some sort of ethnic cleansing for scum. People above a certain income bracket should have the right to a shoot to kill policy

so all poor people should be shot?

****in idiot

RandolphEsq

i agree with funkstard about getting rid of the skangers,but the poor thing is a bit far,for now

Dave!

I think sucking up the river Liffey and replacing it with the river Seine(which would *coincidentally* go missing during the night) would be a good move on the government's part. I'm sure we could find a good use for the Liffey's water, or if not, we can just put it where the Seine was -- see if they notice the difference.

[Jackass]

Poor dosen't = Skanger

You can find scum bags who get absolutely **** faced, get in fights, deal and/or take drugs, have several iligitamate children and are a nuesance to society, living in Dublin 4. They just happen to dress nice and have a respecfull job (where they do nothing more than show up) in Daddys business. They just don't stand out so much!

But Dublin is full of scum. Not much we can do about it though tbh....maybe better education?

Nothing pisses me off more though when areas are regenerated, places that badly need it are cleaned up....then some scum bag spray paints it, or breaks it up...:mad: Grrrrr......makes me mad!!

irlirishkev

DubGuy wrote:

But Dublin is full of scum. Not much we can do about it though tbh....maybe better education?

..Or castration. Deal with the problem at source.

O'Connell St. will be nice when it's finished, but if only something could be done about the shopfronts. I mean what have we got.. Burger Kings, McDonalds, Supermacs, O'Carrolls, Carlton facade, centras, spars... nothing that looks 'nice'. Then you have the litter problem and the druggies walking around with their milk and ice cream.

Surprisingly, the top of Parnell St. is looking well these days with all the chinese and korean restaurants and food markets opening up. It's like a regular little chinatown.

K.

DublinWriter

grimloch wrote:

Maybe get a bit of an underground system going. I'm not entirely sure but I hear we have a pretty extensive tunnel system under the sity for some reason.

We don't. There's a underground line under Phoenix park that was used for transporting mail in the 19th Century and hasn't been used for about 100 years. It's 4 foot high AFAIK.

Saruman

Zaph0d wrote:

Build a weir at the mouth of the liffey so it's at high-tide level all the time.

Was just thinking that this morning, well not a weir.. just thought it would be cool as the liffey looks pertty good when its high tide

However it would not work very well since dublin is a port! Maybe they could do something like have a weir with a large canal lock type area for boats/ships etc.
Only problem is it leaves us open to flooding. Messing with rivers etc causes floods when it rains. Happens everywhere.. probably one of the problems with New Orleans!!!!


Anyway i personally think a Monorail (Q simpsons episode music) would be a good idea. The one in Vegas is class and does not cross interfere with traffic on the roads.

I want to see the Docklands being developed into a manhattan like area. This is on the agenda i think though. Move the port out of Dublin.
More bins and more importantly have them emptied regularly. to cut down on litter.

Boardwalk is cool, do it along the whole stretch of liffey on both sides. Then maybe the footpath could be opened to widen the roads enough for the bus lanes to be constant on both sides as opposed to having to merge with traffic in some areas.

Liffey cruises, supposed to be running now but i have not seen it. Maybe a liffey taxi would be a good idea. it would be a quick way to get from Huoston to the city centre.

Chinatown.. come on they are cool.


Im sure i will think of more later.

gibo_ie

DublinWriter wrote:

We don't. There's a underground line under Phoenix park that was used for transporting mail in the 19th Century and hasn't been used for about 100 years. It's 4 foot high AFAIK.

I think you may be slightly mis-informed about the ehight of the phoenix park tunnel and its usage!!!

It is full height (there are some safety concerns of course because of the age of it) and has full signal upgrading done to it recently so it can handle a train every 5 minutes.

An interesting article on how this can be integrated into the dublin D-Connect, with a small effort and a new station in phibsboro can be found on www.platform11.org . This is a serious proposal and would do away with the stupid waste of money idea for a new tunnel between Connolly and Heuston when there is already one there which can be up and running with litle or no effort or money (more importantly)

Also transport wise, we should have free tourist bus through or around the city, Perth and Melbourne in Oz have this and it is great for people in the city moving around doing shopping etc..

more pedestrian lights wouldnt go astray and heres an idea for the Gardai -- yellow boxes are there for a reason, not a parking space for busses or 40 foot trucks who think they can block them (like pedestrian crossings) because there is 10 foot space in front!!

Footpaths, if your going to have them you might as well make them properly, look at abbey street where they done the paths up when Luas went in, they are still not finished, half concrete and half flagstone...

Buses -- these should not all have to terminate in the city center. Here is an idea, have orbital routes (many more than is there now), and they should have a terminus in the city, there is a site (owned by CIE) between Strand Street and Abbey Street (beside luas stop), which could easily become a terminus for most routes, easy access to and from O'Connell street and Quays and Jervis street on northward. This could interconect with the Luas then and take loads of busses off Talbot/O'Connell streets and the quays...

End of rant for now...

Sarsfield

gibo_ie wrote:

This is a serious proposal and would do away with the stupid waste of money idea for a new tunnel between Connolly and Heuston when there is already one there which can be up and running with litle or no effort or money (more importantly)

The current proposal is NOT for a tunnel from Connolly to Heuston. It is from docklands to Heuston. It will serve the city centre at St Stephens Green and High St. It will connect with the Luas at the green and deliver people to the new and fast developing docklands area. And, as explained by Barry Kenny in the Irish times this morning, the existing tunnel will just deliver more traffic to the railways number 1 bottleneck.

To quote the letter:

"To answer Kenneth Wilson's question (September 3rd) question regarding the role of the Phoenix Park Tunnel, currently it is not used for regular services as it would simply deliver additional trains into the Connolly Station bottleneck; for every Kildare train that travelled through the tunnel, a Maynooth, Drogheda or Dart service would have to be cancelled. It can play a role if a Docklands station is developed, but once again, it would not generate sufficient capacity to meet the forecast population growth."

funk-you

steam clean the city, they did a great job on the statues on o connell st until a few tits saw fit to scrawl their names on the side. seriously steam clean the city twice a year.

[Jackass]

I think the Boardwalk is there to eventually be used the length of the quays as a footpath, while they remove the current footpath to make space for Bus lanes (whilst also hopefully having little or no trucks in traffic), thus making the city traffic flow. Good idea in theroy, i'll reserve judgment untill i see it though.

I have no doubt there will be a china town in the not to distant future, but where would it be located? I'm sure an un-official one will have to develop first. Probebly in Rathmines or somewhere.

An under ground system is desperatly needed by the city. I would love to see one up and running. But to develop a metro system is so complex, expensive, and disruptive that i just can't see it happening. Not with this Governments track record for planning anyway.

But i suppose if their are already lines in place, it would be stupid not to re-devlop them and use them. Is there just the one tunnell already underground in the city? and where does it go, Phoenix park to where?

Zebra3

Seriously expand/develop public tranport.

DART to Maynooth (and maybe a bit further) and Balbriggan.

Either a Luas or Metro to connect with the Belfast line at roughly Balbriggan via the airport which should be quadruple track to free up the existing DART line from Intercity and outer suburban trains.

And most importantly, ban the wearing of sports gear (ie football jerseys and tracksuits) unless you are taking part or on your way to taking part in a sporting event/gym session, etc.

DublinWriter

gibo_ie wrote:

An interesting article on how this can be integrated into the dublin D-Connect, with a small effort and a new station in phibsboro can be found on www.platform11.org .

I've heard Derek Wheeler of Platform 11 interviewed on the Radio before and everything he says makes sence.

...however their website sucks. There I was, all exited about finding out about the existing disused rail tunnel under the city centre, and I get the 'watch this space - site under construction' BS so common with Irish pressure groups. That's like putting out a P.A. statement with a one line annoucement then saying more to follow. I mean, how difficult would it have been for them to string together a few pages of HTML and .... *tray on head*

...there, better, rant over.

In the meantime, I suggest that a Dublin-wide ban be put on all nicknames ending in 'O' (Matto, Lukeo, Johno, Anto, etc) and the names 'King' and 'Prince' be fobidden when naming a dog.

Zebra3

Also, they should outlaw parents (or anyone else for that matter) screaming at kids in public. Does my head in.