Renaming Dublin's rail lines after people

I think most people in Waterford would know it was officially called “Plunkett Station”, but I have never heard it called anything except “the train station”. In fact, I’d say it’s only about half of people who know that the station is named after James, the revolutionary, rather than Oliver, the saint.

Part of reason could be that Plunkett had no connection with Waterford, and so wasn’t a local hero. Compare with Cork Kent (from Castlelyons), Limerick Colbert (from Newcastle West), Wexford O’Hanrahan (from New Ross), Galway Ceannt (from Ballymoe), Sligo Mac Diarmada (sort-of. He was from Kiltyclogher, Co. Leitrim).

Oddly, John MacBride had no links to Drogheda, but was born in Westport, a town whose railway station was not named after anyone at all.

That’s part of the problem with naming places based on a “theme” like this: you either have too many people who need to be honoured, or not enough people to fill the available places.

Everyone in Limerick knows it's called Colbert. It's obviously easier to say "the station" but nobody would be confused by Colbert station.

Given that the station-naming lark was the work of Tod Andrews in 1966, the chances of Waterford station being named after Redmond was just about as likely as it was being named after Oliver Cromwell.

The adjacent bridge was officially named Redmond Bridge but seldom referred to as such. The building of a replacement bridge was used as an excuse to name the new bridge after Edmund Rice.

Which in my opinion shows that naming things in this way is better avoided.

Now there's an interesting question, and it never occurred to me that moving the station would mean losing the old name too. I would favour no personal name at all, but I fear someone will insist on "commemoration"...

@Economics101 I remember hearing the name "Redmond Bridge" a lot growing up, but "Rice Bridge" less so: it was just "the bridge", there being only one at the time.

the fact there are nearly 80 posts on this thread is an indication of how nothing tanglible is actually happening.

Maybe after Mary O'Rourke, former Minister for Transport.

It appears she has died, in which case RIP Mary, though we may need a consultant's report to confirm that...

The expense of a tunnel for a service as slow and low capacity as Luas would have been madness. If you're going to bore a tunnel, put a proper metro into it.

The "Underground Luas" was one of the Progressive Democrats' tactics to kill or delay the Luas project. The PDs were well stocked with the kind of person who'd happily spend a billion on a motorway, but would consider half that spent on a tram line to be a total waste of money… largely because they might one day drive on that road, but wouldn't be seen dead on public transport.

The tactic of proposing a higher-cost, impossible alternative to a good project resurfaces every so often: e.g., libertarian tech-bro Elon Musk's sudden grá for the idea of "Hyperloop" as soon as California High Speed Rail started to look like happening.

U.S. coinage only adoped that motto in 1956 following a successful campaign by Christian lobbyists that played heavily on the country's anti-Communist hysteria. Prior to that, the official motto of the United States, E Pluribus Unum ("From many, one") was used. This was around the same time that the words "under God" were sneaked into the Pledge of Allegience that starts every American schoolday.

I'm an athiest, but I also believe in religious tolerence. Catholicism is a part of our history, for better and worse, so I don't think we should remove all of the many "holy-God" names from our country, but I would object to anything more being named for religious figures (of any faith). I would be okay with honouring someone for good works that were incidental to their religious affiliations though (Edmund Rice sits on the border of these categories, I think, but only because of the evil people that later cloaked themselves in the organisation he founded with good intentions)

These days, as soon as the corpse of any "great and good" man reaches room temperature, their hidden crimes start to be revealed, so naming anything after a living person, no matter how good they are, would seem like aiming a loaded rifle at your foot..

It's separation of church and state, not separation of religion and state. Right from the beginning the US has invoked religious ideas in support of its political nature — the declaration of independence argues that the colonies have a right to choose their own government because (among other things) "all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", and the laws of "Nature's God" entitle the colonists to establish their own state, separate from and equal to Great Britain.

Plus, for bonus points: the separation of church and state was not supposed to secure the state against religious influence; it was supposed to secure the churches from political influence, and to ensure the religious liberty of citizens.

Hence there isn't a problem (in the American version of separation of church and state) with the state invoking generic religious notions, so long as it doesn't align with any particular religion or denomination, and doesn't attempt to impose or constrain religious practices.