Infrastructure that never happened

Ballina & Killaloe bridge between Tipperary and Clare (though Ballina likes to imagine they are in the more wealthy town of Killaloe, looking at you fake address Lakeside Hotel 🙄)

So many years ago and maybe longer there was a plan for a new road bridge and the existing bridge would become a cyclist / pedestrian bridge. A super idea which should have happened 30 years ago but in 2023 we have no progress.

Even local Minister Alan Kelly could not push this through.

A bridge, hell get some students from Univerity of Limerick and it will be superb training for them and have someone experienced oversee it. One bridge is hardly the most difficult project ever

When Ireland had no money and Minister Balfour was handing out money for uneconomical infrastructure there was a railway built between Birdhill and Killaloe. But in 2023 we cannot build a road bridge

And that would have increased capacity, how? Garret didn't want DART, he tried to scupper Luas. How he is thought of as 'rail enthusiast' in any way beats me. A more personable Sean Barrett.

The Munich U-Bahn has an interesting variation, in that it’s mostly three trunk lines with branches, but there are also a few strategic interlined segments that are very short - the sections where lines "cross" are usually only common for one or two stations before diverging again. Follow the path of U2 (dark red) on the map below to see what I mean.

Much less time than typing that post 🤣

The Granada "Metro" are buses that run 100% on bus lanes outside the city centre and then go underground for the central stops.

Great find, has been interesting at how rural that part of Dublin has remained despite growth elsewhere. I wonder when the name Ballyboghil changed to Ballyboughal? And I didn't realise the inital plan was to have the M1 all the way to Griffith Avenue.

The initial plan for the M1 was to run from Griffith Avenue to Blake’s Cross where it would terminate, a full Dublin-Belfast motorway wasn’t considered back then.

I live out that general area, and was unaware of that particular proposal. Though there has been others since then, like the plan for "Vega City" (theme park, 14 hotels, 10,000 apartments, a huge conference centre and believe it or not, a monorail 😀). The article below describes it as in Lusk, but it was definitely the Ballyboughal side of the old N1.

https://fora.ie/theme-park-dublin-lusk-vega-city-3334828-Apr2017/

I also remember a kerfuffle about the spelling of the village name. Some of the locals were not happy about the town being associated with a "bog" and fought the government body of the time (The Placenames Commission). Looks like the locals won that battle. It's claimed that the village is named after St Patricks "staff" (Báile Bachaille) which supposedly ended up there somehow.

Sir Hugh Lane, the Cork born art dealer, proposed building an art gallery in St. Stephen's Green, Dublin in the early 1900s. When that was rejected by Dublin Corporation, he proposed replacing the Ha'penny Bridge with a modern art gallery that would span the Liffey:

Lutyens suggested replacing the metal bridge now known as the Ha’penny Bridge with a Ponte Vecchio-style gallery spanning the River Liffey when the proposal for a gallery located in St Stephen’s Green was rejected. The cost of the bridge gallery was estimated at £45,000 and Lane was so enthusiastic about the design that he pledged to fund any expenditure over this amount. However, the whole idea was considered as an unwarranted extravagance by William Martin Murphy and he declared it would prevent fresh sea air circulating in the slums. The proposal was narrowly defeated in a vote by Dublin city councillors in 1913. The ongoing attempt at finding a suitable location for the gallery was lampooned in cartoons published in The Herald, a paper controlled by William Martin Murphy, with one cartoon suggesting the top of Nelson’s Pillar as a possibility. Here the proposed Gallery is shown majestically taking its place alongside a busy quay crowded with trams, horses and carts and people going about their daily lives.  (source)

His gallery eventually ended up becoming the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, now the Hugh Lane Gallery, in Parnell Square. Lane himself died in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915.

That was to have had an underground rail station too: the first iteration of what would later become "DART Underground" proposed a Dublin Central Station under the CIÉ lands at Temple Bar

I do believe (although unfortunately I have no evidence on hand to back it up) that there was plans back in the mid to late 1800s I think to turn the Custom House into a very large railway terminus/station with I think a higher level (loop line bridge) and a lower terminus level. I’m not sure if plans got too far at all but I know that it was something being considered at the time… a bit mad

The plan for a railway colonnade through the city centre

https://www.archiseek.com/1837-proposed-railway-colonnade-dublin/