Motorist oppression: Parking bays 10 seconds from houses to 30km/h on motorway ramps

Iwannahurl · 01-09-2013 10:39AM #1

Off-topic posts split from the "Junction design the Dutch pedestrian and cycle friendly way" thread.

galwaycyclist wrote: »

... in the Netherlands, which is where we are talking about, the engineers will often seek to reduce delay for cyclists by whatever means possible.

...

And yes if some engineer puts in some design that imposes delay, if they are trying to manage one set of road users (cyclists and pedestrians) for the benefit of some other set of road users (motorists) then there is no moral obligation on the first groups to respect or obey the controls being applied.

We can see this in relation to pedestrian crossings and pedestrian phases at traffic lights all over the country. Several generations of Irish road engineers have been training several generations of pedestrians to ignore the red man at traffic signals.

Spook_ie wrote: »

So in the context of road traffic, do you believe that cyclists should be treated differently and given preferential treatment over other forms of transport?

If that is the case then does that place other road users under the same lack of moral obligation or do you just mean cyclists?

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Not only do we need a 'level playing pitch' for these modes of travel, but as a society we need positive discrimination in order to ensure a much greater modal share for them in future. Other countries have gone much further in that direction than we have, but there are early signs that we are starting to get the message in Ireland.

And no, there is no moral obligation on motorists, for example, to engage in civil disobedience or to ignore laws that favour, say, public transport. Take bus lanes, for instance. Motorists mightn't like them, but they serve a useful societal purpose and are there for the greater good. This is in no way equivalent to situations such as roads engineering practices that treat pedestrians and cyclists as second-class citizens.

I just want to clarify this clumsily-phrased sentence: "there is no moral obligation on motorists, for example, to engage in civil disobedience or to ignore laws that favour, say, public transport."

In the context of the OP, regarding cyclist/pedestrian friendly junction designs, the Dutch approach is clearly 'positive discrimination' in favour of cycling and walking. As galwaycyclist puts it, Dutch roads engineers "will often seek to reduce delay for cyclists by whatever means possible."

The controls being applied in the Dutch situation make the better transport choice the easier choice. It could be argued that the high-quality cycle facilities impose a 'moral obligation' on cyclists to use them, but such an obligation is unnecessary because cyclists are already highly incentivised to use them.

Again, the opposite is often the case in Ireland. Cycle and pedestrian facilities are so poorly designed, often because the primary objective is the facilitation of motorised traffic, that cyclists and pedestrians have "no moral obligation to respect or obey the controls being applied."

Controls on private car use are not analagous in this context. We often hear complaints from some quarters that measures such as speed surveillance, traffic calming, reallocation of road space, parking restrictions, car-free streets and the like are "punitive" and "anti-motorist".

As stated earlier, there are sound public policy justifications for such measures, so there no good arguments for claiming that motorists are under no moral obligation to accept them. For example, a motorist in a bus lane is not making a statement or demonstrating the folly of unreasonable restrictions; they are just breaking the law and causing a nuisance.

Cyclists breaking red lights, going the 'wrong way' up one-way streets and using the footpaths, and pedestrians allegedly 'jay-walking', are breaking the law and/or may be a nuisance to other road users at times. However, in many (though I would not say all) cases they are adapting to unnecessary restrictions. I personally find such behaviour to be very annoying on occasion, but I would also agree that the sustainable way to deal with it is to greatly improve the standard of engineering and education for cyclists and pedestrians.

Make cycling and walking the easier choice at all times and you remove both the motivation and the opportunity for real or perceived misbehaviour. When walking and cycling has been facilitated to that degree, the real recidivist law-breakers will stand out like a sore thumb and should be dealt with accordingly.

SeanW · 01-09-2013 03:34PM

Iwannahurl wrote: »

'positive discrimination'

Is an oxymoron.

It could be argued that the high-quality cycle facilities impose a 'moral obligation' on cyclists to use them, but such an obligation is unnecessary because cyclists are already highly incentivised to use them.

You really should tell this to the fool on the bike I saw at the junction of Talbot St and Gardiner street a couple of weeks ago.

He was continuing along Gardiner street, or more precisely the footpath on Gardiner street, where the pedestrian lights were red but the traffic lights for the road version of the same route were green. He did obey the "pedestrian(cyclist)" lights and stopped, to his credit, but could have sailed through the junction on a green traffic light if he were on the street, which included a decent cycle lane and had very light vehicular traffic.

that cyclists and pedestrians have "no moral obligation to respect or obey the controls being applied."

Translation: the controls are inconvenient, but if I'm on a bike I can disregard them?

Controls on private car use are not analagous in this context.

Controls on private car use can have good rationale, but not all of them do. The "controls" being advocated in certain quarters range from the ridiculous to the sublime.

We often hear complaints from some quarters that measures such as speed surveillance, traffic calming, reallocation of road space, parking restrictions, car-free streets and the like are "punitive" and "anti-motorist".

They are not? Please explain.

However, in many (though I would not say all) cases they are adapting to unnecessary restrictions.

Perhaps, but I am sure you would agree that the same is true of motorists adapting to 18.5MPH speed limits on dual carriageways and motorist hostile layouts such as this housing estate in Portlaoise?

Can you please explain to me how the the above, especially the latter, are not "anti-motorist."

If it is appropriate to suggest that cyclists can disregard laws simply because catering for them might not have been priority 1, then why does the same concept not apply to restrictions applied to motorists that have no basis in logic whatsoever, as the above are.

Or should the level of "positive discrimination" be so extreme that common sense should also be the subject of prejudice?

TINA1984 · 01-09-2013 03:43PM

SeanW wrote: »

Perhaps, but I am sure you would agree that the same is true of motorists adapting to 18.5MPH speed limits on dual carriageways and motorist hostile layouts such as this housing estate in Portlaoise?

What exactly is "motorist hostile" about the layout in your Portlaoise example?

SeanW · 01-09-2013 03:52PM

TINA1984 wrote: »

What exactly is "motorist hostile" about the layout in your Portlaoise example?

Umm ... I should have thought it was obvious, the streets are too narrow and the houses dont have driveways, so parking is strictly rationed and arranged into inconvenient, ridiculous "parking court" arrangements. And it was built like that on purpose, with the explicit intention of being hostile to the needs of the people who would live there.

It's like a moronic child squeezing as many green houses onto a property on a Monopoly board as possible, and it even has a name, "The Essex Design," and is heavily promoted in certain quaters. Presumably in Essex, it's the only kind of house you can buy and the design is imposed on you whether it fits your needs and lifestyle or not.

Furthermore, the view taken in certain quarters, taken very strongly I expect, is that when the residents of that estate adapted to unnecessary restrictions and their own needs as residents, they are to be condemned in very strong terms and should be the subject of an immediate, iron-fist clampdown. But cyclists who do the same thing (at best?) No such condemnation.

Noone would suggest intentionally making things hostile to cyclists or pedestrians, e.g. building a train station with no cycle parking because the train company hates cyclists or a street with a narrow footpath because of explicit hostility to pedestrians.

TINA1984 · 01-09-2013 04:22PM

SeanW wrote: »

Umm ... I should have thought it was obvious, the streets are too narrow and the houses dont have driveways, so parking is strictly rationed and arranged into inconvenient, ridiculous "parking court" arrangements. And it was built like that on purpose, with the explicit intention of being hostile to the needs of the people who would live there...

I think you're being slightly hyperbolic here. Is it really that great a hardship to park your car in a designated parking bay a few metres away from your house?

SeanW · 01-09-2013 04:25PM

TINA1984 wrote: »

I think you're being slightly hyperbolic here. Is it really that great a hardship to park your car in a designated parking bay a few metres away from your house?

Why should someone have to? This is a new build housing estate that should have been built to accommodate the residents, not to force the residents to retrofit their lives IN ANY WAY around some bizarre design principle.

Again, noone would suggest doing this to pedestrians or cyclists and with good reason. But with motorists, it seems anything is fair game.

Qualitymark · 01-09-2013 04:26PM

I have to agree with SeanW that far too little attention is paid to proper parking in Ireland. Parking lots are seen as a chance to harvest profit from the unlucky motorist who has no choice but to use them.
If we built enough high-rise parking lots and let the space out cheaply to motorists, at a *fair* price, it would be possible to release the whole of the street surface for proper cycle lanes, adequate car and vehickle driving space, separation of cars and cycles so both could flow properly and independently, and happy camping all around.
Don't even *start* me on the cynicism of high charges for hospital parking, or the multi-lane stack-up of garda-owned cars outside Pearse Street.

markpb · 01-09-2013 04:29PM

TINA1984 wrote: »

I think you're being slightly hyperbolic here. Is it really that great a hardship to park your car in a designated parking bay a few metres away from your house?

Perhaps if you're too stupid to realise at the time of rental/purchase that there is no parking at your house, there's a risk you might not find your car if its not in your direct line of sight Unless of course people were rounded up and ordered to live there like PoW camps?

SeanW, the 30kph limit on some M50 on-ramps is because they're too tight and too cambered to take safely at normal speed, especially for HGVs. The limit was imposed after a truck jack-knifed on one and the driver was killed. Not every speed limit is there to persecute drivers, there's a conspiracy theory forum if you believe they are.

The reason that the estate is planned like that is to make it safer for residents and their children. It removes the possibility of a child being struck if they emerge between two parked cars. Again, not a persecution.

I don't expect to get a rational reply to the post - your previous posts have shown that you believe motorists to be victims of some international conspiracy and any attempt at making lives easier or safer for people using any other mode of transport to be a) ridiculous or b) also part of the conspiracy.

TINA1984 · 01-09-2013 04:34PM

SeanW wrote: »

Why should someone have to? This is a new build housing estate that should have been built to accommodate the residents, not to force the residents to retrofit their lives IN ANY WAY around some bizarre design principle.

I'm not au fait with the design principle, but I'd presume its grounded in reasoning that a neighbourhood is a more pleasant place to live in when it doesn't have on street car parking either side of the street.

As for people having to "retrofit" their lives around the terrible inconvenience of having to park their cars a few metres away rather the directly outside their front door, presumably they were aware of this tyrannical measure when they decided to live in this fiendishly designed suburban hellhole?

SeanW wrote: »

Again, noone would suggest doing this to pedestrians or cyclists and with good reason. But with motorists, it seems anything is fair game.

What about pedestrians and cyclists in your Portlaoise example? say if you're in a wheelchair attempting to use the footpath, or a cyclist going one way on the street with a car coming the other way, you're seriously inconvenienced by motorists parking their car on the pavement. I find it hard to have any sympathy for people so lazy they refuse to park their cars a few metres away from their house in a designated space.

TINA1984 · 01-09-2013 04:38PM

Qualitymark wrote: »

I have to agree with SeanW that far too little attention is paid to proper parking in Ireland. Parking lots are seen as a chance to harvest profit from the unlucky motorist who has no choice but to use them.
If we built enough high-rise parking lots and let the space out cheaply to motorists, at a *fair* price, it would be possible to release the whole of the street surface for proper cycle lanes, adequate car and vehickle driving space, separation of cars and cycles so both could flow properly and independently, and happy camping all around.
Don't even *start* me on the cynicism of high charges for hospital parking, or the multi-lane stack-up of garda-owned cars outside Pearse Street.

I think we have better things to do with public money then building a network of state subsidised parking lots for motorists looking for cheaper parking.

If you can afford, to buy, insure, maintain, tax, and fuel a car then I'm pretty sure you're able to pay parking charges.

SeanW · 01-09-2013 04:46PM

Perhaps if you're too stupid to realise at the time of rental/purchase that there is no parking at your house, there's a risk you might not find your car if its not in your direct line of sight Unless of course people were rounded up and ordered to live there like PoW camps?

Or maybe the poor eejits who bought those houses did so during the boom for the same reason that everyone else bought houses at the time?

I would liken the crappy, resident hostile design of this estate to Priory Hall - yet people bought properties in both places for the same reasons.

SeanW, the 30kph limit on some M50 on-ramps is because they're too tight and too cambered to take safely at normal speed, especially for HGVs. The limit was imposed after a truck jack-knifed on one and the driver was killed.

All I know is that when I had to use that junction a few years back (continuing through the N3 inbound), I found the 30kph limit to have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what could be considered a sensible speed limit for safe driving. None. Though granted, this was in a car with good handling and in the quieter hours of the night.

Ideally if there are trucks jacknifing, then there should be separate speed limit for trucks, not a low speed limit applied to personal vehicles because trucks have differing requirements. Additionally the view that is taken in palces is that speed laws should be considered a 100% absolute with no flexibility or room for the applicaton of common sense whatsoever.

So if a speed limit is laid down because of jacknifing lorries, it should have speed camera vans crawling all over it because of the sheer terror that a car driver might exceed that limit.

Not every speed limit is there to persecute drivers

True, but many things are proposed to make motoring inconvenient even if there is no counter-beneficiary, simply because making things hard for motorists is in itself virtuous.

Take for example Dom Nozzi's blog in the U.S. where the language is very hostile "War on cars" "The car is the ENEMY" and every page ande every idea within, without exception follows that theme. I have little doubt that this is a blueprint in certain quarters in Europe.

The reason that the estate is planned like that is to make it safer for residents and their children. It removes the possibility of a child being struck if they emerge between two parked cars. Again, not a persecution.

Has there been a single case of that happening in the history of the State?

SeanW · 01-09-2013 04:50PM

TINA1984 wrote: »

I'm not au fait with the design principle, but I'd presume its grounded in reasoning that a neighbourhood is a more pleasant place to live in when it doesn't have on street car parking either side of the street.

Obviously the people who live there dont agree.

What about pedestrians and cyclists in your Portlaoise example? say if you're in a wheelchair attempting to use the footpath, or a cyclist going one way on the street with a car coming the other way, you're seriously inconvenienced by motorists parking their car on the pavement. I find it hard to have any sympathy for people so lazy they refuse to park their cars a few metres away from their house in a designated space.

Fair enough, your point would be acceptable but for the fact that it was built to be inadequate by design. The design should have been able to facilitate the needs of all of its residents: pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, everyone.

But it delioberatly built to be hostile to the needs of its residents and is thus little better than Priory Hall. And that design is advocated quite heavily with the explicit intention of spreading the insanse ideology behind it.

TINA1984 · 01-09-2013 04:59PM

SeanW wrote: »

Obviously the people who live there dont agree.

Some, not all.

SeanW wrote: »

Fair enough, your point would be acceptable but for the fact that it was built to be inadequate by design. The design should have been able to facilitate the needs of all of its residents: pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, everyone.

From what I can tell, it appears everyone is catered for. Residents have car parking if they so choose. Pedestrians have pavements and the internal road appears to be designed for exactly what it is, a road in a residential area. Thus it should be low-speed by design. It appears only to be inadequate to those who think they should be able to park their car wherever they feel like it? even when it inconveniences everyone else?

SeanW wrote: »

But it delioberatly built to be hostile to the needs of its residents and is thus little better than Priory Hall. And that design is advocated quite heavily with the explicit intention of spreading the insanse ideology behind it.

Again with the hyperbole! all this dramatic license being used to describe the tyranny of being forced to park in a designated parking space a few metres from a person's front door. Clearly this Portlaoise housing estate must some kind of communist plot to impinge our our freedoms & civil liberties!

Qualitymark · 01-09-2013 04:59PM

TINA1984 wrote: »

I think we have better things to do with public money then building a network of state subsidised parking lots for motorists looking for cheaper parking.

Except that it would get parked cars off the road, freeing more road space for use (by cyclists and pedestrians as well as by drivers).

galwaycyclist · 01-09-2013 05:03PM

SeanW wrote: »

If it is appropriate to suggest that cyclists can disregard laws simply because catering for them might not have been priority 1, then why does the same concept not apply to restrictions applied to motorists that have no basis in logic whatsoever, as the above are.

Nobody here has said it is appropriate to disregard any traffic laws. The exchange has been very carefully framed in terms of moral obligations. The application of law is a two way street there are obligations on two parties - those to whom the law applies - and those who apply those laws.

TINA1984 · 01-09-2013 05:04PM

Qualitymark wrote: »

Except that it would get parked cars off the road, freeing more road space for use (by cyclists and pedestrians as well as by drivers).

Flesh out your idea for me then. Say we build 4 or 5 new multi - storey car parks around Dublin CC, each capable of say handling a couple of thousand commuter cars. Can you see any drawbacks to such an idea?

SeanW · 01-09-2013 05:20PM

TINA1984 wrote: »

From what I can tell, it appears everyone is catered for. Residents have car parking if they so choose.

Yes, they have strictly rationed car parking in a hostile, incoventient "court" arrangement.

So much better than having, oh, say, individual driveways.

Pedestrians have pavements and the internal road appears to be designed for exactly what it is, a road in a residential area. Thus it should be low-speed by design.

I agree residential streets should be low speed and there should be provisions for pedestrians etc. Absolutely. But why so hostile to motorists?

It appears only to be inadequate to those who think they should be able to park their car wherever they feel like it?

Oh the horror! A motorist resident lives in a place and thinks it should be adapted to their (and most everyone elses) needs, rather than the residents having to alter their lives to accommodate a retarded, ideologically driven design ideal?

The horror!

even when it inconveniences everyone else?

If only there was a way that could have been avoided, oh, say, suggesting that Essex should take a leaf from Las Vegas' book - "What happens in Essex stays in Essex" :rolleyes:

Again with the hyperbole! all this dramatic license being used to describe the tyranny of being forced to park in a designated parking space a few metres from a person's front door.

Only there absolutely no reason whatosever that the place should have been designed like that.

I know it sounds crazy but if you think about it for 5 seconds you should ge the idea :rolleyes:

BTW as for the designated spaces, what to the residents do when they have visitors visiting by car? Where do the visitors park? Since parking is strictly (artificially) rationed?

markpb · 01-09-2013 06:09PM

SeanW wrote: »

Or maybe the poor eejits who bought those houses did so during the boom for the same reason that everyone else bought houses at the time?

I would liken the crappy, resident hostile design of this estate to Priory Hall - yet people bought properties in both places for the same reasons

Let's see where that emotive analogy might be incorrect.

Was it possible for the prospective owners of PH to tell from the plans that it wouldn't be built in accordance with the fire safety acts?

Was it possible for the prospective owners of your favorite whipping boy estate to tell from the plans that there was no driveway outside their prospective homes?

One group of people were swindled by an incredibly unscrupulous builder, the others were blind.

As for your M50 gripe, your last post says it all. Your experience is driving down it once at night. I'm not sure on which planet your single experience trumps the collective, professional experience of the people who designed it, the people who police every road in the country or the people who respond to fatal RTCs. Maybe it's more the case that you want the road to be designed for you and no-one else?

Iwannahurl · 01-09-2013 06:28PM

Images of illegal, obnoxious and utterly lazy parking taken from StreetView. The housing development is in Portlaoise and is based on the Essex Design concept, I'm told, which tries to make streets more pedestrian and child friendly. One of the ways this is done is to minimise on-street parking and place it instead between and behind houses.

The first photo shows a "parking court" typically seen in the Essex Design. There seems to be only one car parked in it. The second photo (of the street immediately adjacent) shows what some people think of the concept, of parking laws and of pedestrian friendly notions.

Because of the residents' unwillingness to walk a few metres from a parking court to their front door, illegal parking became endemic. I was informed that the Council's response to the obstruction of the footpaths and streets by cars was to introduce one-way systems in the area. This of course has the immediate effect of making it illegal to cycle your bike up and down the street in front of your house.

You couldn't make it up.

Qualitymark · 01-09-2013 06:29PM

TINA1984 wrote: »

Flesh out your idea for me then. Say we build 4 or 5 new multi - storey car parks around Dublin CC, each capable of say handling a couple of thousand commuter cars. Can you see any drawbacks to such an idea?

Not if it's accompanied by controls on the number of cars coming in.

I mean, look at this: I don't know about the place where you live, but where I live, the number of cars parked here, and the traffic, plunges during all school holidays. If there were US-style school buses picking kids up and dropping them to all Dublin schools, I suspect that the number of cars in regular use would go down a lot, especially as it's so very dear to drive now. And if there were a really good bus service, with buses that arrived on time and got to their destination on time, and were clean and pleasant and well-regulated, I don't think people would be averse to taking them.

I think an awful lot of the driving, certainly around this Dublin area, is because people can't rely on the public transport service, or find it unpleasant to take buses. While working evening shifts a few years back I tried to rely on buses and was late all the time; I had to take buses because the shift ended very late. We got taxis home, courtesy of the labour laws. I should really have bought a fold-up bike, but this didn't occur to me. When the buses finally did arrive to pick up their frozen, soaked, coughing passengers, they were filthy, with half-chewed 'ready meals' dumped on the floor, cans of soft drinks and cups of takeaway coffee sloshing around underfoot, and the friendly local drug users having a loud slurred conversation in the back as they shared their heroin smoke with the rest of us. And that's not even mentioning the infective sneezers and don't-cover-their-mouths coughers-on-the-back-of-necks.

A bus service where the time on the board meant the bus would arrive at that time, and where the buses were clean, nice-smelling, properly ventilated and properly driven (no putting the foot on the clutch at stops so the bus judders sickeningly all the time it's waiting), and where the routes actually covered the city and suburbs properly - well, that would get so many people out of their cars.

monument · 01-09-2013 06:33PM

Posts removed from the other thread as all are off-topic -- more massively off-topic posts in the other thread will result it a formal warning or an infraction.

TheBandicoot · 01-09-2013 09:37PM

monument wrote: »

Posts removed from the other thread as all are off-topic -- more massively off-topic posts in the other thread will result it a formal warning or an infraction.

The thread title is needlessly antagonistic and not conducive to a proper discussion by either side.

EDIT: and I was infracted for this post :rolleyes:

SeanW · 01-09-2013 11:04PM

markpb wrote: »

Let's see where that emotive analogy might be incorrect.

Was it possible for the prospective owners of PH to tell from the plans that it wouldn't be built in accordance with the fire safety acts?

Was it possible for the prospective owners of your favorite whipping boy estate to tell from the plans that there was no driveway outside their prospective homes?

Both bought their properties likely during the boom under the same circumstances:
"Buy off the plans"
"Only 1 unit left"
"You can only afford some tip 50 miles from your job"
"It'll be twice as much 2 years from now"

If you had actually lived in Ireland and you were aware of the property bubble we had, you would realise that the line between "swindled" and
"blind" was much murkier than you would paint it.

Hint: Others apartment construction were legal but after you buy it you realise that the building is lowest-common-denomiator garbage and you can hear your neighbors conversations and bathroom movements and vice versa.

Priory Hall is just an extreme example of garbage being built on the cheap and hostile to their residents' needs. This estate in Portlaoise is no different.

As for your M50 gripe, your last post says it all. Your experience is driving down it once at night. I'm not sure on which planet your single experience trumps the collective, professional experience of the people who designed it, the people who police every road in the country or the people who respond to fatal RTCs. Maybe it's more the case that you want the road to be designed for you and no-one else?

I was driving along the N3 mainline and found that there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to be slowing motorists down to such ridiculous speeds (again, 18.5MPH on a grade separated dual carriageway) or anything like it.

But the view in certain quarters is that when I broke that speed limit - and I'm not ashamed of it in the slightest - that it was the same as driving twisted drunk and proof that motorists still have dangerous attitudes that need to be knocked on the head.

Iwannahurl wrote: »

Images of illegal, obnoxious and utterly lazy parking taken from StreetView. The housing development is in Portlaoise and is based on the Essex Design concept, I'm told, which tries to make streets more pedestrian and child friendly. One of the ways this is done is to minimise on-street parking and place it instead between and behind houses.

...

Because of the residents' unwillingness to walk a few metres from a parking court to their front door, illegal parking became endemic. I was informed that the Council's response to the obstruction of the footpaths and streets by cars was to introduce one-way systems in the area. This of course has the immediate effect of making it illegal to cycle your bike up and down the street in front of your house.

You couldn't make it up.

You're right about that part.

Housing estate was built in a crappy, lowest common denominator fashion designed as policy to be hostile to its residents needs - the same as a ****ty but legal apartment block with no soundproofing or insulation, only this is defended by people with questionable perspectives.

Residents adapt the design to their needs rather than fitting their lives around it, and the council responds by recongising that it was a bad idea to do it the way and make changes to accommodate the needs of the residents.

And all because aparently the driveway hadn't been invented yet :rolleyes:

You're right, you couldn't make it up.

Furthermore:

The fact that you can show a picture where every single resident was "voting with their wheels"

and automatically assume its' the residents fault for not fitting their lives around the design
not the designers fault for laying down a ****ty design that is hostile to its residents - in fact defending the design despite it being demonstrably proven by your own photographic evidence to be hostile to its residents and contrary to their interests - is something that I consider to be quite revealing.

Cookie_Monster · 01-09-2013 11:12PM

SeanW wrote: »

and automatically assume its' the residents fault for not fitting their lives around the design
not the designers fault for laying down a ****ty design that is hostile to its residents - in fact defending the design despite it being demonstrably proven by your own hostile to its residents and contrary to their interests - is something that I consider to be quite revealing.

they bought the houses fully aware of the plans and design so of course it's their own fault, stupid design or not.

SeanW · 01-09-2013 11:18PM

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

they bought the houses fully aware of the plans and design so of course it's their own fault, stupid design or not.

Partly, I agree. But the view taken in certain quarters is that this is a design that should be promoted, perhaps even made a requirement. I think that there are some people who would like to restrict the choices that others can make - for example as I understand it in Essex this kind of garbage is all they are allowed to build.

I contend that there is no difference between building a housing estate with this design and building an apartment block with no soundproofing (which happened a lot, as I said, Priory Hall was just an extreme example as far as apartment buildings are concerned).

Iwannahurl · 01-09-2013 11:49PM

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

they bought the houses fully aware of the plans and design so of course it's their own fault, stupid design or not.

I don't believe the design is stupid, but the residents' use of it certainly is in this case. I like this example just around the corner from the photos above. Is that a garage I see, with a car illegally parked up on a footpath outside it? You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make him think...

monument · 02-09-2013 12:12AM

I agree with SeanW here, possibly to different degrees.

On 30km/h on motorway -- 30km/h advisory or a solid 40km/h would even be better idea.

With the Portlaoise example: It's poorly designed for what it is even designed to do (as clear by the parking) and so it's a mess and a failure.

There's loads of examples of something like it, in this area of Amsterdam -- some of the main differences:

At local level it creates many good to excellent spaces of different sizes for people to enjoy.
High-grade walking and cycling corridors.
It's a part of a wider planned network and system.

Trying these types of designs half-heartedly tends to fail, annoy people and stop any real progress.

monument · 02-09-2013 12:35AM

Iwannahurl wrote: »

I don't believe the design is stupid,

Err...

Recent Development has taken place has reflected a different approach:

– Adamstown (Lucan)
– Ongar (Blanchardstown)
– Tyrrelstown (Blanchardstown)
– Kilminchy (Portlaoise)

Adamstown -- or what has been built so-far -- is very poor on cycling compared to what it's been billed as; Tyrrelstown is a planning mess and even more so poorer for cycling; I'm still trying to figure out what parts of Ongar and Kilminchy are supposed to be good (links and ideas please?).

Tragedy · 02-09-2013 01:09AM

Iwannahurl wrote: »

I don't believe the design is stupid, but the residents' use of it certainly is in this case. I like this example just around the corner from the photos above. Is that a garage I see, with a car illegally parked up on a footpath outside it? You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make him think...

It's pretty obvious that that garage isn't wide enough to fit any but the smallest of small cars.

Also, a design is stupid if it plain doesn't work. Arguing that the design is fine and it's the end users fault for the design being flawed is an oxymoron. You design living around those who will live there. You design transport around those who will you use it.

ThisRegard · 02-09-2013 08:25AM

monument wrote: »

Tyrrelstown is a planning mess and even more so poorer for cycling;

Once the Essex design came up I had an idea Tyrrelstown would get a mention. I would dispute it's a planning mess and even more so poorer for cycling. For the most part it works compared to the Portlaoise example. The parking spaces on the interior of the estate are at the side of the houses as opposed to courtyards, and there's no parking whatsoever on the main boulevard that loops around the estate.

On the residential roads people now expect to come across kids, people walking, or whatever so traffic, again excluding the morons you find everywhere, travels at a lower speed than most other places.

Iwannahurl · 02-09-2013 09:59AM

monument wrote: »

With the Portlaoise example: It's poorly designed for what it is even designed to do (as clear by the parking) and so it's a mess and a failure.

There's loads of examples of something like it, in this area of Amsterdam -- some of the main differences:
At local level it creates many good to excellent spaces of different sizes for people to enjoy.

High-grade walking and cycling corridors.

It's a part of a wider planned network and system.

Trying these types of designs half-heartedly tends to fail, annoy people and stop any real progress.

Tragedy wrote: »

It's pretty obvious that that garage isn't wide enough to fit any but the smallest of small cars.

Also, a design is stupid if it plain doesn't work. Arguing that the design is fine and it's the end users fault for the design being flawed is an oxymoron. You design living around those who will live there. You design transport around those who will you use it.

It depends on the prevailing culture, perhaps.

Footpaths, cycle lanes and disabled parking bays are clearly designed for particular functions. Irish motorists still park in them illegally, primarily because they get away with it more often than not.

Parking on footpaths in Ireland has become endemic, not because the function of footpaths is unclear or contested, but because enforcement and public policy in this regard are a mess and a failure.

There are housing estates all over the country featuring 'standard design' and motorists still treat the footpaths as private parking space.

No excuses I say.

Motorist oppression: Parking bays 10 seconds from houses to 30km/h on motorway ramps

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