Cities around the world that are reducing car access

LXFlyer wrote: »

Both routes would be redirected along Gilford Road and Park Avenue.

Anyone that uses stops between St John's Church and Sandymount Village is now going to have to walk further to get a bus. That is not a good change for those bus users, especially given the older population in the area.

Are there no old people living on Gilford Road and Park Avenue? It would bring the bus closer to them.

MJohnston wrote: »

Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation. Assessment and consultation.

Vomit. No thanks. This is how it's been forever, and we've gotten nowhere, slowly. It's a broken process!

I'd rather we take a progressive approach with a very minor bus route change like this — trial it now, watch how it impacts things, and then decide whether to roll back, adjust, or progress.

Nobodies lives (especially nobody who can afford to live on Strand Road!) will be ruined by giving these changes a temporary run out.

With due respect take the BusConnects network change proposal.

The original one was rejected out of hand by the public as a result of the consultation. It was based on barking mad parameters by the NTA that Jarrett Walker had to follow.

We got a much improved proposal last November, basically redesigned from scratch without the ludicrous assumptions that the original one had.

We have planning laws and we should have to abide by them. This proposal is riding roughshod over them. They are there for a reason.

There wasn’t even a consultation in Dundrum and bus users yet again have been the losers from the changes there and have a worse bus service as a result.

I just happen to think that the long term nature of these projects (none of them are temporary if we are honest about it) that bus routes shouldn’t be regarded as an afterthought.

I will not apologise to anyone for my pro-public transport stance in this. Buses just tend to be an afterthought and I don’t think that is fair.

I’d also say that the people on the roads that the Strand Road traffic is diverted onto might not view it as benignly as you do. Most of the traffic is cross-river and it’s very simplistic to think that it’ll evaporate. DCC seem to have copped that and are now going to assess the traffic impact. Shades of College Green again.

MJohnston wrote: »

I’m sorry but I’m not going to get into BusConnects as I think it’s absurd as a comparison.

This is a tiny change in the context of buses - the most drastic change being a move of 600m of one stop. It’s one frequent route and one infrequent, peak-only route.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the Dundrum changes cause *absolutely zero* long term problems for bus users, and hopefully some improvements too given the reduction in cars those changes have brought about.

My point was that there was a consultation which showed up the negative elements and that they were properly assessed.

DCC's plan for College Green got rejected by ABP as they hadn't assessed the knock-on effects thoroughly enough.

This is not a minor change overall when you look at diverted traffic and the impact on bus routes. I just think it needs proper planning.

You don't believe that there are negative impacts of the Dundrum changes for bus users? Come off it.

MJohnston wrote: »

Medium to long term? Absolutely not. That’s what’s important.

As for “proper planning” - if you can’t accept that trial-based planning is legitimate then that’s on you.

You clearly aren't aware of the changes to the bus routes in Dundrum if you think that.

We have lost having two stops where all buses going towards Ballinteer stop, that isn't an improvement - people have to choose one or the other.

There is no replacement stop for the main stop in the village for the 44/b and 175, meaning people now have to walk to Dundrum LUAS stop or to a totally unsignposted stop that is at the end of a myriad of paths at the back of the Dundrum Centre.

The 75 now has a 1 km distance between stops as it approaches Dundrum westbound.

The 75 and 175 now take totally different routings based on their direction, and the connectivity with the LUAS (which the NTA were so keen about) has now been lost in the case of the 75 heading westbound.

The reliability of the 14 towards the city centre is now appalling because of the ludicrous route that it has to take from the terminus that involves five right turns, three of them at signalled junctions before it gets to Ballinteer Road.

Virtually every departure from Dundrum terminus on the 14 is taking at least five minutes longer than before to get to Ballinteer, and some are taking up to 15 minutes more due to having to cope with the schools traffic on Kilmacud Road. Who in their right mind would think that this sort of diversion at the start of a major cross-city route rather than the end would be a good thing? It is crazy.

You could set your watch by the 14 in Ballinteer before this happened, based on the timetabled departure time. Not any more, and that will have implications further along the route - five minutes at the start can become fifteen-twenty minutes at peak times by the time the bus reaches the city centre.

So you'll excuse me if I don't share your rose tinted view of the situation. As a bus user I am far from happy about it as we very much got a raw deal from it.

Suburban shopping centres are a circle of help onto themselves. It's all soul-less end stage capitalism, screaming brats and indebted morons with notions of grandeur. The thought that this is preferable to central areas because it's easy to drive there is laughable, why would you chose to drive somewhere that isn't appealing instead of taking public transport or active modes to somewhere appealing.

MJohnston wrote: »

Bingo! The objections by Dundrum businesses are all the more oblivious because they have a huge demonstration of why people prefer to shop in car-free areas right next door.

I'm glad DLRCC are pushing through with this trial in the face of short-sighted objectors.

The degree of civil engineering work being carried out in Dundrum makes me very cynical that this is ever going to be changed.

Unlike Blackrock for example, there is a permanency about the works being carried out on the Main Street that certainly does not suggest that it is only a "trial".

As for your last comment - basically you're holding two fingers up to bus users in Dundrum who are getting a raw deal out of this. They don't matter obviously.

MJohnston wrote: »

Nah, I'm doing nothing of the sort. I simply prefer that they trial the changes and then address any of the issues that are cropping up — an extra bus stop on the bypass heading south close to the old shopping centre would be a very easy fix, for example. Digging up a bit of new concrete and putting the roads back to the old way is still very possible.

I think it's pointless to judge the efficacy of the changes right now, because there is still a tonne of road work happening all around the place to facilitate those changes.

Actually it isn’t pointless at all.

The delays to the 14 departing Dundrum are caused by the diversion route, with little or no roadworks along that route. It’s down to the extended detour, five right turns and four sets of traffic lights, (previously a single right turn and one set of lights) and at certain times the very heavy traffic at the school which it never passed before on Kilmacud Road.

The bus stop on the bypass can’t happen due to the council not realising that they didn’t have a right of access from the Main Street.

Similarly I’m not sure how you can reinstate the common bus stop for all routes to Ballinteer, nor how the much vaunted connectivity between the LUAS and 75 by the NTA can be restored.

Most of the issues that I am outlining are nothing to do with the roadworks at all.

They are down to poor design and not actually thinking the effects of the changes on the buses through.

It’s easy for you who clearly isn’t directly affected by these bus route changes to sit there and say let’s try it out, while those of us that are affected could see this coming a mile off and are now stuck with unpredictable arrival times, poor co-ordination and poorer connectivity every day.

Btw it’s a lot more than “a bit of concrete”. Go and have a look!

MJohnston wrote: »

I'm in Dundrum town frequently, thanks to it being where my bank is, and the encroachments on the road are basically all concrete or the temporary cycle lane kerbs. I've not seen anything added that can't be just as easily removed to revert the area to the way it was before, if that's the way it shakes out.

There's already an accessible route from Main Street to the bypass (right across from the aforementioned PTSB bank in fact).

I do think a lot of knock-on traffic around the area will be caused by the drivers not being used to the new arrangement and the roadworks. Let's see how it pans out during the trial.

By the by, my original comment which got you annoyed "I'm glad DLRCC are pushing through with this trial in the face of short-sighted objectors" was specifically about the business owners along Main Street specifically complaining about CARS not being able to access the street anymore (you can see the context in the post itself) and nothing to do with bus users. If the trial shows that things are still having a negative effect on bus services in a few months, hopefully the next step will be to enact further car restrictions, rather than simply throw in the towel and row back completely. That's why I think medium to long-term there will be no degradation for bus users.

Trial and evolve — it's the best way to progress and not stagnate.

That path is halfway down the Main St to the LUAS stop - you would still end up walking as far to get to the bus stop as you would to the LUAS stop. Not exactly convenient to the old stop.

DLRCoCo had planned an alternative route but got stymied as they didn't realise in time that they didn't have access rights to build a path across private land.

I'm sorry about banging on about this, but the fundamental problem that the 14 reliability now has is nothing to do with the roadworks or the drivers being uncertain.

Please stop clutching at straws.

It's to with the bus route having to make a long detour, making five right turns and go through four sets of lights instead of having a clear straight run up the Main Street and a single right turn.

There is no way that the two can ever take the same amount of time.

A change like this should never happen at the start of a major cross-city bus route. At the end, yes, as the bus will have recovery time at the terminus that can be used.

It also doesn't have anything to do with the lack of co-ordinated bus stops heading towards Ballinteer or the connectivity with LUAS.

The whole implementation of this by DLRCoCo has been hamfisted.

My understanding is that there was zero consultation with either of the two bus companies until fairly well on in the process, with only the NTA being consulted (who have zero operational expertise).

That is no way to do this.

A perfectly good bus service linking Dundrum with Ballinteer with a choice of three routes from a single stop at the LUAS stop and a single stop the Main Street, and a reliable and predictable bus service to the city centre from Ballinteer have been mangled up by this.

Yes, I am bloody annoyed about that, and you telling me that it'll all work out in the medium term due to some fantasy impact of reduced traffic levels on those specific points (which have nothing to with the traffic in the village) is just adding to that.

There is no getting away from the fact that DLRCoCo didn't take the impact on the bus routes seriously when coming up with this design.

MJohnston wrote: »

I think it's time to move on from this particular thread, as I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on it.

Well luckily you can move on.

Some of us have to actually put up with the fall out every day, for which there is not a simple solution.

It’s not about agreeing to disagree, it’s about DLRCoCo actually putting the plans out to consultation and listening instead of just bulldozing them through and to hell with the consequences.

I genuinely believe that there has to be a better way of doing this, either through bus gates or alternative solutions such as reversing the one way directional flow.

If you were losing 15 minutes of your day due to an unnecessary diversion (as I have at school finishing time), I suspect that you wouldn’t be very receptive to this.

MJohnston wrote: »

I suggest you email someone who can actually do something about it, instead of ranting on a message board :shrug:

Oh believe me I have been.

I was in touch with the Council in advance of the plan predicting that exactly what has happened would happen, but they went ahead regardless.

My rant is against your proposition that Councils should be allowed implement things like this regardless of how obvious the negative impact would be, without having to go through proper planning processes.

It is idealism gone mad without any regard for the practical consequences.

FYI two route 14 departures have just each taken 24 minutes to get from Dundrum LUAS to Ballinteer. That’s off the wall performance wise. I would walk it in that time.

It is beyond being even remotely funny at this point.

Rant over.

specialbyte wrote: »

RE: Dumdrum and buses I think this twitter user, who is a Dublin Bus driver on the 14 route, makes a good point. https://twitter.com/dave_donnell/status/1305275860082192385

Or from this Dublin Bus driver who isn't trying to squeeze his bus through the village: https://twitter.com/RayMcGrath/status/1293215975840636929

To be fair to the bus drivers, the main contact that the 14 bus drivers have with the works relate to the end of the 14 route as it arrives in Dundrum from Beaumont, where the impact of the works on the bus service won't be of significant as it's arriving at the terminus and has layover time built into the schedule.

The issues faced by customers are all in the opposite direction, which derive from the diversion that the 14 to Beaumont has to take, the revised 75 routing, and the divergent routes that the 14/75 and 175 now take in Dundrum, all of which are as a result of the design of these works.

Context is important.

A great video from the RTÉ archive today from 2000:

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2020/0904/1163125-dublin-traffic-to-double/

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It shown even then, long before the Green Line was built, that we were planning on upgrading it to Metro.

The video of the Quays and Pears Street are just something else. Almost impossible to visualise now.

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Pearse St is still like that sometimes at rush hour, especially if it's raining.

It's not even close to being so full of cars. Way less commercial traffic and way more buses.

I don't know if this is the right thread but I suppose it has to do with car access. Can someone tell me if it's illegal to park up on the footpath completely, if there is a double yellow line there? Every day there are multiple cars outside my house parked like this. It seems to act as an over spill from the car park for local shops.

MJohnston wrote: »

It's illegal to park either partly or fully on a footpath. Doesn't matter where it is.

Do you think the council would likely do anything about it? I emailed them photos and explained the situation to the parkingviolations email and got a case number.
I've noticed they've started putting planters up near the Dart station to stop people from doing this. It really is endemic in Dublin though.

MJohnston wrote: »

Which council? DLRCC have been known to enforce on parking, DCC are pretty useless though.

DCC. It's just a total mess outside these days. I'll keep at them even if they're useless.

Cyclist numbers would drop when the colleges are on their summer and mid-term breaks surely?
Students would always be a major component of the numbers.

Lot of people have cleared out of Dublin since the lockdown began so if the numbers are 'steady' there's probably more people cycling alright.