Buses and the College Green Plaza -- what can make it work?

celtcia wrote: »

DCC need to come clean and confess there sins and move forward... this is not going away...

Some self-cleaning today ?

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2020/0513/1138154-coronavirus-dublin-city-council/

It's surely hugely contentious how DCC's Owen Keegan has very obviously used the Covid emergency to facilitate his chosen preffered option.

He said that wider footpaths and cycle lanes, as well as pedestrianised roads during parts of the day, are among the plans being considered to increase mobility and allow for social distancing as the easing of Covid-19 restrictions begins.

Indeed.
However it is also noteworthy,that at the same time DCC has abandoned other more basic elements of their remit,as can be evidenced by the condition of areas such as outside number 70+71 Lower Leeson Street or Stephens Green North,inbound outside the Shelbourne hotel...not enough rounds of applause to be gotten I suppose ?

As has been the norm since the late 1960's,with ALL Dublin City Authorities,it does'nt take long before their long standing fear & allegiance to the Status Quo has to be confirmed....

Mr Keegan said that Dublin City Council will preserve vehicular access to the city and all car parks but may restrict routes and access at particular times, adding that doing so is "not unreasonable" as it promotes more sustainable modes of transport.

End of discussion....before it even started

donvito99 wrote: »

I had previously been in favour of complete pedestrianisation (but for Luas) but have come around to the necessity for buses to be able to move from Dame St to O'CS and vice versa. There's no where else for, say, buses from O'CS to go which offers a sensible cross city service.

That being said, taxis must go and overall footpath space must go up under any proposal.

If buses are allowed, along with cyclists and the Luas, then pedestrians gain practically nothing.

Perhaps I'm minimising the inconvenience it would cause, but similar to how motorists must come to realise that they cannot expect to be allowed bring their 4x2m, loud and smelly, possession into the city centre and leave it there, bus users cannot expect to travel through the city without changing buses, unless their routes are shifted to the outskirts, like the Dart line.

donvito99 wrote: »

I think a bit more space for pedestrians in College Green isn't a good enough reason to handicap the bus service.

If you restricted the variation of movements of buses, and got rid of taxis, I think the pedestrian experience would be much, much better.

I don't really know enough to be able to judge how the bus network could adapt. But pedestrianising College Green - giving pedestrians an area where they are not corralled along narrow footpaths that are shared by bus stops, and giving Dublin a central focal point - achieves much more than merely giving them a bit more space, I think.

donvito99 wrote: »

There are other measures though (like greater permeability for North - South pedestrians in front of Trinity, reduction in modes allowed access to College Green, reduction in the number of buses using College Green, etc) that would allow for a much improved pedestrian experience without disproportionately affecting the bus service.

I once saw College Green as a great opportunity to have a plaza in the capital but it is too critical a location and is rather small when you think about it (especially with the Bank and Trinity restricting access inevitably).

Private motorists don't have access to College Green at present, so the only potential improvement would be the banning of taxis. And with the Luas, the crossing outside Bank of Ireland is favourable already to pedestrians.

I agree that a pedestrianised College Green isn't quite the pedestrian panacea that some seem to think it is. There are very few retail spaces in the immediate area that would be able to take advantage of it and Bank of Ireland, which is of no use to most people, dominates the area and prevents a link-in with Temple Bar. There's something of a risk that it could come to be a grey expanse that's desolate at times and crisscrossed by a mass of pedestrians at others, rather than the idealised continental piazza. But I still maintain that it's better for the city that the mid point of its four most important areas - Grafton/SG/surrounding streets, Temple Bar, O'Connell/Henry and Trinity College - be a pedestrian plaza, giving the city coherence and space for pedestrians to roam.

Have gotten the impression that all this public realm stuff has come off the boil in the past week.

In a few weeks we'll be mostly back to normal, cars will be back and the opportunity will be gone. 3 weeks ago DCC were physically going out and putting in proper cycle lanes on stretches where there had been expensive glossy 'plans' to do so for multiple years. Now we're back to more plans. :-(