BREAKING: College Green – first look at “visionary” new plan

— Wider plaza with two-way cycle path planned

— Buses and taxis to be allowed to follow Luas tracks

Dublin City Council now plans to provide segregated two-way space for cycling leading up to a street-wide plaza on College Green, while buses and taxis wI’ll follow the north-south Luas tram tracks at the eastren edge of the plaza.

Only people walking and cycling will be able to go east-west on College Green. The new plaza layout removes a large percentage of the major bus-tram-pedestrian traffic light conflicts.

At a local area committee this afternoon, Fine Gael, Labour, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and Green Party councillors welcomed the design. Councillors were surprised but very welcoming of the draft design which was presented to them.

Buses and taxis will now not be banned, as previously reported (wrongly reported in the case of buses), but will only be able to follow the two-way Luas route. The plan could be implemented at the start of next year, in line with works on the Luas Cross City project.

A city official told councillors that the cycle route (outlined in red) is not shown within the plaza as this detail will be up to the designers of the plaza — as councillors questioned the lack of cycle path in the plaza, traffic and transport officials confirmed that this area is yet to be designed. The design of the plaza is to be tendered for internationally.

A number of councillors highlighted how the cycle path should be continued across the plaza and how shared use does not work.

The monuments on College Green are to be retained and not moved as previously planned. Loading arrangements are to be confirmed.

Officals stressed that the Dame Street section of the images (shown below) are — along with the rest of the plan — is at draft stage.

Images from a presentation given to councillors today:          


...That's the end of the article. Keep scrolling if you want to the comments, but IrishCycle.com *NEEDS* readers like you to keep it that way. It only requires a small percentage of readers to give a bit each month or every year to keep IrishCycle.com's journalism open to all. Thank you.


17 comments

  1. I saw part of the meeting on the website. One of the councillors made an interesting suggestion – to remove the wall and fencing around the front of Trinity and incorporate that into a public space. Apparently historically there was no green-space there and people were free to move across it. The benefit of freeing up this space would mean that pedestrians would feel less of a crush up against the east side of the road which would still carry a high volume of buses and trams.

    Reply
  2. Remove the buses. Dirty, polluting, noisy, dangerous to cyclists, extremely inefficient bus system(we often see 4/5 buses in a row with a few people on each of them), poor aesthetic for a modern European city, cause huge congestion by having to cross lanes to pull in ever 200 meters for nonsensical bus stops. Never seen a system as poor as it anywhere in the world. They have no place in the centre anymore. If you must run them to depots on the cities edge, places such as Mountjoy Sq, Christchurch, Smithfield etc. But they should turn around at that point and not cross the city.

    Reply
    • @Diarmuid Buses are too important to the movement of people to fully remove them from the area anytime soon. Other cities have done what you are suggesting but only with large investment in more tram or metro lines.

      Reply
  3. Ban buses? Are you for real?! What an incredibly self-centred idea! What about the tens of thousands of us who aren’t on a Dart/suburban rail/Luas route and/or can’t realistically cycle! Should we use cars instead?!

    Reply
  4. I would agree with Citizen Wolf, if the wall at the corner of Trinity (Grafton and Nassau corner) could be demolished, it would allow widening the pedestrian walkway on the opposite side that is a sore chockepoint as far as pedestrians go. It would also allow less than a 90 degree turn for the buses and other roamers of the street.

    Reply
  5. @Jon
    I’m not a fan of taxis myself and I don’t think they should be allowed to use bus-lanes ESPECIALLY when not carrying passengers. However, during the discussion by Councillors the point was made that people coming to the city from the airport (for example) are most likely to use a taxi. It was said that allowing taxis to use this corridor would avoid people being set-down at some distance from their hotel. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s a consideration. Personally, I’m not sure why taxis would have to use this route to get people to their destination. I would have thought that other routes would be open to them.

    Reply
  6. Agreed about taxis in bus and cycle lanes but the airport transportation discussion is fatuous. 1- this is catering for a small minority! 2- they could/should be on a bus. 3- most of those hotels are now out of the city core. Honestly if those councillors want to designthe city around the needs of business men we are doomed!

    Reply
  7. It would be all well and good if we had an underground railway or two, but we don’t.

    A monkey with a congenital brain defect could come up with a more sensible idea.

    Reply
  8. It’s getting there but, as Colm Ryder says, the Devil will be in the details. Visually, it would be great to get rid of the proposed overhead power lines for the Luas as has been done in historic areas of other European cities such as Bordeaux.

    Reply
  9. This looks characterless. If they replace the old pavements and change the differentiation between the pavement and road they’ll have destroyed the only distinct part of the city. Add chewing gum, puke and fast food and it’s an eyesore. Leave College Green as it was, just exclude the cars.

    Reply
  10. It really looks lacking in decent provision for cycling, not just with the obvious east-west shared space (a disaster at the volumes for both walking and cycling) but also along the Luas track/bus lane where it simply appears and disappears. Disappointing imagery. I can’t say it looks to remove conflicts between cyclists and other modes or pedestrians and cyclists as it states it should.

    Reply
  11. There should be nothing but pedestrians on that plaza – no road there means precisely that – no vehicles and that includes cyclists – it’s not a road and hence, cyclists should dismount and walk.

    Reply
  12. So, are you going to ban Luas, buses and taxis (all are vehicles)?

    Plenty of plazas have space for movement by non-pedestrians. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza “Plaza … is a Spanish word, cognate to Italian piazza, … The origin of all these words is, via Latin platea, from Greek πλατεῖα (ὁδός) plateia (hodos), meaning “broad (way or street)”.

    It would be quite possible to include a cycleway or similar, if nothing else it would provide a dedicated route to discourage people cycling, driving their street sweeping vehicle or patrol car in random places.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.