The fixation with joining Luas lines

bk

I have to say peoples suggestions for relocating bus stops sound like a nightmare from the point of view of a bus user.

At the moment you can get pretty much any bus from O'Connell St and that is very handy for changing between buses and for where multiple routes serve the same area and leave from nearby bus stops.

Now it sounds like people want to send the bus stops all over the place!!

Can't we just route BXD down Marlborough St in both directions?

It will be cheaper and much less disruptive.

LXFlyer

Cool Mo D wrote: »

There is no need to permanently lose bus stops: if taxi ranks are removed on Dawson street, Grafton street and O'Connell street there will still be room for bus stops, O'Connell bridge can take up the slack from lower O'Connell street, and Marlborough street is wide enough to handle buses and 1-way Luas.

Making Dawson, Grafton and Nassau street 24-hour clearways would probably improve traffic flow, even with shared buses and Luas, due to the removal of double parked taxis.

There's also the option of making Kildare street and Nassau street 2-way and removing on-street parking to make room for bus stops.

The plans are for all those locations to have the bus stops permanently removed. Examine the planning documents. Stops on Lower O'Connell Street are proposed for removal, while those on Upper O'Connell Street will remain.

Victor

AngryLips wrote: »

As an aside, it seems Dublin wasn't the only city to struggle with building a tram network. In fact, by comparison, Edinburgh Tram makes the Luas look a rail-based version of Shaft. Coming in at nearly a billion pounds for a network a about a third the length of the original two Luas lines it's intended to connect Edinburgh airport with some place near the city centre. Sure that's like spending almost twice the amount we did on the original Luas and only getting a red line that terminated no further to the city centre than Heuston.

Edinburgh seems to be mostly about cost claims by the contractor.

BrianD wrote: »

Not always comparable because a lot of European cities were also flattened or partially flattened 60 odd years ago giving them an opportunity to start from scratch.

This tends to be overstated. While Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg and to a lesser degree London did receive batterings, the majority of cities wtih trams or undergrounds didn't.

BrianD

bk wrote: »

I have to say peoples suggestions for relocating bus stops sound like a nightmare from the point of view of a bus user.

At the moment you can get pretty much any bus from O'Connell St and that is very handy for changing between buses and for where multiple routes serve the same area and leave from nearby bus stops.

Now it sounds like people want to send the bus stops all over the place!!

Can't we just route BXD down Marlborough St in both directions?

It will be cheaper and much less disruptive.

Well far too much goes through the city centre on one small section. Although our view of the city centre is quite small it has grown outwards. There's absolutely no way that everybody that works in the CBD works around the the affected areas.

monument

bk wrote: »

Can't we just route BXD down Marlborough St in both directions?

I've yet to see a good answer to that.

LXFlyer

BrianD wrote: »

Well far too much goes through the city centre on one small section. Although our view of the city centre is quite small it has grown outwards. There's absolutely no way that everybody that works in the CBD works around the the affected areas.

Bizarrely enough that is where most people want to go. Given that Dublin Bus are currently merging many routes into cross-city routes that incidentally don't necessarily all go up/down O'Connell Street, but which do or will offer greater connectivity between the various areas of the city I find your comment rather extraordinary. The fact that most routes do serve the Westmoreland Street/D'Olier Street/College Street triangle means people can switch easily from one route to another to virtually anywhere in Dublin within a very short walk.

I find it this sort of response very disparaging towards bus users -effectively you're saying, well sorry but the tram users (although smaller in number) are more important than you, and you should go somewhere else!

It's all well and good saying that the LUAS lines should be linked up, but permanently removing many major bus stops in the heart of the city centre, disrupting connectivity between bus routes, and causing unnecessary disruption to the vast majority of public transport users in Dublin City Centre is not the answer.

I repeat again Dart Underground and Metro North will deliver this link up far more effectively than this proposal ever will.

Aard

D'Peoples Voice wrote: »

Can you qualify that statement for me?
When you say Europe, are you referring to the EU or the whole continent of Europe.
I ask because some people mistakenly used to say Dublin was the only capital city in the EU without a metro to the airport, then they later had to revise that to being the EU (pre accession countries of 2005) and excluding capital cities that were part of Monarchy (Edinburgh) - when the obvious was pointed out to them.
So when you say Europe - how many countries are you exactly including?

http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/urban_2006_1.html
According to this list of Urban Area populations, the only European (in the broadest sense of the word -- all the way to the Urals and including Turkey) cities that have bigger populations than Dublin and that also lack underground metros are:

Katowice
Birmingham
Manchester
Mannheim
Leeds
Aachen


OK, so the other poster got it wrong. But not by much.