New Lake in Front of Engineering

bbuzz

Looks like they're putting a third second lake between Engineering and the new School of Law.

http://www.ucd.ie/campusdevelopment/announcements/temporaryarrangementsforconstructionofssol/

Do we really need another lake? Trinity doesn't even have any.

beardedmaster

Can't say I'm too much a fan of it at all at all.

stop

bbuzz wrote: »

Looks like they're putting a third second lake between Engineering and the new School of Law.

http://www.ucd.ie/campusdevelopment/announcements/temporaryarrangementsforconstructionofssol/

Do we really need another lake? Trinity doesn't even have any.

Would this not make it the fourth one?

I'm no fan of it, I think its the wrong time for big landscaping projects.
But according to the planning application for it, it is needed for the rain water run off, and it will allow for a few more buildings as well. If Ucd kept building buildings with no planning for future drainage, they'd be criticised for doing a half assed job.

Chet T16

Another carpark gone (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

OneOfThem Stumbled

Carpark, bike racks, trees, grassy areas gone, more distance to walk for engineering students, and another heap of money spent when the college can't afford books.

Sounds like a good idea.

L

The location of it is awful (seriously, putting a lake on top of a path that gets used by every single person in the Eng block is bad planning). Even if it was two smaller lakes or had a bridge over it, it'd be much better.

pljudge321

Guess this means that third wing of the engineering building will never be built.

Maldesu

Can't say much about the carparks, but I thought they were making plans for new bike racks? Even if you lost them, they are far easier to replace/relocate. The new landscaping has loads of greenery.
Stop bitching about the walking. It's not that much of a distance.

Costs - dunno. If this was a project agreed to before everything went downhill, they're be no point not going ahead if it was already paid for. They may have been a grant for the water attenuation and in the long run, preventing flooding on the campus rather than trying to repair flood damage may be the goal. Esp if that flooding was occurring around engineering or the comp buildings. Replacing servers for a the college would not be easy.

There is still potential for more development to the Eng building. You can always move up (but on that building I don't think it would be a good idea) but there is space to the side and behind. I would wonder it getting rid of the carparks is part of a plan to reduce the number of cars in the area. Even if they remove this one, they could build multistory.

OmegaRed10

Seeing as this is part of the Law Building development, I'd be sure that the budget for the building includes the cost of the lake. Shame that parking will be further reduced though.

L

Maldesu wrote: »

Stop bitching about the walking. It's not that much of a distance.

No, it's not a long distance per trip. However, that pathway is used 4 times a day by most of the people in that building (coming, going and lunch). Even using conservative estimates, if it's only an extra 1m15s a journey, that's a nice solid 5 minutes lost every day per person for no reason. Scale that by 200 people (the Eng block has more full year occupants than that). Now scale that by a year. That's in the region of 5000+ lost manhours just because someone made a stupid decision...

Perspective...

stop

L wrote: »

Maldesu wrote: »

Stop bitching about the walking. It's not that much of a distance.

No, it's not a long distance per trip. However, that pathway is used 4 times a day by most of the people in that building (coming, going and lunch). Even using conservative estimates, if it's only an extra 1m15s a journey, that's a nice solid 5 minutes lost every day per person for no reason. Scale that by 200 people (the Eng block has more full year occupants than that). Now scale that by a year. That's in the region of 5000+ lost manhours just because someone made a stupid decision...

Perspective...

Assuming they are going to Quinn, the bar or the restaurant..

bbuzz

pljudge321 wrote: »

Guess this means that third wing of the engineering building will never be built.

Actually there were supposed to be 2 more wings:

L

stop wrote: »

Assuming they are going to Quinn, the bar or the restaurant..

Oh, so just the closest places to get lunch then.* That's ok so.

More seriously, if you've got a few hours to kill, sit down and watch the foot traffic along it. 800 journeys in a day is a pretty low estimate especially in term time. It gets used a lot. An awful, awful lot.


*Also, the roebuck gate of UCD, the carparks, the arts block, two entire on-campus accommodation buildings, the new lawschool building etc ... the list goes on.

OneOfThem Stumbled

L wrote: »

Oh, so just the closest places to get lunch then.* That's ok so.

More seriously, if you've got a few hours to kill, sit down and watch the foot traffic along it. 800 journeys in a day is a pretty low estimate especially in term time. It gets used a lot. An awful, awful lot.

There were some plans to build a bridge over the lake (the main one) - I kid you not! - due to the increased amount of time it takes to get around it. This is notwithstanding that on two sides of the main lake are the O'Reilly Hall, Admin/Research and Virus Labs, all of which are pretty much unused by most students. As such it seems weird to deliberately put a lake between the main restaurant, main engineering block, new school of law, stu bar, Merville, and Daedalus.

One of the additional wings in the plan above, btw, is where the lake is going to be.

I was only mentioning the loss of green space because (with the exception of the carpark) I think it's actually a really decent looking area on the campus! A bit of landscaping wouldn't go amiss around any of the science buildings now...

Also during term time the carpark and bike racks are always fully parked up.

Chet T16

As someone thats now going to spending time going between eng and csi i'm glad theres finally going to be a path in that direction!

Also, they've allowed for new bike parking.

http://www.ucd.ie/building/code/documents/ssol_landscape_design.pdf

From the pic the walkway<->eng path distance is going to me increased by 57% (distance*pi/2) Currently the straight path is ~75m (from google maps) so the new path is ~118m. Average walking speed for a healthy teenager is 1.5m/s so an increase of 29 seconds per trip or less than 2 minutes per day based on the four trips mentioned above.

seantorious

At this rate I just want my degree and employment before the college goes bust

graduate

Also, they've allowed for new bike parking.

yes. But with no obvious way to reach this other than from the Stillorgan Road. The new "walkways" around the lake will be bicycle speedways rather than pleasant places to stroll and look at the ducks.

At this rate I just want my degree and employment before the college goes bust

In the world of UCD accounting, this is "capital" expenditure and the money would not be spent on books anyhow.

stop

L wrote: »

Oh, so just the closest places to get lunch then.* That's ok so.

More seriously, if you've got a few hours to kill, sit down and watch the foot traffic along it. 800 journeys in a day is a pretty low estimate especially in term time. It gets used a lot. An awful, awful lot.


*Also, the roebuck gate of UCD, the carparks, the arts block, two entire on-campus accommodation buildings, the new lawschool building etc ... the list goes on.

I'm not arguing that a lot of people use the path, what I'm saying is that only people going to the buildings I listed are going to lose the few seconds it takes to walk around the new late.

All the other buildings are off at an angle to the current path so it really doesn't make a difference.

stop

graduate wrote: »

yes. But with no obvious way to reach this other than from the Stillorgan Road. The new "walkways" around the lake will be bicycle speedways rather than pleasant places to stroll and look at the ducks.

There will be tiered seating on the Daedalus side which should be nice!
Long term, ucd should probably mark out cycling paths through campus, coming down the concourse is impossible near the top of the hour. The construction outside Ag is a pain at the moment too.

RandolphEsq

L wrote: »

No, it's not a long distance per trip. However, that pathway is used 4 times a day by most of the people in that building (coming, going and lunch). Even using conservative estimates, if it's only an extra 1m15s a journey, that's a nice solid 5 minutes lost every day per person for no reason. Scale that by 200 people (the Eng block has more full year occupants than that). Now scale that by a year. That's in the region of 5000+ lost manhours just because someone made a stupid decision...

Perspective...

L

RandolphEsq wrote: »

NEEEERRRDDD

It's pronounced 'Former Biomech Engineer'

Chet T16 wrote: »

From the pic the walkway<->eng path distance is going to me increased by 57% (distance*pi/2) Currently the straight path is ~75m (from google maps) so the new path is ~118m. Average walking speed for a healthy teenager is 1.5m/s so an increase of 29 seconds per trip or less than 2 minutes per day based on the four trips mentioned above.

Heh. Pretty good. Replace the 75m with 85m and take account of differing self selecting speeds when on curves and straight lines (0.95m/s and 1.23 m/s were the values I used). Should give you about 73s or approximately 1m15s.

Chet T16

L wrote: »

Heh. Pretty good. Replace the 75m with 85m and take account of differing self selecting speeds when on curves and straight lines (0.95m/s and 1.23 m/s were the values I used). Should give you about 73s or approximately 1m15s.

Thats what we call fudging data to get the required result

L

Chet T16 wrote: »

Thats what we call fudging data to get the required result

Now now. If I was fudging it, it'd be exactly 75 seconds :P

smunchkins

For anyone interested in the plans and landscape parts, I posted the details about it in the "UCD track to close" thread quite a while back, and will put it here:
http://planning.dlrcoco.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/wphappcriteria.display

Ref No: D11A/0520

You can see the maps and plans under the "documents" section

Another interesting one is the commuting centre application, with 583 car parking spaces. (Ref: D10A/0386 )

And incidentally, as someone who works in Richview and has seen her daily walk extended by at least 5 minutes each way to the rest of campus thanks to all the work going on this end, the complaint about having to walk round a lake is quite quaint!

Chet T16

Gonna need to see some math behind your "at least 5 minutes" there