Limerick city absolutely booming

zulutango

Cookiemunster wrote: »

Isn't that already being done? William St, Catherine St., Thomas St., Bedford Row already finished. Plans in place for Patrick St/O'Connell St./The Crescent and Wickham St./Parnell St./Davis St.

Not quite. Just taking them one by one ...

William Street was a road upgrade primarily. It was about getting traffic though the city and the public realm aspect was tacked on to that.

The Lower Catherine Street / Thomas Street / Bedford Row upgrades were done more or less together and were very good. This kind of thing should be rolled out in the other retail areas, in so far as practicable. Lower O'Connell Street and Patrick Street are retail areas and are suitable for this kind of public realm work.

The plans for Wickham Street / Parnell Street / Davis Street are much more like William Street, i.e. to facilitate traffic flows. The main thrust of the design is to add an extra lane for traffic, and it's really just a progression of the 'orbital route' plan which the Limerick 2030 plan recommended be scrapped. The public realm aspect is very weak in this plan, even if it was sold as a public realm improvement.

There are no plans, as yet, for O'Connell Street / The Crescent, but funding has been secured and we should see plans emerge in the autumn.

What I am talking about in the previous post is for the streets around Upper Catherine Street / Upper O'Connell Street and some of the interlinking Georgian streets to be upgraded and transformed into attractive residential streets, akin to Clancy and O'Callaghan Strands. If that was done we'd see a total rejuvenation of the Georgian core of Limerick within 10 years. Notwithstanding the upcoming plans for O'Connell Street mentioned above, there is currently no plan to do this.

Vanquished

The pace of the upgrade works has been embarrassing. The programme for remodelling the city streets was launched in 2001 and in the 15 years since then only the below schemes have been completed;

Bedford Row; 2006
Thomas Street/Little Catherine Street; 2007/8
William Street; 2011
Part of Sarsfield Street; 2010
City Quays; 2013
St. John's Square; 2013

O'Connell Street won't kick off until next year. There are no plans yet for Patrick Street and Rutland Street. I presume those works will take place as part of the proposed Arthur's Quay/Opera site redevelopment. There are vast swathes of city centre streets in a dreadful condition and in need of a complete overhaul. Footpaths, public lighting, removal of disgusting, dirty old cabling and poles etc. Ellen Street, Shannon Street, Roches Street, Catherine Street, Glentworth Street, Cecil Street, Barrington Street, Newenham Street, Hartstonge Street, Mallow Street, Pery Square etc all fall in to that category.

There is a massive amount of work to do!