Save Fairview Park

hatrickpatrick

Fighting Tao wrote: »

Dogs are meant to be under the control of their owner. If they are straying onto a cycle path/track then they are not under their owners control.

There's no logic in this when the park was there before the cycle path though. That's like putting a road through a playground and blaming the kids or their parents for disrupting traffic / getting hit by cars.

P_1

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Not if you have small children or pets. Areas which are widely used to let either of the aforementioned play freely shouldn't have any sort of high speed traffic whatsoever allowed on them. I don't know about Fairview park, but Newtownsmith in Sandycove, where the end portion of this massive cycle route is intended to intersect, is used by pretty much everyone locally for off-lead dog exercise, as well as family picnics etc. Having people zipping around the green at high speed would completely kill that atmosphere. Is the portion of Fairview park under discussion here similar at all? Like, if people have been using a place for years to let young toddlers and pets play freely without having to watch them every second or worry about them getting injured, it's pretty understandable that opening such areas up to any form of high speed vehicular traffic would piss people off.

Here's Fairview Park:



As you can see the main path (in blue) is well segregated from the rest of the park by some rather large trees. The introduction of some swing gates in the areas circled in red will vastly reduce (if not eliminate) the potential for any of the conflicts you are concerned about.

TallGlass

To true P1, as I mentioned also raising it up along with making it wider so that pedestrians can use it also.

At the moment, it's up to both cyclists and pedestrians to look out for cyclists, people, children and pets. Personally I don't belt it across the park, I take it easy, folks need to slow down. The cycle track that's there at the moment is a sorry excuse for one to be honest.

Also something needs to be done for cyclists going the route along Fairview Grill towards Malahide road/Howth Road/Howth. It's quite rare to see cycle traffic via the park heading towards Howth, almost everyone uses the main road, as it's nearly impossible to get across the six lanes of traffic to the gate to get into the park.

dubrov

I don't see how swing gates address any of the issues.
You'd have to build a wall all along the side of the bike path to stop toddlers running onto it.

Even if you did it, the end result would not be great.

Widening the bike lane along the road seems like by far the best solution to me.
If a few trees have to go to make it happen, then so be it.

P_1

TallGlass wrote: »

To true P1, as I mentioned also raising it up along with making it wider so that pedestrians can use it also.

At the moment, it's up to both cyclists and pedestrians to look out for cyclists, people, children and pets. Personally I don't belt it across the park, I take it easy, folks need to slow down. The cycle track that's there at the moment is a sorry excuse for one to be honest.

Also something needs to be done for cyclists going the route along Fairview Grill towards Malahide road/Howth Road/Howth. It's quite rare to see cycle traffic via the park heading towards Howth, almost everyone uses the main road, as it's nearly impossible to get across the six lanes of traffic to the gate to get into the park.

The North Strand/East Wall Road junction could well be retrofitted with a better crossing feature to facilitate northbound traffic along with the Malahide Road/Fairview Strand junction. Possibly a new bridge over the Tolka (a la what they have done with the Canal) could work?

JRant

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

There's no logic in this when the park was there before the cycle path though. That's like putting a road through a playground and blaming the kids or their parents for disrupting traffic / getting hit by cars.

That cycle path has been in the park for decades and I can't remember anyone getting knocked down on it. You're more like to run foul of the homeless dipso's that use the park and children's playground as their very own.

It would be a travesty to lose those tree's, especially when they could just improve the entrances and exits in the park and use the existing infrastructure. The other point that really needs to be hammered home is that removing those trees will only create more room for the selfish arßeholes that use the existing cycle lane as a car park.

jon1981

This thread is a micro example of challenges on putting decisions like this out to the public, nothing would be achieved if decisions like this was decided by public opinion. We will always find reasons why a proposed solution is a bad solution.

current problems

* Too many trees leading to dangerous amount of wet leaves leading to accidents
* It's only in one direction with no safe lane on the opposite side of the road
* The pedestrian lane is not obvious and switches over part way along the park
* It's not cleaned often enough (again due to leaves)
* it's dangerously narrow at sections
* There's multiple pedestrian park exits with zero warnings to pedestrians of cyclists passing and vice versa

Cut down the damn trees and plant new ones elsewhere, widen the cycle path, make it bidirectional, make it clear to pedestrians where they can walk and get it f**king done. As it stands it pleases nobody!

TallGlass

Jon, you do realise there is a second set of trees? These are not getting cut down. The leaves will blow onto the track regardless, it's a park. DCC, need to keep on top of that, but that's for another day.

Upgrade the track via the park, would have more benefits as you can spring off into other cycle track projects, one towards East Wall, another project towards the old Players Lounge. Anyway, that's enough day dreaming for today. The added benifit would be the pedestrian track would be resurfaced via the park (it's in an awful state at the moment).

Also, for what it's worth, the trees should stay, and DCC or who ever needs to address the North Strand after the Fire Station first, it's a fúcking Hazard at the moment, between dodging buses, pot holes or general lunatics from the area, you'd need eyes in the back of your head.

Pawwed Rig

TallGlass wrote: »

Also, for what it's worth, the trees should stay, and DCC or who ever needs to address the North Strand after the Fire Station first, it's a fúcking Hazard at the moment, between dodging buses, pot holes or general lunatics from the area, you'd need eyes in the back of your head.

Whole area from Clontarf to Connolly could do with a major redesign imo. Not least a heavier Garda presence to enforce safe driving and chase off the local bad elements.

odyssey06

Update: http://www.thejournal.ie/fairview-trees-saved-3571405-Aug2017/

A revised plan was circulated to councillors on the North Central Area Committee and Central Area Committee yesterday.
Under these revised plans, 42 of the 46 roadside trees will be retained. In the circulated revised plans, DCC said that of the four trees being felled, two are noted to be in bad condition, one is thought to have a lifespan of 20 years and the other of 40 years.

Unclear what this means for the routing of the cycle path.

Fighting Tao

Sounds like another Liffey cycle route type fudge coming soon from DCC.

TallGlass

odyssey06 wrote: »

Update: http://www.thejournal.ie/fairview-trees-saved-3571405-Aug2017/

A revised plan was circulated to councillors on the North Central Area Committee and Central Area Committee yesterday.
Under these revised plans, 42 of the 46 roadside trees will be retained. In the circulated revised plans, DCC said that of the four trees being felled, two are noted to be in bad condition, one is thought to have a lifespan of 20 years and the other of 40 years.

Unclear what this means for the routing of the cycle path.

Delighted we can keep the trees. But what's the plans for the tracks? The lads look to be going full steam ahead marking out the roads for moving underground fixtures?

TallGlass

Piece on RTE news website, will link later. But revised plan is to give one of the current traffic lanes over for that stretch. Will still have to remove trees at pinch points.

odyssey06

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2017/0904/902271-fairview-trees-councils/

dubrov

Is there any way to see what councillors voted to delay this?