Liffey valley to start charging for parking

Golden Discs closed down during the week which is a shame. Hopefully it will be back at some stage

Anyone else.having trouble using their Revolut card to pay at the barriers in LV? They never accept mine and there's also occasional problems using my BOI card. It's an awful system and painfully slow even when everything actually works.

Its not worth the bother for how frequently I go there. I would say maybe 3/4 times in the last year? If even that. I'm usually dropping my daughter off, and then I go for a wander around The Range and she walks over to meet me when she's done.

Edit: Will be even less now if Golden Discs has closed, as that was one of the main reasons she went.

I think that location was only intended to be temporary.

Was there a couple of months ago, there was a planning notice on the wall to turn the unit into 2(!) cafes.

For all the doom and gloom reported here, surely the expanded bus services with higher frequencies and new routes launched under BusConnects serving Liffey Valley mean more people are using public transport to/from the centre?

More people from more areas now have direct public transport access to/from Liffey Valley.

You now have:

C Spine routes and the 52 to/from the city centre and along the N4 corridor west to Lucan, Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth

G Spine route G2 to Neilstown and the Ballyfermot corridor to/from the city centre;

26 to Palmerstown, Chapelizod and the city centre;

Local routes L51 and L53 to Lucan and Adamstown;

Orbital route S4 to Ballyfermot, Crumlin, Terenure, Rathgar, Millown and UCD

Orbital route W2 to Clondalkin and Tallaght;

Orbital route W4 to Blanchardstown or south Lucan, Cheeverstown and Tallaght

Or are people that wedded to driving that they don't want to consider public transport?

I'd really only go to LV off peak for non essential shopping at which point driving is a lot faster, then getting two buses and associated wait times. If it was a work commute at peak perhaps I'd consider a bus than driving in congestion.

Rarely go to LV very little there now that isn't in Blanch, other than B&Q. Anytime I pass it, it seems to be a queue to enter and exit. If I'm passing I just don't bother as I don't want to get caught in the queues.

Like Blanch the approach roads are very congested these days. So don't really go to a SC unless I really have to. No longer just go window shopping or pop in for cafe like I might have in the past. Used to be able to pop into borders or easons for a browse of books or magazines, grab a drink. That's all gone.

Been in LV twice since they brought in paid parking. I think it was only to stop for food, and there didn't seem to be a queue.

I made the point that there is a large increase in the number of areas served by direct bus services to/from the centre and in frequency.

People seem to read what they want to read.

I'm not suggesting that large numbers of people are going to take 2 buses each way, but there are now far more people who do have a direct bus and to read this thread, you'd think they don't exist!

People can only talk about their own experience.. their own reality. Be interesting to see the stats on the bus traffic.. That would remove personal bias and subjectivity.

I find all parking too tight and awkward these days. Poorly designed and too small.

As I said urban shopping centres were built around the model that the vast vast majority of customers would arrive by car, buy shitloads of goods, load up the boot and then piss off back home - you can’t do that travelling by bus - doesn’t matter how many of them there are

Again, to a degree you’re reading what you want to read.

I am not for one minute suggesting that most people would choose it, nor that they should. It obviously isn’t going to be an option for many people. I wouldn’t expect someone to go there from Dundrum on a bus, nor did I even suggest it.

Why people focus on more extreme journeys like that I don’t know. Public transport can only go so far when it comes to orbital journeys. I have made it clear several times now that I am referring to those people who do have a direct realistic public transport option.

The point that I’m trying to make is that it would be interesting to see what effect the increased network and frequency of public transport at or adjacent to the centre has had in terms of people travelling by public transport, be they working there or there as customers. Reading this thread you’d swear that it was non-existent, which I just don’t believe.

I think that it is fair comment to say that as a result of chronic historic underinvestment in public transport in this country, and poor experiences in the past, many people will have developed a bias against public transport, and understandably so.

As a result many just don’t even bother to consider it despite new or improved services being launched and some never will, and that’s just the way it is. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to make it more appealing.

This is not going to change overnight - it is going to take years to alter but the public transport usage statistics in general do paint a positive picture as the expanded services are rolled out.

Re Kildare and Meath, both the 115 (now half-hourly from Enfield and hourly from Mullingar) and the 120 to/from Edenderry have seen frequency increased and running times altered to improve reliability in recent months.

Blanchardstown has the NX, 105, 109/b, 111 from various locations in Meath all of which I believe are currently under review with a view to improvements.

I rely exclusively on public transport. I pass through LV at least twice a day (usually more) using the new bus hub. The car park is horrible to navigate as a pedestrian to get to and from the bus. The L51, L53, and W2 are very unreliable in my experience of daily use. The L51 particularly hardly operates at all - my mother has given up going to the centre since the L51 became so bad. She would have popped in once a week using the old 239.

On the N4, the Cspine buses are too full. In particular the C4 is too full nearly all day so getting on at LV means either not being allowed on at all and a half hour wait, or squeezing on and standing squashed just beside the driver (can't even move down the bus) until at least Celbridge main street. Nobody is going to choose that over a car. The W4 seems to regularly spend up to 7/8 minutes sitting at the N4 stop and is nearly empty always.

I went into the centre for the first time in nearly two years in February. I used to have lunch with friends there weekly but they won't pay for parking now so we go elsewhere. The centre certainly looks nicer inside than it used to, but it was completely dead. Nothing there to make me as a public transport user choose it over the city centre or Maynooth, even with me passing through the car park anyway every day.

Even its more expensive you're only paying the difference between the bus/train and the car. Which actually reduced the perceived cost of the car journey.

Expensive, or no Parking becomes the real showstopper for driving.

I wouldn’t be one for weekly or even monthly visits to these places - but if I was, paying 3-4 euro to park in a place that was once free and during the weekday day time would be mostly empty , while not a lot, would probably get in on me after a while and I’d just go elsewhere- it’s not really the cost for me it’s the principle behind it .

I visit Arnotts about 4 times a year - that’s all - each time by car- I hate paying for parking having just spent a few hundred euro in the shop, hate it. But I get on with it but I wouldn’t do it every week that’s for sure.

Isn't LV around €2.50 for up to 3 hours?

you can loop around the top part and there are up and down loops within the bottom part and you can go into and loop around he bits by cosmos

So you don't need to go back out

You can loop at the top where one batch are, not sure about the second batch

They should get rid of the family parking spaces really and move the further back

I would say for a disabled person the parking charges are a good thing as it's way easier to get a spot

Yep.

Plus free if you going to cinema.

There's a new bridge to be built as part of the Lucan core bus corridor scheme (currently with An Bord Pleanala) and the N4 bus stops moved further west in line with the new bus interchange.

FYI The 26 is always an option for that journey - it goes into the centre and doesn’t take much longer than the C-Spine.

Agree. I'm not there very often but when I do, it's for social purposes (often involving drinks so no car), and I can't help criticising the bus layout. If they even had a minibus circling the centre with stops at the footbridge, M+S, the Retail Centre and around Penneys etc. it could help an awful lot. There are many people who don't drive, but I do realise that such centres are car centric anyway, despite the Greenies trying to get us all on our bicycles!

The new bridge and bus stops proposed will shorten the distance to the bus zone and the centre, but it is still not an interchange by any stretch of the imagination.

How frequent ought it to be?

Are you sure? I ask as someone who has circled through the carpark for years, in fact I find it hard to exit sometimes

I would question whether the demand for the L53 is great enough given that the C1 and C2 are there as well.

There's only a small section of unique routing.

But the C1 and C2 go half way around the world to get to LV and you then have to make the lengthy trek across the bridge and car park to actually enter the centre. The L53 is direct and actually goes TO the centre. Nobody going to the centre from Lucan would willingly choose the C1/2 over the L53 if it was a real viable option! It's night and day if you were actually familiar with the area. The L53 also offers access to the retail parks unlike the C1/2.

If it was improved enough to offer a real alternative for a trip to LV then it would also help alleviate the issue of people left standing at bus stops by full C1/2 from Earlsfort onwards inbound - particularly on Saturdays when this issue is most severe.