1. The Green Party released a video and the document they submitted as part of the public consultation on the new Dublin City Council’s – Public Realm Strategy [PDF]. The green’s I think should be commended for the numerous videos they’ve released lately! Check it out:

2. Dublin Bus allowed people to travel for free (on some buses) after the collection system broke down on some buses

3. I did a quick write up on my experiences with Dublins Leapcard so far at Leapcard has still got some living up to do!

4. Vincent Browne, love him or hate him, he stuck it to the man like only he can. Vinne was featured on the Strong Towns Blog (a fantastic resource) in a fairly honest outside commentary on what happened Ireland.

5. The Ulster Rugby fans have something to cheer about, Ravenhill has been given planning permission to renovate the stadium for the first time and increase the capacity.

6. Inevitably, Bord Pleanala announced they have delayed making a decision on the National Children’s Hospital on the Mater site, due in part to the complexity of the application.

Keep in touch

Get your daily dose of me through my twitter @Rusty1052, your daily Irish Planning News courtesy the paper.li aggregator.

Not down with any of these new things? Or maybe you would like to offer me a job or use my services? Well sure just drop me an email at colinb@dt106ers.com. Will be great to hear from you! (Whoever you maybe).

Peace out planners!

No related posts.

I would also advise you to check out all the other entries, some fantastic ideas providing food for thought in the ideas section and some great apps!

UrbanRural – Built on Heritage

Given that everyone seems to be mad into searching their family trees and establishing their personal histories, I figured why wouldn’t they be interested in their local area also. There’s a lot of built heritage out there that most people may never of known existed right in there back garden. UrbanRural aims to change that! I would be grateful if you could check out my entry and like it, spread the word, whatever!

The problem with Irish Planning is….

We don’t have enough documents like this one kindly retweeted by Dominic Byrne.

Very interesting paper on Participation in #SpatialPlanning (for both content & presentation) ow.ly/8sGDg via @rusty1052

— Dominic Byrne (@Dominic__Byrne) January 14, 2012

My Dissertation is now available online

For those of you interested in transport may want to have a read of my undergraduate dissertation which is now available online at issuu. Long story short, it looks at the barriers that one would come up against establishing orbital bus rapid transit routes in Dublin.

DT106ers is now on Google+

So plus one us!

Dublin Rail Transport – What it might be

Well the guys over at the Mental Planners have put together a nice map of what the complete NTA 2030 Vision transport strategy would look like if all the rail projects are all implemented. It’s an interesting idea. I have mashed up their map with the population growth maps of the NTA strategy and the result is below. Interesting to note that while the strategy fails in many respects it actually deals with the growth areas by proposing rail projects quite well.

Other Stuff

• My Dublin Rapid Transport map final version will be available for printing soon! So watch this space.
• The Irish Planning Institute is on twitter, Follow them @IrishPlanInst
• I’m planning on setting up some planning podcasts, if anyone is interested in being part of that, get in touch with me!
• Since their is bugger all planning work out there, we may aswell start our own businesses. That’s what the Dublin StartUp weekend is for! Build a business in 54 hours, more at – dublin.startupweekend.org

Keep in touch

Get your daily dose of me through my twitter @Rusty1052, your daily Irish Planning News courtesy the paper.li aggregator.

Not down with any of these new things? Or maybe you would like to offer me a job or use my services? Well sure just drop me an email at colinb@dt106ers.com. Will be great to hear from you! (Whoever you maybe).

Peace out planners!

Related posts:

1. Metro North – What’s the story like?
2. Links I liked 30/01/2012

13, 194 Hits in 2011

That’s a 23% increase in traffic compared to the year before and I guess that reflected the at least 23% more effort I put in this year. Once again thanks a million to all of you who have read the blog, you’re great! Would be lovely if I could generate more debate in the comments though, that’s my new years resolution, to figure out how to do that!

So on we go to the top 10 posts of 2011.

Top 10 posts of 2011

The most popular post of 2011 were wide and varied in their depth of content and the downright failure of Ireland in 2011 in terms of withdrawing from many capital (bog boys) projects. For now enjoy and let us hope 2012 will bring much more cheer in that department.

#10 Westmeath CoCo gives the go ahead for Chinese Trade Centre

#9 CILT Transport 21 Mid-term Review

#8 [Guest Post] The need for transportation planning and urban development to be closely aligned

#7 Bikes on the DART, what about in Europe?

#6 ‘Ghost’ estates to get €5m to deal with safety issues

#5 Metro North – What’s the story like?

#4 [UPDATED] Sunday Rant: Dublin Bus putting up prices again!

Yet again we get a great Happy New Year from Dublin Bus with 15% increase in all prices, and to think they wanted 30% !!!

#3 Census 2011 by the county and Fusion Tables, mapping the data.

#2 Dublin Rapid Transit Map – Feedback please!

#1 Pictures Dublin Bus Realtime Information (RTPI)

RTPI sign and waiting Dublin Bus on Eden Key (Photo: Colin Broderick)

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Do you like what you have just read? Maybe you are interested in being a guest writer too. Email me at colinb@dt106ers.com

Related posts:

1. Bag’o Links “Independence Day”, Chinese ghost estates and more…
2. 6,649 Visitors to DT106ers last year! Cheers folks!
3. Things to look out for in 2011

According to the UN today, we symbolically reached the 7 Billion person mark. It just boggle the mind, that in just 11 short years since 2000 that another billion people have been added to the worlds population. So why not tell your story on 7 Billion Actions?

In 1900 some 10% of people lived in cities, by 2007 this was 50% and it is predicted by 2050 some 75% will be living in cities!

That will produce some profound impacts on land use planning for the future. How are we going to deal with this 25% increase in just 40 years? Our own population grew by 14.5% between 2002 – 2011, and we are only a small drop in the ocean.

Considering Ireland went with the spread it everywhere spatial approach and yet the majority of population growth continued in the City areas such as Dublin and Cork:

So why don’t we just abandon the politically motivated spread it everywhere and start to prioritize areas for investment and development? After all that’s what land use planners are meant to do right? Think Big, Think Strategic!

So anyone got any pragmatic solution to deal with this? Would love to hear from you if you do!

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Do you like what you have just read? Maybe you are interested in being a guest writer too. Email me at colinb@dt106ers.com

No related posts.

Incinerators

Indaver Ireland are pursuing a Judicial review of the Bord Pleanala decision to refuse permission for the planned Waster to Energy facility (Incinerator) at Ringaskiddy on the a number of grounds including strangely that the board made conclusive decision prior to the completion of an EIS

Merging

The talk of merging local authorities continues, this week minister Hogan announced that Tipperary North and South county councils are to be merged for the 2014 local elections. This along with the merging of Limerick county and city reduces the number of LA’s by 2.

 Transport

Fantastic piece by Jarret Walker over at HumanTransit.org on how a transport planner might approach the designing a transit network for high ridership in a dense city. His example Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Network Direct

Our own network reshuffle / redesign continues apace with Dublin Bus releasing revised proposals for the last areas of the Network Direct Phase II to be implemented in the Autumn (whenever that is!). The most important for me is the Santry area as thats where I live:

Just to recap the two areas realeased are:

• Swords / Santry / Rathfarnham / Firhouse / Ballycullen / Terenure - Route Diagram [HERE]
• Ballinteer / Dundrum / Milltown / Ranelagh / Beaumont - Route Diagram [HERE]

 DIT Grangegorman Planning Scheme

The long awaited restructuring of DIT and its spread out buildings has made some progress this week. It has been adopted through a variation into the Dublin City Development Plan 2011 – 2017 with one final hurdle to overcome being the probable appeal of the scheme to Bord Pleanala by some local interest groups. Details of the plan can be found at www.ggda.ie and www.dublincity.ie

As always!

Comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Related posts:

1. Things to look out for in 2011
2. [UPDATE] Dublin Transport Map v1.5
3. Grangegorman SDZ Oral Hearing – The last hurdle?

Chinese ghost estates (cough) CITIES!

Interesting piece by those plucky Aussies on dateline down under – Watch Chinas Ghost Cities.Watch as they tour cities designed for 12 million people which are 85% vacant. Boggles the mind!

News just in, An Taisce hates planners!

While they also hate the laws in which we operate in, councilors and county managers they label planners as “spineless” in the face of bad zonings. Read On.

Fingal talk to NIRSA summer school of urban walkability study

Fingal planners were on hand at the National Institute of Regional Spatial Research’s summer school to explain there study of walkability in the Blanchardstown area, a residential area i know only too well characterized by a huge shopping centre and loads of fences to stop you walking to the bus 50m’s away.  Read On.

Preliminary Census Results are out!

Results from the 2011 census of Ireland have been published, check out the published CSO Report [PDF] or check out the data. There have been a number good posts from various blogs who were pretty fast off the mark. One very good one by Rob Kitchin over on Ireland After NAMA with commentary on the vacancy rates. Most eye catching stat for me though is , there are way more women than men in the state, well except for the midlands.

Don’t forget!

As always folks comments are welcome, you can follow me on the tweet machine @Rusty1052. Only want the blog? Subscribe to the RSS Feed with your favorite reader!

Toodles!

Related posts:

1. Cuffe backs demolition of some ‘ghost’ estates
2. ‘Ghost’ estates to get €5m to deal with safety issues
3. Ghost estates mess is fault of council chiefs, insists Cuffe

After reading an article in the Irish Times entitled “Regional airport cuts ‘should be reconsidered’” by Lorna Siggens. Given that the article was about the the subsidization of PSO (public service obligation) air routes within Ireland and how a late decision by the former Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey to cut costs by only subsidizing Dublin – Donegal from July and how these routes are vital for tourism and business in the far flung parts of Ireland due to there sub 2 hour travel times. What other routes are served by the various regional airports? So 20 minutes of research later and a bit of google docs magic here are the results:

• 28 Regular service non Irish destinations served by various different Airlines on non PSO routes.
• The majority of non Irish routes are to the UK.
• Dublin is served by all of the airports except Waterford.

Regional Airport Routes in Ireland

Information was compiled from the respective websites of each airport.

From this brief overview it shows that Sligo will stand to loose the most out of the removal of the PSO’s since Dublin – Sligo is its only route. All the regional airports bar Donegal and Sligo link into worldwide Hubs in London with all main airports served aside from London Heathrow (LHR).

Assuming most of these routes are economical to be run by the various Airline Operators all the airports currently provide major links for there respective regions through the network effect thanks to their connections to the Dublin, London and the UK.

Maybe a better use of the funds allocated to the PSO routes would be to provide proper connecting transport service to and from each airport to their respective tourism and regional destinations, to make something similar to the airline hub system to improve the land transportation.

Related posts:

1. Regional development key to growth in all areas of economy, report states
2. €14m to be spent on bus transport
3. Gotthard Tunnel breakthrough. Could Ireland create a high speed rail link to the UK?

Was firing through the google reader when i came across this on Buck Planning, Redrawing Dublin – Paul Kearns and Motti Ruimy, available for €33 in bookshops. (It’s sold out on amazon, will hopefully be able to get a copy in town today) Would suggest everyone check out the Redrawing Dublin Facebook page for extra titt bits!

Metro North or DART Underground, what’s it to be? One, both or neither…Dublin Transport.

Very good article in yesterdays Sunday Times by Richard Oakley, was quiet synical but a good laugh and hit the right nerve as far as the projects go. The RPA are definitely the better PR machine at the moment. Sticking with the transport note, now that Dublin Airports T2 is complete and operational, will the plans for a second parallel runway be lodged? Dublin Bus is to complete the role out of real time passenger information throughout the city by March, will have to see it to believe it! We are to finally have an integrated ticket this year at some stage! Further Dublin Bikes expansion is on the cards too and the new bike map looks like the shape of a seating plan for an airliner.

Plans, plans and more plans!

This year however will undoubtly be the year for the preparation of the Local Area Plan, for instance Dublin City Counil have committed to producing 5 local area plans by the 2016 renewal date of the newly adopted plan.

Hope 2011 will be way better than 2010!

C

Related posts:

1. Happy New Year! 2011 The year of the Chinese, our massive population, continuing trends and more
2. Bag O’ Links 31/07/2011 Incinerators, Transport, Dublin Bus and Grangegorman
3. Review of Kildare County Development Plan 2011 – 2017

What I am really interested to find out is, are any of you actually planners reading the blog? Actually screw it if you are reading this blog who are you, what do you do?? What would did you like from 2010 and what would you like to see more of in 2010??

Thanks to you all for reading! I will have a post tomorrow with a quick outlook on 2011 in terms of planning as I see it! Stay tuned.

Don’t think too much, just do it!

Related posts:

1. Happy New Year! 2011 The year of the Chinese, our massive population, continuing trends and more
2. Happy Christmas from Dt106ers.com

Image: IrishTimes

It is very difficult to see such an amazing bird so recklessly poisoned. Any other country the people responsible would more than likely be in jail. Surely there is someway to prevent this form happening to yet more of our re introduction programmes!

A WHITE-TAILED sea eagle released into the Killarney National Park last summer as part of an ambitious five-year reintroduction programme from Norway, has been found to have been poisoned near Glencar in the foothills of the Macgillycuddy Reeks.

It is the ninth eagle poisoned in the sheep farming area of the Reeks which extends west of Killarney and includes the river Laune and Beaufort area. Another eagle was shot in the vicinity.

The latest poisoning comes despite strict legislation banning poisoned bait to control foxes introduced in October after an outcry by conservation groups and representatives of Norway over the spate of poisonings in the spring.

Last May the Norwegian ambassador to Ireland, Öyvind Nordsletten, expressed his outrage at the continued use of meat bait to poison animals and birds.

The female, which was found on December 11th last, died from high concentrations of liver fluke drug, the State laboratory has concluded.

This was probably from meat bait left out to poison foxes and grey crows, a practice that is now “unequivocally illegal and totally unacceptable” under recent legislation, those involved in the project said yesterday.

Gardaí are investigating and are understood to be following a definite line of inquiry.

Some 77 eagles were brought to Ireland from Norway as part of an ambitious reintroduction programme that began in 2007. A total of 15 have have since died, 10 of them in Kerry.

The scientist in charge of the project, Dr Allan Mee, said the practice of using poisoned meat bait had been banned outright from October. The legislation was unequivocal and fines of up to €5,000 may now be imposed on conviction.

Writes: Anna Lucey in The Irish Times

Related posts:

1. €3m e-town project for Tarbert, Kerry