Ireland being an island nation with its major ports on the east and south coasts of the country relies heavily on road transport for the distribution of imported goods nationally. There is a minor reliance on rail transport for distribution of goods as it is considered to be more efficient to use the road network to deliver small and bulk freight. One way of addressing the issue is to look at the subject of transportation and land use and how we can reduce journey times between towns and cities throughout the country.

Background

The Von Thünen Model for use of land

It was revealed by JH Von Thünen in his 1826 paper “The Isolated State” that from an agricultural perspective, transport and the location of goods could be more efficiently dealt with by locating fresh produce growing appropriately to optimal transport corridors which would deliver the goods more efficiently and cost effectively. We can use

this example to demonstrate the sustainability of land use when transport is considered in an urban context. Von Thünen’s theory stated that the products with the highest production costs would be located closest to the market place. For example, grain production would be located closer than livestock production to the market place.

Although Von Thünen was demonstrating the efficiency of the transportation of agricultural produce, the theory can be explored to look at how this concept can be applied to the transport of people from residential areas to retail and commercial areas. In other words, how we deal with people movement as well as the movement of goods.

Alonso’s Bid Rent Curve

The National Spatial Strategy (NSS)promotes the strategic and sequential release of land whilst concentrating development in areas where “it is possible” to integrate employment, retail & commercial as well as public transport. The NSS also advocates consolidation of existing areas and regeneration of brown field sites ahead of green field sites. This is clearly a ‘work with what we have’ approach as it uses the networks already existing, or at the very least, networks that could be conveniently reintroduced.

Building on Von Thünen’s model, Alonso came up with a more modern approach through his Bid Rent Curve or what is sometimes known as the Central Business District Theory (CBD). This theory related to the location of business to the critical masses. The logic of the CBD theory was that the greater access to population for business, the more profitable it could be in commercial terms.

Global Factors

At present we are experiencing political unrest in middle?eastern countries such as Libya, Iraq and Bahrain as well as Tunisia and Egypt. The impact such unrest is having on Europe is fundamental as the political stability of countries such as Iraq, Libya and Bahrain have a direct influence on the price of oil. At time of writing, the cost of crude oil has reached $110 a barrel (22 March). The affect of political unrest on the production of oil is a major factor in the cost but so is the transportation of oil as freight.

It is estimated that 3 million barrels of oil travel daily via the Suez Canal, which is controlled by Egypt. Primarily this freight is bound for the USA and to a lesser extent, the Western European market (Vanderbruck, 2011).

Not only does this raise the issue of how strategic transportation of oil coming from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is to Europe and the United States of America, it also raises the issue of what those western continents must do to address the heavy reliance on fossil fuels produced in the middle? east. This puts an onus on the Western economies to address how we deal with the supply of a product vital to the sustainability of all the countries that have become major end?users.

The subject of oil and the reliance of Ireland on it during recessionary times, poses a serious question in terms of transport and land use. Urban transport in Ireland up to now has not been problem because we have always had an abundance of reasonably affordable oil to power our public and private transport. However, with unrest in the middle?east and no indigenous supply of our own during the worst economic downturn in the history of the state, Ireland is vulnerable and must look to reduce our heavy reliance on imported fuels. We can do so by looking at how and where we

locate our central business districts and residential areas. This also leads back to the NSS and the policy of consolidating built up areas.

Political Factors

In 2009 the then Irish government made up of Fianna Fail/Green Party brought forward a policy document called Smarter Travel – A Sustainable Transport Future. This document outlines the difficulties faced by Ireland during the current economic recession in terms of transport provision and presents a plan to address the needs amid current economic constraints.

In his foreword of the document, Minister Noel Dempsey acknowledges that current transport trends are unsustainable and pursuing outdated policies will have an adverse impact on the economy and society in general. The document also acknowledges the importance of aligning transport and spatial planning to prevent urban sprawl. The culmination of the policy is that smarter travel is encouraged as an alternative to private car use. The policy offers a commitment to radically changing and improving the public transport system to encourage people to live in closer proximity to places of employment. It is a very strong policy document but is unlikely to be adhered to by the new Fine Gael/Labour government.

The current Programme for Government 2011 – 2016 is weak in terms of direction for promotion of sustainable land use and how it will be addressed but there is mention of giving more control to local communities in terms of transport and traffic that could be a positive step toward bringing the powers of delivering public transport and roads into the local governance sphere rather than the current centralised model currently in place whereby national government delivers on public transport and other community infrastructure such as schools and health care facilities. If such a policy is implemented by the current Minister for Local Government, we may see a new joined up approach to transport planning and spatial planning which will benefit the quality of life for citizens.

Density

As mentioned earlier, the NSS promotes consolidation of the Greater Dublin Area (GDA) to ensure economic competitiveness as well as ensuring a cohesive approach in terms of development. Crucial to future consolidation is the densities of residential developments. It is essential to encourage higher densities to manage the supply of local services in a more efficient way. When we allow urban sprawl to occur, we stretch the provision of services such utility provision and public transport. For

example, if the Rural Housing Policy of Fingal County Council was abolished and it becomes easier for people to build one?off housing units on agricultural sites, we will create urban sprawl but more detrimentally we will create a situation whereby sewage treatment cannot be provided, public transport does not serve areas where population growth is taking place because of the sporadic development.

However, if we designate land around Balbriggan train station where people can live in close proximity to a transport hub, this will create a more sustainable lifestyle for the residents who can avail of transport provision close to where they live. The latter scenario is what is being promoted and supported by the NSS and RPGs in an effort to bring land use and transport together, thus encouraging people to live and work in areas accessible by transport.

Urban Transport

Currently planning authorities are working from policies within the RPGS which promote development along key transport corridors. According to the RPGs, two types of Green Belt have been established, large outer greenbelts to earmark areas where the minimum level of development should take place and smaller connector green belts where space between urban areas and rural areas can be preserved. Consolidation of development has been an objective of planning guidelines since the publication of the SPGs in 1999. Policies delivering consolidation of development are pursued in order to concentrate development around transport corridors with the objective of minimising urban trips using private transport. Concentrating development around transport nodes ensures an efficient use of public transport as an alternative to private transport.

Conclusion

Taking into consideration global factors such as the cost of imported fossil fuels which will influence travel patterns of both private and business users, it is vitally important for planners to bring together transport planning and urban development through consolidation. The economic factors such as availability of disposable income and access to cheap finance which was abundant during the “Celtic Tiger” years but now dramatically lower mean that policies within the National Spatial Strategy and the Regional Planning Guidelines are essential to address the quality of life for people who may not be in a financial position to obtain private transport. In addition, bringing together transport planning and urban development ensures a more cost effective way to deliver public transport projects to support the existing communities and those emerging.

It is clear that with policies such as the NSS in place to consolidate our developed areas we are moving in the right direction. However, the question must be asked as to whether we have the political will to concentrate development in appropriate areas designated for that purpose. The matter of ‘Ghost Estates’ along with the overhang of land zoned for development in a number of local authorities throughout Ireland would tell us that there must be a change in the political culture ahead of any sustainable approach to a more cohesive relationship between transport and land use. Until the mindset of our public representatives is set to deliver on sustainable development, we will continue to see sporadic land zoning occurring with urban sprawl being the result. It will take a number of decades for infrastructure to catch up and until then populations of those areas will be subjected to a low quality of life where inadequate physical and social infrastructure are the norm.

As always!

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I would also like to mention that an explosion of on shore windfarms may not be welcomed as well, as one would think.  Because lets face it, they can be seen from a fare distance away, they ain’t small!! I know EIS’s can be a right pain to get right, but they all come together to allow the authorities to make a better judgement of these turbines on the people and the land. Maybe offshore is a much better way to go? Sure there some proper winds out of the west cost.

Floating Wind Farms thats what we need, move them around over the contential shelf like the oil rigs do!

Good to see so much money will be invested though.

SOME €300 billion is set to be invested in European offshore windfarms over the next 20 years, according to a new report from wind turbine manufacturer Siemens.

The company, which recently signed contracts to supply up to 500 wind turbines for Dong Energy’s offshore windfarms in northern Europe, said there were existing commitments from investors for about 100 gigawatts (100,000 mega watts) across the continent.

At an installation cost cost of about €3 million per mega watt, Siemens said the total potential investment was in the order of €300 billion.

The company warned however that Ireland’s system of queuing projects for “gate” connections to the national grid meant Ireland would not be quick to achieve a significant share of the potential.

Currently the Republic has five offshore windfarms in the pipeline with a potential generating capacity of 2,655 mega watts, representing potential investment of almost €7 billion.

The next allocation of grid connections, known as Gate III, is due by next year. According to the Irish Wind Energy Association, though, Gate III is likely to give permissions for grid connections timed for about 2016.

Association chief executive Michael Walsh said some of the projects which might be approved under Gate III had been in the pipeline since 2004. To be in the pipeline since 2004 with a possible offer next year, and a potential connection in 2016, represented too much uncertainty over too long a time, he said.

Mr Walsh said, taking onshore and offshore wind proposals together, “there is about eight gigawatts in development, with a potential investment value of €16 billion to €18 billion”. About 3.9 giga watts were expected to be sanctioned by Gate III, he said.

A Department of Energy source acknowledged the difficulty but referred to plans by EirGrid to double the grid capacity under a €4 billion investment, by 2025.

The source also said it was planned to transfer control of the foreshore from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of the Environment in a bid to expedite the planning process for off-shore installations.

“We must upgrade the grid,” the source added. “There are parts of the country, usually where the wind is, where the network would not support the connection. Also we want to streamline planning and control so connections are ready and licences can be awarded like those for oil and gas.”
Source: IRISHTIMES

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HERITAGE & HABITAT: NOW THAT “development” is a dirty word in Ireland,  and building projects are too often seen in the light of destruction rather than construction, there is one kind of building project that is still a good thing – almost a morally good thing – and that’s bridges, writes GEMMA TIPTON

It’s easy to get carried away by bridges, but with Irish architects winning competitions to build bridges around the world, and global architects creating new ones here, it’s time we all started celebrating the not-so-humble bridge. Where does the morality come in? Can bridges be moral? If you can ascribe such qualities to inanimate objects, I believe they are – how else could you view such a means for bringing people together, closing distances, and linking communities, countries, and sometimes even continents? Take the Oresund, which you can see from the air as you fly into Copenhagen. It was opened in the year 2000, and spreads out like a dancing ribbon across the sea, connecting Denmark and Sweden for the first time since the Ice Age. Then there’s the Bosphorus Bridge that joins Europe and Asia. Venus Williams once played a tennis match here, against Turkish player Ipek Senoglu, it only lasted five minutes, but was the first tennis game in history to span two continents. Perhaps more excitingly (Europe and Asia already being attached by land elsewhere) is the proposed Bering Straits Bridge, which would link Asia, Africa and Europe with North and South America — meaning you could drive around much of the world. The Bering Straits Bridge proposition has been around for a while, and at the same time as the dreamers are planning their bridges, their perhaps more practical colleagues are thinking of tunnels. Tunnels also do their work of joining and bringing together, but they don’t seem to have the romance of bridges. Novelist JG Ballard put it best, when he was asked about the, then newly-opened, Channel Tunnel: he agreed it was amazing, but imagine . . . he said. Imagine if it had been a bridge.

In Ireland we have some pretty good bridges – although no world-beaters yet. Sir Edwin Lutyens’s plan to build the Hugh Lane Gallery as a bridge across the Liffey might well have been one, had it gone ahead. Instead, we have the beloved Ha’penny bridge spanning the Liffey, as well as, among others, O’Connell Bridge – actually two bridges side by side, and almost as wide as it is long. Further north there is the Boyne Bridge, which glows an ethereal blue at night, and, possibly the most beautiful of the new, soaring breed of bridges: the Foyle Bridge in Derry, which although it has to close in high winds, seems to be like an inspiration for the imagination to start to soar.

Opening later this year in this country is the Suir Bridge, which will help the N25 bypass Waterford. Regulars of Waterford’s traffic jams might find this thrilling enough on its own, but the Suir Bridge, designed by Spanish firm Carlos Fernández Casado, is a pretty glorious feat. The pylon holding the cable-stays took two years to build and is almost twice the height of Liberty Hall. Hang out with bridge-fanciers for a while, and you hear an awful lot of statistics and comparisons, as people wax lyrical about arches, spans, tonnes of reinforced concrete and numbers of rivets. Perhaps it’s their way of coming to terms with all that majesty and wonder.

Le viaduc de Millau France
Originally uploaded by filip42

It all starts to make sense when you come across a bridge like the Millau Viaduct. It’s the tallest in the world, taller than the Eiffel Tower, and it floats in the clouds as it crosses the Tarn Valley in France. It’s architect, Norman Foster, said he wanted it to have “the delicacy of a butterfly”, and people have said that driving across it is like “flying a car” – and they go there to do just that. Traveling to see amazing bridges has a distinguished history. Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, and Thomas Telford’s Menai both drew the Victorian crowds when they were built – the Menai actually being a direct response to the Act of Union in 1800, as suddenly there was more traffic between the ports of Ireland and Wales. Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, has the additional, unfortunate distinction of being a spot for suicides, and plaques along the bridge display the Samaritans’ phone number. In 1885, however, a 22-year-old woman was saved from her plunge by her skirts, which caught the wind and acted as a parachute. Sarah Ann Henley lived on into her 80s.

While people travel to bridges, bridges have been known to travel too — famously London Bridge, which millionaire Robert McCulloch bought and transported, brick by brick, to Arizona in 1962. Ireland’s other newest bridge has traveled too: Santiago Calatrava’s Beckett Bridge floated, fully formed, into Dublin on a barge from Rotterdam earlier this year, and will be open for business in early 2010. I’m not completely convinced by the Beckett Bridge, the architect insists it looks like a harp, in deference to Ireland, but I think it looks like a great many of his other bridges – lovely, but by no means unique.

Meanwhile, Irish architects Heneghan Peng are building bridges abroad – one at Mittelrheinbruecke, in the Rhine Valley, on a site famed for its beauty; and the other, a footbridge for the 2012 London Olympics. Heneghan Peng’s German bridge is a thin sliver in the landscape, and like the best bridges, doesn’t detract from its setting. Some actually add to theirs – framing views in valleys, and giving new ones from their decks. One such will be Buro Happold’s winning design for the proposed Metro West across Liffey Valley – proving that sometimes man and nature can work in harmony. And finally, now is our last chance to see (for 2009 at least) the gorgeous, and a little scary, Carrick-a-rede rope bridge near Ballintoy, Co Antrim. It is taken down at the end of October/beginning of November every year, and goes up again in March.

Stunning And Romantic

Millau Viaduct , Tarn Valley: flying a car above the clouds in France.

Golden Gate Bridge , San Francisco: iconic, mist shrouded, it was once the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Oresund , Denmark/Sweden: connecting countries separated since the Ice Age.

Ponte Dom Luis: Porto, in Portugal, is famed for its bridges, but this one proves that iron work can be wonderful.

Clifton Suspension Bridge : turned Bristol into a Victorian tourist attraction.

Pont Neuf: the “new bridge” is now the oldest in Paris

Charles Bridge: begun in the 14th Century, a Prague tourist attraction

Rialto Bridge: all the bridges of Venice are romantic, but this one stands out.

Five-pavilion Bridge, Beijing: the Chinese are brilliant at bridges, and this one is very special.

Ponte Vecchio: the only one of Florence’s bridges not to be blown up by the Nazis. Hitler deemed it too beautiful.

Source: IRISHTIMES

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NATIONAL ELECTRICITY network operator Eirgrid yesterday got the green light for its planned €600 million power link between Wales and Ireland.

Eirgrid said that An Bord Pleanála has given it permission to build an interconnector between the east coast and north Wales that will transmit electricity between Britain and Ireland.

The interconnector will have the capacity to carry 500 megawatts of electricity, roughly the same amount as of that generated by a medium-sized power plant.

According to Eirgrid, this is enough power to supply 300,000 homes. The project will require an investment of €600 million. Its construction will create about 100 jobs and work will be finished in 2012.

The grid operator has hired Swedish company ABB to carry out the work. The firm manufactures cables, switches and most equipment needed by electricity transmission systems. It also designs and builds the systems itself.

The interconnector will link Deeside in north Wales and Woodland in Co Meath, where Eirgrid operates a substation. It will come ashore close to Rush, Co Dublin.

Eirgrid, a State agency, applied to An Bord Pleanála’s strategic infrastructure division for permission to build the interconnector. Eirgrid chief executive Dermot Byrne described the planning board’s decision as a major milestone, and added that the project will be delivered on time.

“As an island of five million people that is over 90 per cent dependent on imported fossil fuels for our energy, we have an immediate and pressing need to improve our security of supply, and to enhance our capacity to generate renewable energy. The east-west interconnector will help us do both,” he said.

The Irish Times

We shall see how it goes!

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