THE LABOUR Party has called for the retention of some €8 million in funding for the rural transport programme, which is “critical” for tens of thousands of people living in the countryside.

Labour’s transport spokesman Tommy Broughan yesterday published a plan outlining how the service could be maintained and protected. The six-point plan, Giving Rural Ireland a Lift, proposes the maintenance of the programme and new initiatives to prioritise the service and to allow local public transport providers become financially independent.

“Rural public transport services have been underfunded and neglected for years and the transport needs of rural Ireland have too often been ignored,” said Mr Broughan.

He said providing transport for people who lived outside larger towns was important to prevent social exclusion and rural isolation. This was especially important for senior citizens, people with disabilities and low-income families.

He claimed there had been a “savage” series of cutbacks proposed for Bus Éireann fleets and services, plus plans to axe the rural transport programme.

Labour’s plan proposes to

Maintain the Rural Transport Programme (RTP);
Make rural transport planning a key priority of the Department of Transport and the new National Transport Authority;
Protect the national Bus Éireann rural bus network;
Prioritise the enhanced integration of rural transport services;
Review successful EU rural transport models and establish a rural public transport services target;
Consider initiatives to encourage local transport firms to be more financially independent.
“In 2008 the 36 RTP companies in every county across Ireland received just €8.3 million in funding. Transport Minister Noel Dempsey must now make sure that this relatively small funding allocation is maintained under Budget 2010,” he said.

Source: IrishTimes

Related posts:

1. Sligo may lose €100m funds over bridge row
2. €14m to be spent on bus transport
3. TD calls for independent inquiry into causes of November flooding in Cork

MARY MINIHAN

MINISTER FOR the Environment and Green Party leader John Gormley has described the decision to temporarily scale back the College Green “bus gate” as “a retrograde step”.

Dublin city councillors voted on Monday night to lift the ban on private cars passing through the area during peak evening hours from November 18th to January 15th.

“I think the decision to abandon the ‘bus gate’ for the time being in the evenings is really based on fear not facts,” Mr Gormley said.

“I respect councils and local government and want to see more decisions made locally, but as a Dublin TD and resident, the decision Fine Gael and Labour councillors made was a bad one . . . It’s a retrograde step.”

Mr Gormley said the bus corridor was making life easier for people who used buses or bicycles, but the move by the council “steals time from them”.

He said that the last thing that should happen in a recession was for the city to be made less accessible.

“When I hear that car parks are not doing as much business as previously, I have to say that to me that sounds like good news.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey said he was “disappointed” at the decision.

“But, importantly, he would welcome the fact that a fixed date has been set for its reintroduction,” said the spokesman.

Labour councillor Dermot Lacey stressed the scaling back was temporary.

“There are 43 agencies or bodies with responsibility for traffic in Dublin.

“When Ministers Dempsey and Gormley sort that out, maybe they can come back to us,” Mr Lacey said.

Representatives from Dublin City Council and Dublin Chamber of Commerce will appear before the Oireachtas transport committee today to discuss the issue.

Source: IrishTimes

Related posts:

1. City footfall nosedived before Bus Gate review
2. ‘Bus gate’ ban to be lifted temporarily
3. Bus gate halves journey times in capital

THE FINAL stage of work to replace one of Iarnród Éireann’s three railway crossings of the Shannon, a bridge near Lough Tap, between Dromod and Carrick-on-Shannon in Co Leitrim, gets under way today.

Over the next 12 days the line will be closed as the new steel bridge and concrete deck is lifted into place in four sections by the largest crane ever used in Ireland.

The crane, imported from Texas, has a lift capacity of 1,350 tonnes. The work was to have taken place from October 5th to 16th, but it was delayed. The replacement of the existing bridge,which dates from 1862, is expected to allow for considerable improvement in the speed of trains across the bridge, which had slowed to about walking pace in recent years.

In addition to the work on the bridge, the approach routes and embankments have been realigned and the entire structure is being raised by one metre to allow for larger vessels on the Shannon to pass underneath.

Iarnród Éireann said bus transfers will be in operation between Sligo town and all stations to Dromod. Passengers should note that buses will depart from Sligo and Collooney 30 minutes in advance of the scheduled train times to Dublin.

Costing €5.5 million, the bridge replacement brings to €150 million the total investment in the Dublin to Sligo line since 1999.

According to Iarnród Éireann, improvements have included renewal of track, resignalling and the upgrading of level crossings, platform lengthening and safety enhancements. The Sligo-Dublin route was the first to benefit from the new intercity railcars fleet. There will be eight daily services in each direction compared to three in 2003.

Iarnród Éireann said the increase in services has resulted in the Sligo-Dublin line becoming the network’s fastest growing route, with more than 1.34 million passenger journeys in 2008 – representing a jump of more than 30 per cent in three years.

Rail services to Sligo opened on December 3rd, 1862. The town was later connected by rail to Enniskillen, by the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway in 1879, and to Limerick in 1895.

The line to Enniskillen closed in 1957 and passenger services to Limerick closed in 1963. The Sligo to Limerick route is known as the Western Rail Corridor, part of which – the Ennis, Co Clare to Athenry Co Galway section – is due to reopen later this year.

Iarnród Éireann’s other rail crossings of the Shannon are at Athlone and between Limerick and Ennis.

Source: IrishTimes Link

Related posts:

1. Sligo may lose €100m funds over bridge row
2. New bridge opens to traffic – Beckett Bridge
3. Samuel Beckett Bridge Dublin

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

Related posts:

1. Samuel Beckett Bridge Dublin
2. €300bn for offshore windfarms – Are windfarms a good idea?
3. New bridge opens to traffic – Beckett Bridge

According to Dublin Bikes and the City Council the scheme is proving even more populour then they ever imagined it would be. I find it hard to believe why they did not put out more bikes in the first place. There are only 440 bikes for some 6000 people. But sure i can’t really comment as i havent had a chance to use one of the bikes yet.

Can’t wait to get in there give them a go and be able to get over to Fallon & Byrne for lunch in a jiffy, and back to college for the afternoon!

In my opinion a scheme that will most certainly be a success! With any luck if the popularity of the service last they will expand it to other parts of the city.  I also don’t believe we will see any of these bikes in the Liffy, but only time will tell!

Dublin City Council has said 6,000 people have subscribed to the Dublinbikes scheme which was introduced last weekend.

It said more than 5,000 people had registered for long-term hire cards and almost 1,000 for its 72-hour duration short-term subscriptions.

The council has 450 bicycles available from 40 stations between the Royal and the Grand canals.

Cyclists can register online for annual membership using a credit card at a cost of €10 or can pay with a credit card at 14 of the stations for a three-day €2 ticket.

Rental is then free for half an hour and costs 50 cent for the first hour, rising to €6.50 for four hours. The bikes are available from 5.30am to 12.30am.

The scheme is being funded by advertising agency JC Decaux in exchange for advertising space in the capital.
Source: www.dublinbikes.ie

The Dublin Bike Station on Dame Street

May it be really successful!

Related posts:

1. DCC are to add more Dublinbikes to the city streets!
2. Samuel Beckett Bridge Dublin
3. Luas Red Line extension to open on Tuesday

Samuel Beckett Bridge Dublin

The first thing to strike me about the bridge is its size. Interestingly its not that visible from O’Connell Bridge but when you round the corner down to Butt Bridge and the other one that crosses to the CHQ Building, it is immense!

The bridge will have four traffic lanes, with cycle tracks and footpaths on either side. It will also be capable of opening through an angle of 90 degrees allowing ships to pass through. This will be achieved through a rotational mechanism housed in the base of the pylon.

From www.dublincity.ie

Now i have one issue with the bridge, it is called the Macken Street bridge but yet the road deck crosses the river in between macken street and the next street up from it, Guild Street I think it is.

This bridge will finally  re-create a link across to the south side of the city from the north side without having to travel all the way down past Capel Street to gain access to the college green area, when the bus corridor is in operation. As most of you will know as you drive into town down Dorset Street you cannot turn left once you pass temple street, thanks to the traffic management plan in operation in the city, because of the one way system in operation around the city people driving from the northside have to travel all the way to Church Street to cross the liffy to get to any part of the south bank of the liffey. This bridge although removed from the central part of the city, it will allow people to travel to parts of the city like merrion square and the like with much greater ease and a lesser chance of getting caught in the inner city traffic.

Another feature of note is the capacity of the bridge to carry luas tracks in the future. Finally some proper future planning by the city council in terms of transport! Mind you it could be a planning nightmare to get a luas up and down the keys there or even up macken street/guild street, but sure we shall see whether luas extensions will even continue thanks to the recession and its cuts in funding for infrastructure projects.

Dublin City Council have indicate that the Bridge will be open to city traffic in early 2010.

Related posts:

1. New bridge opens to traffic – Beckett Bridge
2. A time for building bridges
3. Complaints over traffic controls at new bridge