A quart in a pint pot
Dublin is an old city.
It dates back to the Vikings but expanded considerably over the centuries which is sort of to be expected. And the expansion was somewhat haphazard, not like those boring Merkan cites which are all straight lines and the Dublin expansion resulted in a maze of streets, some wide, some narrow and all basically suitable for little traffic which mainly consisted of the horse and cart.
Roll on to modern times, where nearly everyone owns a car and those narrow streets fill up pretty rapidly. In other words, driving in Dublin is a bit of a nightmare.
So we have streets jammed with cars and buses and cyclists and motorbikes and taxis, not to mention dumb pedestrians wandering around the streets fixated on their mobile phones.
Someone had a brilliant idea – let’s cordon off half the streets so buses can move freely and people will take the bus instead of the car. It didn’t work. It just meant the traffic was worse because the streets were now narrower and there were fewer lanes to cope with the flow.
Roll on to the present day. Someone else had the amazingly brilliant idea that the way to get all those cars, buses, taxis, lorries, bicycles and motorbikes moving freely was to add fucking railway tracks to the mess. So our Glorious Gubmint spent the best part of 380 million ripping up the city centre and laying railway lines everywhere. So now we have buses, cars, taxis, lorries, cyclists, motorcyclists and long fucking trains running down those narrow streets that were really suitable only for horses and carts.
Naturally things came to a standstill.
Now they are sitting around scratching their heads wondering what the hell went wrong. Presumably they are now desperately running around looking for some poor dumb schmuck to put the blame on. Some lowly clerk will be handed a final pay cheque for thinking up an idea he had nothing to do with.
I wonder what they’ll think of next?
Has anyone thought of adding canals to the streets and running barges?
“was to add fucking railway tracks to the mess”
Funnily enough I was pondering a similar situation the other day.
http://www.messynessychic.com/2016/03/17/when-they-dug-up-paris/
Has Dublin got an Underground yet? There must be EU money available….
The Dublin Underground has been on the plans for a long time, as has a plan to run a railway to the airport. Doubtless they’ll fuck up those plans too.
It’s not the trams, it’s Irish administration that is the problem. The exceptionally beautiful medieval city of Bordeaux built an entire network, with similar trams, for a fraction of the price – and charge only €1.50 for an hour and a half of travel. And they have no overhead wires in the city centre.
The problem in Ireland is gougers in high places who seize upon every opportunity to trouser public money.
Why not use elevated barge canals. After all keeping a few million liters of water 6 or 7 meter above city streets should be simple.
After all keeping a few million liters of water 6 or 7 meter above city streets should be simple.
With Ireland’s annual rainfall it’d be a piece of piss.
You’ve never been to Boston have you? You could take your entire post and just substitute Boston for Dublin and it would be just as accurate. Of course Boston added the MBTA subway (underground) system some time ago that also include bus style “trolleys” that ride around on rails all over the place to add to the mess. I swear there’s not a straight road or street anywhere in Boston and half of those are one-way only.
Pre-car, there was a tiny clue about access, “She wheels her wheelbarrow, through streets broad and NARROW”
I have a dream that one day councils will employ fewer dunces and self-serving, grasping idiots. It might happen.