So the plans for the Metro North are going on display and Dubliners were warned to expect massive disruption to their daily lives when construction begins.
We already know they’re going to dig up a big chunk of St Stephen’s Green and now I read that Westmoreland Street could be closed to traffic for up to five years. Which is a bit mad when you think about it. Where is the traffic supposed to go?
I have been in cities when they have been constructing/embiggening metro systems and the disruption is mental. Whole chunks of neighbourhoods collapse, roads are closed, traffic grinds to a halt and lots of blokes with hard hats stand around appearing to do very little.
So I am concerned that in cities in which they already have metros and have experience of digging the tunnels etc that things are going to be even worse in Dublin. We saw what a fantastic job they did with the port tunnel. Wasn’t there the story (perhaps apocryphal) that they built it about 5 inches too small for some of the biggest trucks? And it seems to be closed at the drop of a hat, if it’s not computer issues, it’s leaking or cracking or something goes on fire inside it.
They say 1/5th of the Green will be removed then put back but they’re going to need much more than 1/5th to work in. Machinery, vans, portaloos, men with hard hats standing around appearing to do very little. Utter carnage. Then add the closure of Westmoreland Street, probably the widest street in the whole city (right?), which handles a huge amount of traffic every day, and it’s going to be absolute mayhem just so we can get people to the airport quicker.
I’m all for metros, the more of the traffic we take off the surface the better, but I wish they’d done it years ago. Then we would have to be the people who lived with all the disruption. In years to come futurefolk will look back and think ‘My good sweet holy Allah, ruler of the whole world, how did they cope with having this thing built? Oh well, fuck ‘em an’ an’ anyways, I’m getting the metro to the inner-city district of Swords’.
And, of course, they say five years but nobody believes that, do they? I reckon it’ll take twice as long and cost ten times as much as they say it will.
What say we all move somewhere else while they’re doing it? I think it’s time to give Lando Calrissian a call and get working on them cloud cities.
God. I can believe their Green plan is going ahead, it makes my head spin.
So little vision. All these junkets to places that work better than Ireland and still, nothing. Get in German contracters, I say. It’ll be efficient and look better than it did when it started.
Hey, that’s a damn fine idea there re:cloud cities – maybe their construction will mean a bunch of clouds will get closed off and we won’t get pissed on 24/7 like we have all summer.
That’s a good point, JL.
As everyone knows cloud cities can only be constructed upon cirrostratus clouds and the Nimbostratus or Cumulonimbus that bring us most of our rain would have be outlawed, thus improving the climate and enabling people to cope better with the disruption to the surface traffic.
It’s a winner all round.
Worked for Flash Gordon.
‘Flash, I love you but we only have fourteen hours to save the earth’.
‘I’ll do it inna minneh’.
haha
‘Only I’m on the cloud-jax and we’re about to pass over Limerick.’
‘Shift over’.
(Ja. Popular in Limerick, I’ll be.)
‘Hurricane Gustav has handed General Motors a welcome public relations coup for OnStar, its on-board navigation and safety system.
The carmaker on Monday said that, as drivers fled the storm, it had seen a rise in the number of calls to the system’s crisis advisers, who were counselling evacuees on routes, hotels and other emergency preparations.’ Financial Times, 02 Sept 08
Aye. It’s an ill wind …
Lando had terrible problems with planning permission though.
Cloud cities would be pretty cool – wouldn’t they sag in the middle though, what with the weight of the buildings, cars and people?
Surely though the whole point of an on-board navigation system is that you don’t have to ring a crisis adviser.
There should be a voice in the car, soothing at first but rising slowly in panic, saying “drive faster…a bit faster… for fuck’s sake, drive faster!!”
They should really wait another eight years until 2016 to begin working on the Metro North. That way they could pass the state of the inner city off as a 100-year anniversary reenactment of the Easter Rising. (Although I doubt the Brits did THAT much damage with their shelling.)
See the way I spelled “for fuck’s sake”, Jo?
Heh. Rows of cloud-houses with cloud-wheelie-bins outside.
Anyone else heard that there was an underground started near the entrance to Trinity College? It was started as part of a proposed underground link between Heuston and Pearse stations way back at the beginning of the last century?
We should have waiting until we had a Metro before fecking out the Brits.
And also we should have a tunnel starting at Christchurch going under the length of Dame St and coming out half way up Pearse Street and sending traffic over the Liffey further up the Quays. That would make the whole area around Central Bank, Trinity, Westmoreland Street much more attractive.
Twenty is right. We should be digging upwards, not down.
Just because you have been digging potatoes for 100′s of years, dose not mean that you’re qualified to go digging tunnels all over the place.
Just because your name’s Alfie doesn’t mean you’re qualified to speak
We need the island-men. Because British men didn’t want to ruin their carefully moisturised skin or get their metro-sexual man-bags dirty there was a bunch of lads off the islands who used to go over to work on the channel tunnel.
They were flown over on Sunday nights and flown back home on Friday. Great workers, apparently.
And they know a thing or two about clouds too, I’ll warrant.
They’ll approach it the potato way though, no doubt.
On a smaller scale, they’re apparently going ot be working on the bridge in Bray for TWO YEARS. Something to do with drainage.
This will be such a hassle. There’s already no parking because the council decided to build a shopping centre in the car park – the construction company dug out a huge hole in the whole thing, let it fill with water and rats – and left it there. They owe the council millions they’ll never see.
And now, two more years of disruption. What could take two years?
At least elsewhere they work at night, early in the morning. Not rush hour.
Tinman, good work. Educating the masses one step at a time ;)
The Chinese built their line 5 subway in five years, and very impressive it is. However, I don’t think the Chinese workers work on two teabreaks, four breakfast rolls, seven cups of tea, three tabloid sports sections and 20 Players. Factoring in this approach to construction, I reckon ten years minimum. This will have to include a 12 month gap when they realise the grade of tracks does not fit in the tunnels they have dug.
Jo told us about the big carefully planned hole in the ground.
This is great. On the one hand we have the big feckin spike as a tribute to the heroin industry in Dublin and not far away we have an ambitious & publicly funded hole in the ground.
Its almost making me homesick. Is the hole big enough for a Harney?
But surely you live in London so have neither of these, you have Cockney wankers, and kids who think they are gangstas. You have overpriced beer, football holligans and City Tossers.
Right. We stick a massive big magnet in the hole in the middle of Dublin and fire another one up to the new Jack Charlton Space Station maintaining geosynchronous orbit over Dublin.
Switch em on and we have the necessary tension for a cloud city as long as we use bricks made out of iron filings.
Hey presto! One cloud city. The other advantage is that if we switch the magnet-in-the-hole on first then the big Spike would bend over and we could attach Ray Burke to it and switch it off again when he’s not expecting it. Ireland would lose a langer but Alaska would gain another cunt.
And home counties ponces trying to be “street”
Puerile Pish Roving Reporter says:
‘But surely you live in London so have neither of these, you have Cockney wankers, and kids who think they are gangstas. You have overpriced beer, football holligans and City Tossers.’
Your use of capital letters betrays you. And however much I’d like claim I invented or arranged all the above I must, out of modesty, decline to do so.
I would direct your attention to the planning application I have outlined for the new Cloud City.
Your carping, sir, neither encroaches upon my patriotic city-building duty nor my selfless devotion to a glittering future for the country of my birth.Your name is now on the list back at HQ.
All rise for a quick verse of Amhrann na Bhfian.
But you miss my point you said “we have” when in fact you should have said “you have” as you live in London. You spend your days in darkened faux Irish bars, waxing lyrical about the old country and complaining that the Guinness is never the same.
Your planning application will only succeed if you can bribe the appropriate officials and ensure that the services are inadequate so that the residents of your Cloud City have no schools, shops, sewage or uncorrupted water supplies.
They would have to build a new four lane flightpath through the new suburbs in the sky to get to the airport. I’d like to see them work out the traffic lights at the junctions….
Jaywalking wouldn’t be an issue anymore though
Chaos maybe, but in the long run it will save dolphins by taking some SUVs off the roads – and that has to be a good thing, doesn’t it ?
yawn
To new cloud-busting consultancy Skywalker Productions (Eire & The Cayman Islands) no problem is insurmountable.
As for the baseless accusation that I in my role as Chairman, Chief Executive, Fianncial Advisory Board and Lead Sky-Architect on the ‘Up Dub’ project would hang around in faux Irish bars of an evening I would inform you sir that last night I spoke to not a single Irishman while quaffing my regulation Adnams Broadside and quitely enthusing over the honours that will come my way.
We Irish abroad have always been alert to Joyce’s exhortation that we are obliged to get by on ‘silence, exile and cunting’. Sorry, ‘cunning’.
As for regulatory difficulties? Pshaw. I merely have to join Fianna Fail and all these piddling paper tribulations evaporate like a virginal cumulonimbus over delightful, cosmopolitan Mullingar.
Don’t disturb me anymore. I’m thinking.
In London we have Jock pricks pimping they’r Sisters around Kings Cross and the Cladonian Rd.
Yep but the Jock pricks can spell in your native language you fucking nonce.
alfie says:
In London we have Jock pricks pimping they’r Sisters around Kings Cross and the Cladonian Rd.
I think you’ll find that those whores are Man U fans searching for Old Trafford.
I am come back now from Mrs Genevieve and the Holy days on Lake Isle of Innisfree.
I am liking Irish people make funnings. ‘Go back and fix the dinner ya black bitch’ says Mrs Genevieve to Delicious M’Swati!
Hee hee. Evening was full of linnets wings although the bee-loud glade was full of bees to sting M’Swati arse.
We have cabin build there and nine bean rows. It is made of clay and wattles.
Batty, I think you probably have quite a insight into the truth about Ireland. Any chance you might let me know if it’s true that we being fucked by a small club of masonic type men who are sharing all the wealth amongst themselves and doing whatever the Brits and the US tell them to?
Quick, somebody make a pig joke.
An Essex girl is walking down the street with a pig under her arm. She passes a person who asks “Where did you get that?” The pig says, “I won her in a raffle!”
Beware. Digging tunnels may allow underground dwelling monsters to be able to get to the surface. They will wreak havoc !
Many of these monstrous monsters live on lager and crisps, so the supplies of lager and crisps to Dublin are in danger from these inhuman beasts of the nether regions.
Holemaster, upon delivering a succinct analysis of the Celtic Tiger is immediately promoted to Communications Director of SkyWalker Products with special responsibility for the ‘Up Dub’ project.
As for conspiracies? In IRELAND? Any secret in Ireland known to more than one person is called a ‘rumour’, to more than two people is called a ‘news item’ and to more than three qualifies as an ‘Ard Fheis’ with Riverdance and the Clancy Sisters giving blowjobs for chips behind the haggard.
Seriously though, there’s no international conspiracy as humans can’t keep their gobs shut. Its just the dynamics of international markets and an honest zeal for tax-free money.
Bonhamhs are great. Little wriggly fellas with happy faces and curly tails that grow up to be great big piles of Sunday mornning sausages.
A great fan of bonhamhs.
Holemaster, here is how it works. Politicians in Ireland make big speeches about Irish sovereignty and pay researchers to watch what happens in Westminster and Washington.
18 months after a new initiative (from America) is announced in Westminster some little gobshite stands up on its hind legs in the Dail and pretends they’ve had an insight of pure genius and if only people would listen to them the job would be nationally Oxo.
Watch for newspaper articles with the dread words ‘An American study has found ..’ or ‘According the University of Britney at Harvard …’
And I know this because I have worked in both places, thereby building on my early experience at a piggery.
I’m talking a lot, aren’t I? Or has everyone patriotically decided the best place to put their shoulder to the wheel for the sake of the Emerald Empire is the nearest shebeen?
Sorry about the interrruption from Delicious, who is currently attempting to find an earring in the slurry pit wearing only her swimming costume and little Sheena’s plastic 9.99 diving mask from Easons and a snorkel fashioned from an old Wavin pipe.
I warned the bitch.
Couldn’t they dig up the cricket pitch in Trinity instead of the Green? Everyone hates that cricket pitch, it would make quite a nice hole in the ground for the breafast roll brigade to stand around and breastfeed their shovels.
Tinman18 says:
Surely though the whole point of an on-board navigation system is that you don’t have to ring a crisis adviser.
I’m so bored now and the only alternative to work is to engage with Tinman so here goes.
I’ve got SatNag. Whenever I’m driving a female voice comes out of the speakers in the back
saying things like ‘Did you not see the sign?’ and ‘Why don’t you ask in the garage? They’re bound to know’, along with such goldne classics such as ‘You might want to shift gear’ and ‘THERE’S A GUARD CAR. OH JESUS PRESERVE US FROM ALL HARM IN THIS HOLY HOUR OF MERCY’.
Batty, ever thought about creating your own blog?
Maybe it could be something brilliant like a sort of Pat Shortt style one with references to ‘the mammy’ etc.
I bet it would be hilarious.
Seriously though, there’s no international conspiracy as humans can’t keep their gobs shut.
yeah, and as if there wouldn’t be a massive cockup of some sort at some stage.
The leader of a shadowy organisation that controls the world goes out and gets pissed and drops his usb key with his world domination plans on it.
alfie says: ‘Just because you have been digging potatoes for 100’s of years, dose not mean that you’re qualified to go digging tunnels all over the place.’
Alfie, old bean, there are 70 million people in the UK and you have very little land free in which to grow food. Soon you won’t be able to put your fishing boats to sea because of the hundred thousand old Dorises and their knackered WWII husbands sitting in Morris Minors staring through the squeaking windscreen wipers and engaged in the British national sport of silently being jealous of the French who somehow know how to live with style and elan.
Consider the Emerald Empire. Under 4 million people with many of them in and around Dublin. Oceans of agricultural land available and easy access to the western approaches, guarded dutifully by Rear Admiral O’Sullivan of the Irish Naval Service in the wheelhouse of the LMV Bertie with his finger on the trigger and the lads watching for any sign at all of a stolen sardine. Any sign at ALL.
I’d say you lot are all fucked. You’ll be eating corned beef and shredded ration books again before long.
Stay warm.
All family cars come with a SatNag, Batty, but the difference between that and a SatNav is that a SatNav will say “turn left here” a few seconds before the event, but the SatNag says “you should have turned left there” a split second after.
In either case you still shouldn’t have to ring a crisis adviser unless its for marriage counselling.
Morgor’s right that there couldn’t be a world conspiracy, because all the plans would have been on a laptop in plain view on the back seat of a car.
SuperGrover says: Batty, ever thought about creating your own blog?
I have, SG, I have. But then I cleverly consulted my brain and it replied ‘Batty, are you going fucking bipolar or something? Yer man Twenty is paying for the blog you are on and there’s no guarantee the people you are currently annoying will follow you to a place of your own. Layve it be.’
There you are now.
Nice try at getting him to shag off somewhere else though, SG.
‘The leader of a shadowy organisation that controls the world goes out and gets pissed and drops his usb key with his world domination plans on it.’
I never mentioned the Israeli secret service.
The problem with the traffic in Dublin (I always thought) is not the people driving, but the “other” people driving.
We all want greater public transport, so that other people can fuck off and use it leaving the roads clear for us.
Who the us is, is a moot point.
Traffic is great, particularly around grafton street, you don’t have to slow down to follow a nice pice of ass, she is probably doing the same speed as you.
What’s the fucking problem?
Juice is involved, lots of it, and not the kind you drink. The longer the project lasts, the more money goes into the pockets of the proper people. Expect it to last longer and cost more than the “Big Dig” in Boston, Marxachusetts which is collapsing and leaking. And when the money runs out you’ll be looking at a hole in the ground until the second coming.
Where does the shit go when you flush the toilet in a cloud city? Right down on the poor fucks who live on the ground and pay the taxes. But aint that what it’s all about? Shitting on the taxpayer!
Boston’s “Big Dig” still leads the way for construction companies.
It took forever, was to cost “only” two billion and is still not finished. The cost is now well over $16 billion, and counting.
A ridiculed plan called the Boston Bypass would have been much better. It called for a series of bridges to be built on stepping-stone islands in the harbour, running from Quincy to Logan Airport, bypassing the City.
But the flaw here was that major construction forms wouldn’t make fortunes.
Same here.
The new subway system is a FF ploy to “save” the economy while bankrupting the state.
Someone in the pub last night suggested that closing Westmoreland Street for five years is an obvious Southside ploy to cut off access to Northsiders.
After five years, a generation of young lads will think of the Southside as a place you need a passport to visit.
Mostly, I enjoyed your use of the word ‘embiggen’. :D
Take that ugly giant concrete block off Wood Quay and we would be half way there with our new tunnel.
Dublin is an ugly dirty expensive fucked up city. Would it not be better to move the people to Athlone or somewhere and start again??