The answer is YES! You just need teammates and awesome teachers to help you find your way. They’re building simple robots at DIT with sophomore engineering students… and sometimes even with school kids.
The Only in Ireland Facebook page is a hoot. These two pics are sure to make you smile. They are relevant and true!
Irish life in the city. (Photo from Only in Ireland.)
Irish life in the country. (Photo from Only in Ireland.)
Aris Venetikidis’ dream for Dublin transport. (Image downloaded from The Atlantic Cities.)
For an architect/urban theorist/planner like myself, Dublin’s transportation system seems to defy logic. I lack the adjectives to describe it.
But Eric Jaffe depicted the situation effectively in his October 2012 article in The Atlantic Cities.
His piece, titled “The ‘Confusing and Nonsensical Grandeur’ of Dublin Transport,” highlighted solutions posed by Aris Venetikidis, a skilled and clairvoyant graphic designer.
Apparently when Venetikidis arrived in Dublin, he was as perplexed as my sister and I about the lack of a comprehensive transportation network map. It’s a guide we look to in other cities when we want to travel around. We consider it essential.
Venetikidis let this frustration blossom into beauty. Like Colin Broderick, he too created a map of existing routes.
And then Venetikidis took this work a step farther. He researched the history of past proposals. And he designed several new maps. They illustrate how various moves could improve transportation by making the network more coherent.
Jaffe’s article on the topic is worth a read… I thank Fulbrighter Amanda Burnhard for send it my way!
Dramatic bridge that spans the C&D Canal at Chesapeake City, Maryland. This image is from Wikipedia.
Headed to the eastern shore of Maryland by auto last night, Dave and I enjoyed spectacular evening sky. The vibrant pink and purple Pennsylvania sunset melted into a jacquard pattern of clouds illuminated by a bright, shiny, and very-full moon. Unfortunately, my iPhone didn’t do the sky justice from the window of Dave’s truck.
Along the way we stopped for dinner at the Bayard House along the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in Chesapeake City, Maryland.
The picturesque town is fully decked in Christmas cheer.
While we ate, we had the thrill of seeing a large cargo ship — the type that delivers new cars to the Philadelphia area — pass under the bridge spanning high above the historic city and the wide canal. This canal “is one of the few fully sea-level shipping canals in the world. The original C & D Canal was built privately in the 1820s, and it opened for business in 1829” according to the PennWays website.
Amtrak service is up and running between Norfolk VA and Washington DC. (Photo downloaded from Facebook, by Downtown Norfolk.)
Today is a big day in Hampton Roads, Virginia, which is the place I call home.
Passenger train service is finally up and running–direct from Norfolk to Washington DC.
I think this route was available long ago in history, but it hasn’t been since I moved to the region in 1998 (and also not for a long time before that). I’ve had to drive all the way to Newport News to catch the Amtrak up to now.
Long ago, the auto-making companies in the US bought up many of the rail lines. In many instances, they dug up the tracks or sold the linear lines to multiple parties–all to make the system unworkable and difficult to reinstate.
But today, Hampton Roads has overcome some major obstacles and re-upped its route.
On Facebook, “Downtown Norfolk” says “the station can be found in Harbor Park. The first train leaves at 4:50am and the station will be open at 4am. Tickets are not sold at the station and must be purchased in advance. Please contact Amtrak to make your reservation or visit www.amtrakvirginia.com“.
I have to say, though, that as happy as I am about the new train service, the photo that Downtown Norfolk posted on Facebook shows just a glimmer of hope in a very bleak landscape.
The photo is a depressing depiction of what we’ve done to the land in the USA. Asphalt. Plastic. Ugliness wall to wall.
We can, and we must, do better.
Dear Shannon,
From today’s Irish Times. Thought you’d like it.
Máirtín
FRANK McNALLY
Things I love about Dublin:
1. The boardwalk.
2. The view westwards along the Liffey at sunset.
3. The bike scheme.
4. Walking through Trinity’s front square at night.
5. Church bells ringing on a Sunday morning.
6. Kilmainham Gaol.
7. There being a Hilton Hotel across the road from Kilmainham Gaol.
8. Architecture with a sense of humour.
9. Raglan Road on an autumn day.
10. The canyon-like street that runs through Guinness’s Brewery.
11. The walled garden of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
12. Italianate grandeur and the poetry-inscribed gravestone of a horse.
13. Walking through the Liberties and suddenly smelling horse manure from a yard.
14. Kids play hurling against the walls of Guinness’s.
15. Extensive use of the nation’s favourite adjective in place-names. Even one of the canals in Dublin is Grand. It has a Grand Parade running alongside it. And there’s a hotel in Malahide that’s Grand too.
16. The Beckett Bridge.
17. Most of the other bridges.
18. Fawning season in Phoenix Park.
19. Signs warning about “fawning season”, while foreign dignitaries are being entertained at Farmleigh and Áras an Uachtaráin.
20. Environmental management with a sense of humour.
21. That circular railing around the Central Bank. Yes, it’s ugly, but it’s always reassuring to see money ring-fenced.
22. The first smell of burgers when you approach Lans-downe Road on match day.
23. Ditto the first smell of home-made ham sandwiches near Croke Park.
24. The pedestrian traffic light outside the Dáil. It always works.
25. The surprising and still growing number of people who clean up after their dogs.
26. Cobblestone streets (except when you’re on a bike).
27. Chinatown.
28. Charles Stewart Parnell proclaiming that “no man has the right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation” just beside the fast-growing Chinatown.
29. Swans on the canal.
30. Barges on the canal, occasionally.
31. The Chester Beatty Library and that Celtic snake thing in the garden outside that children love running around.
32. The politeness of Dublin gurriers who, even while indulging in gratuitous verbal abuse, call you “mister”.
33. Georgian doors.
34. Harry Clarkian windows.
35. Merchant’s Arch.
36. The arch that crosses the road at Christchurch.
37. People in shirtsleeves outside pubs and cafes every time the air temperature climbs above 10 degrees celsius.
38. A crowd of several hundred drinking outside the Barge pub in Portobello on a summer’s evening.
39. Rivers that sound like characters, or oul’ fellas, or both: The Camac. The Poddle. The Dodder.
40. Sweny’s chemist.
41. Joycean plaques in the footpath, like literary manhole covers on underground works.
42. Seeing the names of exotic, far-flung destinations you’ve never heard of before on Dublin buses.
43. Wondering what life must be like there. Where is “Ongar” anyway?
44. Place-names you just enjoy saying: Fishamble Street. Stoneybatter. The Longmile Road.
45. The intensely colourful Zone 3 of the Luas Red line: Goldenbridge. Blackhorse. Bluebell. Red Cow.
Things I hate about Dublin:
1. Hawkins House.
2. Just about every other house built between 1958 and 1980.
3. The state of the footpaths when it doesn’t rain for a while.
4. The part of the boardwalk that every seagull in the city seems to crap on.
5. Panhandlers at ATM machines.
6. Panhandlers everywhere else.
7. Clampers lurking around every corner.
8. The loop-line bridge.
9. The lights on the tip of the Spire that were supposed to glow softly but instead look like a strip of tinsel sellotaped to the outside.
10. The city’s habit of building phallic monuments that, unlike other cities’ phallic monuments, tourists can’t climb.
11. Chain stores taking over Grafton Street.
12. Being expected to call the Grand Canal Theatre the Bord Gais Energy Theatre. Ugh.
13. Having to walk the wrong way up the footpath in Westland Row at 5.30pm, with four lanes of fast-moving pedestrians coming the other way.
14. All those buses heading out of town to the teeming suburb of “As Seirbhis”.
15. Men urinating in doorways.
16. People who don’t clean up after their dogs.
17. Percussive leakage from ear-phones on public transport.
18. You’re strolling along Dawson Street, all chilled out. Then an amphibious bus-load of tourists pretending to be Vikings suddenly passes and roars at you. Very annoying.
19. It’s not even a real roar. They have it recorded, because the tourists are too polite to do it themselves.
20. Grattan’s Parliament being occupied by a bank.
21. And what’s worse, Grattan’s Parliament being occupied by a bank we had to bail out at vast expense.
22. The East-link toll bridge. Only one lane in each direction. No room for anything but cars. Ugly as sin. Had paid for its inadequate self many times over and is still charging.
23. Christmas lights in early November.
24. Ditto Christmas music.
25. Walking through Trinity’s front square at night. Then, realising the feckers have locked the door again, you have go back out by the Nassau Street entrance, where you came in.
The proposed transportation map, which helps people visualize the links between various systems of public transportation.
An enterprising recent Dublin Institute of Technology graduate, Colin Broderick, has developed a very helpful map of all of Dublin’s public transport routes. Colin created a map to help people visualize various transit routes and see how they connect. And the Irish Times featured his idea yesterday!
This is truly exciting for me (a recent arrival to the city who struggles to navigate a frequently baffling bus system).
For the past three months I’ve longed for a resource like the one Colin has produced.
When my sister, Heather, visited from New York City in September, we collectively bemoaned the lack of such a visualization tool.
Yesterday’s Irish Times listed issue #4 as improving Dublin’s transportation map. YAY!!!!!
There has been, it seems, no comprehensive map of Dublin’s many bus routes published in recent memory. Heather and I each, individually, trekked to the Dublin Bus headquarters to request one, only to leave empty handed.
The lack of a map was truly a “gap in the existing knowledge base” here in Dublin. And someone fresh out of DIT (my host institution here in Ireland) took it upon himself to fix the situation!
In the past two months, I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to make a map like Colin’s for my own personal use. I even dreamed of sharing it with others, but I also knew I didn’t have adequate time. And I worried that I would misunderstand some of the systems and make mistakes, which would mean I couldn’t share it.
Now, my dream of having such a map will become reality.
I applaud Colin for developing and such a map–and for making it available to the rest of us.
Many thanks to Joan Cahalin, her husband (Peter Twamley), and their awesome kids (Georgie and Jox) for tuning me into this bit of news!
The Irish Times will feature a new issue each day this week.
I snapped a few images of the map while I was with them earlier today, although I haven’t had the opportunity to study Colin’s graphic closely yet. Each day this week, the Irish Times will focus on a separate issue. Colin’s map will be “front and center” in Tuesday’s paper. I can’t wait to, as we say in the States, “read all about it.”
Ireland by Chance 