also very entertaining!
slán – p.

The land-take in Fairview Park for the Port Tunnel was proportionally the same if not more as for the Green, and lasted longer. The park was actually divided in two, making it impossible to pass from one side to the other except at the edges. However, it was for the greater good, and the park has been reinstated.

If you can look through the red mist which clearly descended for a while, you’ll see that closing 1/4 of the park for a limited period of time to build desperately needed transport infrastructure is also for the greater good. 3/4 of the Green will remain open and entirely usable for the time period.

Completely the same. Probably best you don’t criticise the Irish Times for making silly comparisons just quite yet.

Sorry, yes, the people of Dublin. Entrusted to the people of Dublin for their use. Hard to use it when it’s shut for three years to plough a bloody train station into it.

By the way – the park was given to the people of Dublin. Not the Government. Its entrusted to the City Council as representatives of those people. Again, not the Government.

Are the pieces in the Times going to be as hysterical and factually inaccurate as McDonald’s previous piece? With Junior Cert pass-level mathametical errors – claiming a single tunnel would be cheaper than two despite a single tunnel being approximately double the size, and also explicitly banned by the Railway Safety Commission – I don’t see what else we can trust there.

Lets not even get on to the insane suggestion of putting the Grand *Central* station in a suburb.

The least disruptive to buildings? Once again, you’ve managed to discount the value of St. Stephen’s Green Cian, and this is what it comes down to: you place a value on one thing, I place it on another. I find it unacceptable to have three years of the heart of Dublin to be shut down (and with a train station being built in one-third of it, the other two-thirds are effectively shut. Who goes to a park that shares a construction site?) – with no guarantees of length (and I wouldn’t believe the three years estimate) and permanent damage being done to the Green that was entrusted to the Government by a private individual. This was not ever meant to be redeveloped. This was not meant to be touched. This, for all effective purposes, should be treated like a building, whether or not it’s more or less cost effective.

I’m suggesting things which other architects and urban planners have also suggested; and will be suggesting over the coming weeks, all of which will appear on the (properly launched) website and in the Times. There is far more to these proposals than what you’re saying here Cian and what you’re claiming to be ‘impossible’ is very very doable (re: the northern and western roads plus the eircom site) – albeit, at a cost indeed. But I would prefer a financial cost to a social cost. And this is just one of the myriad points where you and I radically differ.

How is Stephens Green a ‘vital artery’? How is the most cost effective and least disruptive to buildings plan ‘poorly developed’? How do any of your alternative plans make sense when they all require far more expensive and dangerous construction works? Your propositions are based on quick assumptions and have no basis in feasibility – that is why they’re being shot down.

You’re suggesting things which are impossible – digging under the Green from the roadway; things which would add billions to the cost of the project – bring the Interconnector south, placing the station (and hence the runoff tunnels, etc) under buildings; things which would be horrendously unsafe now – digging under the green from the roadway again; and unsafe in the future – any description of station reduced in size to fit under a smaller site, such as the eircom building.

Of course others are going to feel the same – although I don’t call 73 people ’such support’ on a widely used social networking site where people join groups at the drop of a hat, to be honest.

So when you said the entire operation, you didn’t actually mean the entire operation? Oh I can see how I selectively quoted that. Yes.

How, exactly, is a ‘more expensive’ solution equating to half-arsed when it doesn’t interfere with a vital civic artery of the city? That makes no sense. You’ve decided to equate the term ‘half-arsed’ to whatever you deem fit personally, it would seem. My point was that more expense doesn’t preclude any solution at this stage, thus rendering the argument of ‘more economic’ as half-arsed. We’ve seen poorly developed infrastructure come back to haunt us before – with the airport, the LUAS and now potentially the Metro. And the simple fact that people are shooting down proposed alternatives with such blatant arrogance, while we’re getting such support despite only being running for 4 days, would suggest that others feel the same.

But time will tell Cian. And perhaps preaching to the so-called ‘deaf’ is indeed useless when you’re blind yourself.

Moving the interchange a mile down the line is half-arsed – it’ll require miles more tunnelling for both Metro and the Interconnector and demolishing buildings on the surface for construction/access/vent shafts rather than putting them under an effective void.

Moving the station to the other side of the green might work but this would require putting the entrance tunnel under buildings, not the road – far more expensive – and putting the turnaround tunnels under buildings rather than the park – far more expensive. You’re going to need to tunnel around services, basements, etc; which you don’t with the current location. So moving it the eircom site is half-arsed.

How is something factually inaccurate when it wasn’t? You introduced another facet, which I never mentioned. I was speaking solely about the cut/cover operation to build the ticket hall. You introduced the tunnels. Not me.

And why would I sent my suggestions to the OPW and DCC? I’m agreeing with what they’re suggesting. I was using it to illustrate that your idea of digging down the roadway and moving in under the park was impossible. I’m absolutely positive their engineers know this already – considering they’ve never been suggested.

If there’s anyone selectively quoting here, its you, not me. I’ve repeatedly said that using the roadway isn’t large enough to build the station. You keep saying it as if I’m suggesting it is.

However, preaching to the deaf is basically useless, as I’m finding out.

Nobody tried to fix the roof when the sun was shining. Should we plough ahead with something now that we’ll end up regretting in 2012, should the economic climate improve and we find ourselves able to build it in another way? Should we have another half-arsed measure, like not connecting the two LUAS lines the last time out? Indeed, it seems foolhardy to undertake such a large-scale project at a time when we’re trying to cut costs.

Should we essentially betray an original agreement that vested the trust of this park with the OPW so that it could be kept and held for the public interest? We seem to be selling out for perceived ‘progress’ on a project which has an almost negative cost/benefit ratio according to the latest estimates at this stage – but we haven’t even touched on that aspect of it yet.

“You can’t bore out the ticket hall/interchange space – its too large. ”

That’s right Cian. You seem to be selectively quoting me here. That’s where the road and Eircom/other CPO space to the West, or the road to the North, would come in. Or Ranelagh. Whichever really. My point stemmed from your erroneous quote on “the entire operation needing to be cut and cover” in Stephen’s Green, which was just factually off the mark.

Have you sent your sandbox suggestions to OPW and DCC? Perhaps they wouldn’t've sold off land around Stephen’s Green so recently then, as Damien pointed out here in the beginning.