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living the stereotype
I had reason to visit both Dublin Airport and Heuston (Train) Station yesterday, for the purpose of collecting friends of mine off a flight and ferrying them to the train. There is a commuter service to handle this, but after you've read this you might reconsider the advisibility of using it.
Firstly, there was the fun of getting to the airport. My office is in Sandyford, which is on the south side of the city. The airport is on the north side of the city and then some. There is a ring-road, the M50, which currently does about 3/4 of the loop around the city; unfortunately, the part of the road that'd drop right down by my office has been under dispute for the last couple of months over an archeological dig that happens to be in the way. The construction of this route has been in planning, one way or another, for about 30 years, and the section under dispute has had at least five years of planning put into it, during which time the planners were aware of the dig. Why they had to go to court over the whole thing and go through appeal and counter appeal is beyond a simple guy like me. Anyway. The upshot of this is that in order to even get to the ring road I have to navigate some pretty nasty roads, numerous traffic signals, and at least five roundabouts (that's a rotary if you're in the US). The rotary suffers from the fact that noone really knows how to use them properly in terms of approach lanes, etc. and those who try to use 'em correctly get shafted by the don't know/don't cares. Then I had to drive through part of the construction site that will eventually become the local M50 offramp, then some speedbumps, then a bunch of roundabouts, and finally I'm on the M50.
For reasons to do with an environmental noise survey, traffic on the southern section of the M50 is restricted to 60MPH - normal motorway speed is 70MPH. Amusingly, one of the engineers involved in the noise survey is a friend of mine. Anyway, average speed along the 60MPH section was about 70MPH. Then I got to the 70MPH section, where the average speed dropped to... 4MPH. Maybe 6. Certainly significantly short of 10MPH, anyway. This is because in quick succession you encounter:
A word or two on the toll bridge is in order. It's a pretty impressive construction, spanning the Liffey valley rather majestically and all that. The toll gates were installed on it to pay off the construction costs, with the intention that the gates would be removed after something like five years. That five years expired some time ago, and since then not only has the toll increased, but they took advantage of the Euro changeover to hike it a little more (something which was explicitly prohibited by the government at the time) and they've now built a second bridge in an attempt to better feed the tollgates with traffic and avoid the 5MPH tailbacks.
On the other side of the toll bridge, the traffic opens out again and I managed to maintain good speed all the way into the airport. On entering the short term carpark, I discovered some asshole had blocked off an entire section by virtue of parking on the area clearly marked with diagonal yellow crosshatching as a no-parking area. No sign of anyone objecting to this idiot-parking, either. Actually, I couldn't even find someone to object to.
Inside the airport, I wandered over to the arrivals area. One of the exit doors for the arrivals was broken, with no indication of such to the passengers - at least, I'm inferring that there wasn't one, as a number of silhouettes approached the broken doors and stood there for a few seconds waiting for them to open. JC and Anita eventually arrived, and we headed back to the car. At the pay point, one of the machines was out of order. Ticket paid, into car, leave airport, join M1 on the world's stupidest onramp - it deposits slowmoving traffic directly into the fast lane - then over the new mishmash of flyovers and roundabouts that routes us down into the city.
Traffic into the city was no more than normally stupid, and having folks in the car makes it easier to ignore, so no big deal there. Eventually we got to the train station and ignored several signposts indicating we couldn't go straight into the carpark in favour of obeying the traffic signal filter which indicated that we could. Further up, there was a pair of gateposts; on one side, it said, "no parking" and on the other side it said, "car park". Into the carpark, wander down through the construction site that is the train station, and look for somewhere to eat.
At 8:30pm on a Thursday evening, apparently the only source of food in the train station is a vending machine snack or a plastic-boxed sandwich from the deli counter. Hope you're not actually hungry. Need change to buy that? Sorry, the change machine is out of order and none of the vending machines take notes. Oh, and unless you're particularly whiny you're not going to get change at the ticket counter, either; never mind that the guy running the ticket counter is on the phone and not selling any tickets to the people who are supposed to be on the train that's leaving in three minutes.
JC and Anita headed off on the train, and I went in search of change for my €50 note to pay my parking fee with. Having criss-crossed the station several times in search of some way of doing this, I was really getting pissed off, when I realised that the paypoint probably took credit cards. Of course, then I had to find the damn thing; it's back out in the carpark, beside the entrance gate, in a shelter facing away from the car park - facing the permiter fence, in fact. Yes, it takes credit cards. Back to the car, then attempt to locate the exit. Aside from the surface of the car park feeling like it was rotovated recently, the markings are faint and sparse. I almost attempted to drive out the entrace before I noticed the signs forbidding movement in that direction. That said, a three-point turn gave me clear sight of the exit, and I left the carpark.
I have to say, though, were I an actual tourist as opposed to someone who endures this level of broken crap and non-service on a daily basis, my instincts would have been to drive back out to the airport and flown home.
Welcome to Ireland.
Firstly, there was the fun of getting to the airport. My office is in Sandyford, which is on the south side of the city. The airport is on the north side of the city and then some. There is a ring-road, the M50, which currently does about 3/4 of the loop around the city; unfortunately, the part of the road that'd drop right down by my office has been under dispute for the last couple of months over an archeological dig that happens to be in the way. The construction of this route has been in planning, one way or another, for about 30 years, and the section under dispute has had at least five years of planning put into it, during which time the planners were aware of the dig. Why they had to go to court over the whole thing and go through appeal and counter appeal is beyond a simple guy like me. Anyway. The upshot of this is that in order to even get to the ring road I have to navigate some pretty nasty roads, numerous traffic signals, and at least five roundabouts (that's a rotary if you're in the US). The rotary suffers from the fact that noone really knows how to use them properly in terms of approach lanes, etc. and those who try to use 'em correctly get shafted by the don't know/don't cares. Then I had to drive through part of the construction site that will eventually become the local M50 offramp, then some speedbumps, then a bunch of roundabouts, and finally I'm on the M50.
For reasons to do with an environmental noise survey, traffic on the southern section of the M50 is restricted to 60MPH - normal motorway speed is 70MPH. Amusingly, one of the engineers involved in the noise survey is a friend of mine. Anyway, average speed along the 60MPH section was about 70MPH. Then I got to the 70MPH section, where the average speed dropped to... 4MPH. Maybe 6. Certainly significantly short of 10MPH, anyway. This is because in quick succession you encounter:
- The offramp for routes south
- The offramp for routes southwest
- The offramp for routes west
- The West Link toll bridge
A word or two on the toll bridge is in order. It's a pretty impressive construction, spanning the Liffey valley rather majestically and all that. The toll gates were installed on it to pay off the construction costs, with the intention that the gates would be removed after something like five years. That five years expired some time ago, and since then not only has the toll increased, but they took advantage of the Euro changeover to hike it a little more (something which was explicitly prohibited by the government at the time) and they've now built a second bridge in an attempt to better feed the tollgates with traffic and avoid the 5MPH tailbacks.
On the other side of the toll bridge, the traffic opens out again and I managed to maintain good speed all the way into the airport. On entering the short term carpark, I discovered some asshole had blocked off an entire section by virtue of parking on the area clearly marked with diagonal yellow crosshatching as a no-parking area. No sign of anyone objecting to this idiot-parking, either. Actually, I couldn't even find someone to object to.
Inside the airport, I wandered over to the arrivals area. One of the exit doors for the arrivals was broken, with no indication of such to the passengers - at least, I'm inferring that there wasn't one, as a number of silhouettes approached the broken doors and stood there for a few seconds waiting for them to open. JC and Anita eventually arrived, and we headed back to the car. At the pay point, one of the machines was out of order. Ticket paid, into car, leave airport, join M1 on the world's stupidest onramp - it deposits slowmoving traffic directly into the fast lane - then over the new mishmash of flyovers and roundabouts that routes us down into the city.
Traffic into the city was no more than normally stupid, and having folks in the car makes it easier to ignore, so no big deal there. Eventually we got to the train station and ignored several signposts indicating we couldn't go straight into the carpark in favour of obeying the traffic signal filter which indicated that we could. Further up, there was a pair of gateposts; on one side, it said, "no parking" and on the other side it said, "car park". Into the carpark, wander down through the construction site that is the train station, and look for somewhere to eat.
At 8:30pm on a Thursday evening, apparently the only source of food in the train station is a vending machine snack or a plastic-boxed sandwich from the deli counter. Hope you're not actually hungry. Need change to buy that? Sorry, the change machine is out of order and none of the vending machines take notes. Oh, and unless you're particularly whiny you're not going to get change at the ticket counter, either; never mind that the guy running the ticket counter is on the phone and not selling any tickets to the people who are supposed to be on the train that's leaving in three minutes.
JC and Anita headed off on the train, and I went in search of change for my €50 note to pay my parking fee with. Having criss-crossed the station several times in search of some way of doing this, I was really getting pissed off, when I realised that the paypoint probably took credit cards. Of course, then I had to find the damn thing; it's back out in the carpark, beside the entrance gate, in a shelter facing away from the car park - facing the permiter fence, in fact. Yes, it takes credit cards. Back to the car, then attempt to locate the exit. Aside from the surface of the car park feeling like it was rotovated recently, the markings are faint and sparse. I almost attempted to drive out the entrace before I noticed the signs forbidding movement in that direction. That said, a three-point turn gave me clear sight of the exit, and I left the carpark.
I have to say, though, were I an actual tourist as opposed to someone who endures this level of broken crap and non-service on a daily basis, my instincts would have been to drive back out to the airport and flown home.
Welcome to Ireland.
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I can't imagine there ever being anything like that in New Mexico; one reason being that there aren't five places to go in the entire state that aren't in a straight line, more or less, another being that anyone who proposed such a clever idea would be met with what we call here "a lot of resistance," possibly involving gunfire, and finally, if anyone ever actually built such a thing it would immediately be overrun with pilgrims thinking it was some kind of energy vortex.
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I've been through the Magic Roundabout a few times, but only as a passenger. The part that really freaks me out is that some of the standard driver testing routes require you to negotiate it.
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(Lessee. Rotary in New England, Roundabouts with a side of Jughandles in New Jersey, and Traffic Circles here in New Orleans.)
I also have a simple comment about construction. Boston. Big Dig.
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Seen the big dig, yes, fine, that trumps pretty much any construction project in Dublin, except that there's always a conglomeration of projects underway in Dublin, which proportionally amount to the same amount of damage to traffic flow, etc. Currently we've got port tunnel construction, Luas (tram) construction, and the aforementioned second toll bridge, and the M50 southern segment.
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The biggest problem with the dig is that it is lasting forever at this point. Oh fuck, that road's not here this month, I hate you Mapquest, etc. Fortunately now I leave that for my little sister to deal with, and she doesn't even have a car there.
Sounds like an absolute blast in construction there.
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It is indeed an absolute blast in construction, so much so that there are various investigations going on into which politicians were payed how much for rezoning, routing roads through whose lands, etc. It'd be funny if I weren't ultimately paying for it through tax.
Oh, and the thing that always amuses me about getting website directions from mapquest, maporama, etc. around Dublin is that you get an instruction like "take the R116 for two miles" and noone actually knows where the R116 is, and it's certainly not marked on the road itself anywhere, which is probably a street anyway... sometimes, I think the Irish were put on this planet as a counterexample. Or possibly a worst-case scenario. Or an entire nation of devil's advocates.
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Drunk devil's advocates, right?
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And now that things are at least partially done, I've gone and moved to California. All the frustration of the Big Dig without the payoff!
Problem SOLVED!
(Anonymous) 2003-07-18 10:43 am (UTC)(link)[Ferret]
Re: Problem SOLVED!