O'Connell Street

O'Connell Street, Dublin, June 19 2005

I was in town on Saturday and I noticed that a larger portion of the center of O'Connell Street is now blocked off as part of the regeneration work. I think the regeneration of O'Connell Street is long overdue and in general the parts of the street that have been completed look good. Ok lets ignore the concrete Luas power sub station they seem to have added as a new statue, its an ugly concrete industrial box that hopefully will be covered by a real statue (maybe a monument to 1916, one is long overdue?). However there are more annoying problems with the scheme. First it was supposed to be finished for the EU summit held in Dublin at the end of June, that's June 2004 not June 2005. The contractors seem to have been on a go slow for the last 13 months. Secondly they seem to now be tearing up the parts that they had already finished with the intention of expanding them out into the street. This seems like something they should have planned and done at the beginning instead of tearing up the work they had already done. Thirdly, why put down those nice flagstones at all if you allow the companies that are constantly digging up Dublin streets to rip them out and replace they with tarmac when they want to lay a pipe? (note the dark line in the center of the remaining paving on the photo below)