Farron Flaherty

Paid actors cycling up and down the route, changing jackets each time to make it look like lots of different people clearly.

Horrendous. RIP

This is the second cyclist death in 2 days. Plus several hit & runs.

Whats going on our roads? I went for a cycle today & seen all sorts of crazy behavior: speeding, close passes, phone use. It’s all just standard now, not challenged, anything goes, no road policing, no enforcement

A very good summary by @farronf.bsky.social of a very bad updated plan.
Car dominance has destroyed #LimerickCity for all but a few and this exact imbalance is clear in the (ignored) feedback.
@pedestrianlk.bsky.social

When public consultation falls short: Limerick’s Market Quarter Upgrades Comment & Analysis: Limerick City and County Council’s recent proposals for the Market Quarter and Cruise’s Street public realm upgrades demonstrates an all too familiar disconnect …

📖I wrote an article about the Market Quarter public realm upgrades in #Limerick and how the updated plans ignore key public feedback from the initial consultation, or worse, go against it.

It's a 5 minute read, so check it out.

irishcycle.com/2025/05/23/w...

There is still time to make submissions and make your voice heard on this. Details are here.

mypoint.limerick.ie/en/consultat...

Unfortunately that just hasn't been reflected in the updated proposal which aside from a couple of minor improvements has actually taken a step in the other direction.

I have a lot of time for Limerick Council
and their staff. But this is honestly shockingly poor.

Their "You Said We Heard" report was really promising and showed that consultation was greatly engaged with and that people wanted something different for the area.

Hold on...that table also mentions 3 loading bays on Denmark St? I didn't see that anywhere. Is that what theses white boxes are? Lorries?

So it's a shared space/loading area/2 lanes of traffic? It's not marked on the maps. And I don't see it anywhere in the report. Very odd.

3 bike stands. Bike bunker in the background. 6 bikes locked to the stands.

These 3 stands also untracked outside the library(photo from the weekend)

So in total there are 11 and this report says there are 0 but they are delivering 12.

Well actually they are delivering 1 but removing them from the most used area.

By the way, the report is straight up wrong about there being no bike stands in the area at the moment. There are 6 on Mungret Street I showed that are always busy on market days. +2 more at the side

So actually are they are planning to REMOVE 6 stands from around the market?

All the accessible parking has been moved here. The other side of the market should have 2 more delivered as part of an Active Travel project.

But here again the taxi/parking makes for a very tight squeeze with the width going well below that 1.8m threshold.

It just doesn't fit here and should be removed and the other parking beside it re-designated as a Taxi zone at the appropriate times.

Finally another section of Ellen Street and good lord that's a lot of on street parking that was added. Do I need to check the feedback again?

Ok, to be fair they reduced this to a one way street which given the layout round the Milk Market makes sense.

And despite being marked for a street section view elsewhere in the drawings they don't actually represent that loading bay so the width looks fine but is not representative.

The one on the left is the Opera side. Why do they need 2 loading bays directly opposite anyway?

“Where footpaths are narrow to facilitate parking/ loading, footpaths should be widened and parking removed" On narrow streets, footpaths have been increased to a minimum of 1.8m where possible and parking has been removed to ensure pedestrian safety and comfort.

But they have added another loading zone. It looks like this doesn't become parking but remains a set down area.

It does however reduce the width of the footpath to 1.4m, well below the minimum recommended width of 1.8m as per national guidelines. And what they mention in their own report.

Ellen St. They've marked parking on the north side of the street as not their remit now, presumably part of Opera project.

Not much to say about Cruise's St. There's some vague plans for a couple of small canopies, but I don't think this is what people asking for them envisaged.

That's for a future proposal anyway.

A current zebra crossing has been replaced by a "courtesy crossing".

A crossing is a hilarious concept on a "shared space" to begin with.

There's several of these crossings dotted around these "shared spaces" which shows they are not truly shared at all.

Going to Lower Denmark St. Again it's "shared space" again with through traffic. Again with some of that being 2 lanes of carpark entry/exit traffic. Although it's not clear from this drawing it's mentioned in the report.

Back Lane is to be pedestrianised.

I mean sure, it's welcome and should be but it feels tokenistic as this was likely to be pedestrianised anyway with the Wickham to Clare St Active Travel scheme route selected.

But all over on-street parking has been re-added. Under the guise of loading bays.

The City Centre Transport Plan is due soon. I'm hoping to see some interesting stuff in there regarding on-street parking and how loading bays will work going forward.

Q‐Park have 2No. Multi Story car parks within 50m and 200m respectively of the Milk Market both of which currently operate at a maximum of 45% occupancy on any given day of the week which equates to in excess of 400No. spaces available across both car parks.

Just a reminder the majority of submissions on parking were asking for an even bigger reduction of on-street parking.

Their own report says that the multistory car parks have an excess of 400 spaces on any given day.

LSMATS also calls for a reduction of on-street parking.

Anyway, moving on to High Street. Ah, more Loading/Parking...

It's a good time to point out, it says Loading/Parking. But all these Loading/Parking zones I'm showing are only loading zones from 6am-11am Mon-Fri so they are really mostly parking.

A street cut off with bollards.

Instead of putting 50 bollards along Cornmarket Row, Carr St and Robert Street. Just put a few on the junction in between.

Suddenly you've cut all the unneeded through traffic while maintaining access for local access and loading.

Like this example in London.

To make a true shared space with pedestrian priority, safety and comfort. Real changes to a traffic layout have to be made.

Through traffic has to be eliminated.

And please notice I don't say all traffic. Local access traffic at low speeds is fine.

a cartoon of rick and morty with a caption that says " well that just sounds like slavery " ALT: a cartoon of rick and morty with a caption that says " well that just sounds like slavery "

And notice that lots of bollards are needed to keep vehicles out of dedicated pedestrian areas on these "shared spaces".

That's just a road with extra steps.

Render of High Street shared space street.

Look at this nonsense vision for High Street. This is currently a pretty busy road. Do they really think calling it a shared space will actually make this a nice safe place to walk?

No, it'll be just like O'Connell Street.

Shared spaces absolutely have a place in urban design. But only when there are extremely low volumes of slow moving traffic.

Through traffic from a car park IS NOT the place for shared space.