New Wheelchair Accessible Footbridges
 

Has anyone had the mispleasure of using the new bridges at Blackrock/Booterstown yet?

They are the most commuter unfriendly thing on the DART network. I was quite excited to use it until I realised the maze of stairs I had to walk accross.

I asked a few of my colleagues what they thought, all answered "It takes f* ages to cross it, too many steps."

I suppose what matters most is it looks nice. :rolleyes:

Blackrock opened Saturday but the lift is not finished

Booterstown opened Wednesday but the original bridge is still in place

Its a maze alright but there are two stair cases in the old days it was a major bottleneck in Blackrock in the mornings it took ages to cross over

The bridges are taller than earlier ones as they make allowance for double decker trains and new safety regulations

It still does! :D

Killiney opened during the week and the old bridge has been lifted out. Only one stair is open and the lift is not in use.

For the record here is the maze in Blackrock

Attachment 101

This morning I say a flat truck heading down the north quays towards the Point carrying something that looked very like the steps from a railway bridge. Coincidence?

part m of the building regulations
section 1.14 max height between landings 1.8m

Not sure I follow (I'm slow today :D ) are you saying that it is building regulations that mean I have to traverse a maze and battle a minatour everyday?

I can't fault IE if it is. Doesn't make me like the bridges though. ;)

That starcase reminds me of the film "Outland" starring Sean Connery.....

yep. The regs are designed for people with impaired mobility, not able bodied.

There's lots of little annoying things in the regs, but they sure do allow disabled people access far easier than without.
I spent some time with 2 broken legs in an 1970's house with no downstairs loo so I appreciate them.
you are gonna get old and you never know when you're gonna appreciate them.

I guess the big bridges are the ones IE had planning troubles with. a refurb wouldn't have to meet the regs.

The planning objections where very funny, the only real change they managed to get was railings at the opposite end of Blackrock station replaced with matching one

Legally IE had to build the bridges the section M and the bridges are taller as clearance to the overhead wires needed to be increased to account for modern safety regs as well as possibilty of double decker trains later

Thanks God for that. It could have been chaos otherwise. :rolleyes: :D

What is the issue any way? is it the 3 turns on the way up the stairs?
Does this slow people down as much as they are saying?

Was there not only 1 stairs in Blackrock previously? Surely the two stairs have more capacity for people?

There's 4 flights down from the east platform in Tara st also.

Blackrock had a standard DART footbridge one flight of steps with a small landing about half way up

What really gets you with the new bridges is the step pitch is funny

Like Mark said, the step pitch is funny. You go up a few steps, turn, walk up a few stairs, walk along a flat part (I decide who to race here), then walk up a few more stairs. You then cross the bridge and do it all again to get down. I think the first turn is a problem as that does slow it down.

Why didnt they go for the ones that have been built in Portlaosie, Templemore and Thurles? They are fully accessable and a lot tidier and better looking.

Am I missing something or did IE waste a heap of cash in Thurles on a bridge?

I don't think the bridges elsewhere comply with section M and they are not tall enough to cope with double decker trains

The one interesting thing about the DART bridges are very compact in width which is important as all are up against a sea wall

I heard a funny story about the Thurles Bridge which may or may not be true so I'll PM it to you.

Sadly I cant find a photo of these bridges. They have a phnumatic elevator on each side, and there are open starcases on each side. They do confirm to current standards as far as i know but as for Double Deck Trains I wouldnt say so. They are Green and have many many lights on them.

Pity no-one uses them.

I noticed yesterday that nearly every one (bar three) people getting of the train at Booterstown crossed the tracks by the old bridge.

Show's I'm not alone in my hatred of the mazes.

Well, where do I start? Accessibility I will give you, tidier I will give you and better looking perhaps on a Dart line but they do look out of place in the old stations like Portlaoise. However they did not think very much about the time it takes to get over these bridges either. I have gone over these bridges with noone in front of me and STILL taken longer to cross than someone starting at the same time and with billions (slightly exaggerated) of people in front of them. I would say less than 5% of people use the new bridge over the old one (at Portlaoise anyway).

Now we like to collect time-wasting bridges here in Portlaoise. :D Anyone ever see that blue bridge that goes for miles in one direction then miles back in the other (for wheelchairs of course) but everyone just crosses the road using the pedestrian crossing provided?

That is a classic bridge Peter. There's one just like it in Palmerstown in dublin that no-one uses either.

You're right about the bridges in Portlaoise and Templemore, that's why I love them so much.

I was in Killiney over the weekend, so I got to try out the twin of the Blackrock and Booterstown bridges. It's a fair bit higher than the old bridges, presumably to allow the possibility of double decker trains in the future. You can see this from the big gap between the overhead lines and bridge floor. Naturally being higher, it requires more steps. I think the most offputting thing is that you have to make two 180 degree turns on the way up, and two more on the way down, which kind of interrupts your flow.

I think the double stairs would make sense if they made one up only and the other down only, though the two sets of stairs start from roughly the same point, so it wouldn't make things any easier for crowd control.

That's the most messed-up thing I've ever seens :confused: Since its a two-stairs-in-one type of thing could they not have built one half accessable and the other straightforward?

I don't know why, maybe its just the angle the photo was taken at but I keep expecting there to be a diver jumping off the top and somersaulting into water below.:D

Hi
How much did the new bridges cost? In my opinion they are ridiculous.
1.) They are quite slippery when wet
2.) They replaced a concrete (reinforced?) bridge with one made out of steel.
3.) All three new bridges are right beside the sea and they are going to have to constantly repaint them. They are already rusting in places!
4.) Why couldn't they have simply put in two lift shafts and a seperate bridge (like in Glenageary) and raised the height of the old bridges and added in a few more steps either side

I use the station in Blackrock several times a week. I don't have a digital camera so I can't show you pictures of the rust.

The original bridge in Blackrock had a hump in the middle and it wasn't even wide enough for two people to pass on comfortably so it wasn't suitable for wheelchairs or for a lift shaft addition as was done at Glenageary and Shankill which both had wide flat deck style bridges. It was common to see a queue onto the bridge in Blackrock something which has been eliminated by the new double stairs

The bridge in Blackrock was also sub standard in height compared to modern electrical standards, raising it was not an option since that would require demolition of part of the station (which is a grade 1 listed building and one of the oldest station buildings in Ireland) to fit in the staircase. The chosen design is about as compact as can be

There is are a heap of rules buried in the accessibility rules section M building regs 2000 which explain why there are so many landings on the stair cases why the steps are as they are. 25% of all rail users have a mobility impairment of some kind ranging from wheelchair users to people carrying heavy bags so the design of any new bridge must cover all

Killiney and Seapoint (3) all had steel or possible iron footbridges still in place until last year, Seapoint retains two they date from 1880 if not earlier, design life is taken as 100 years so they will last so the fact the replacement bridges are steel is not a issue, most of the decay on the remaining footbridges is attributed to poor standards when they where raised in the early 1980's as part of the DART project. IE had to abandon a like for like replacement in Seapoint in 2002 ish since a replacement bridge would not meet required planning standards

Bridge design 101
 

I accept that building regulations need to be complied with and we would probably all be on here (well some of us) giving it loads if IE build non-accessable bridges, but here's my list of dumb things about the new DART bridges.

1) the design student charged with drawing the pictures forgot to include a gutter. Result - you cannot walk underneath *any* part of the bridge when it is raining without getting significant amounts of run-off on you. Normal bridges provide some element of shelter in bad weather - these ones make you wetter.

2) they are dangerously slippy when wet - I don't know what the building regs have to say on this, but I doubt they suggest having a flat surface where all the water can drip off passengers and sit on the bridge. Except for the bits that drip on to the waiting passengers (see 1, above) of course. I am not looking forward to seeing what they are like when it freezes (not for long beside the sea mind you, but it does happen).

3) IE decided to close the existing bridge in Booterstown (and took about 6 months or more to remove the huge Exit sign pointing to the closed bridge). The old bridge still functions as a bridge, but they closed it. If there is a health & safety concern with the old bridge perhaps they might think of closing the other half of the bridge that gives access to the beach. If there is no health & safety concern then perhaps they would re-open the thing. As it stands a significant number of able-bodied people save themselves several minutes by bunking over the low railing and walking over the old bridge anyway.

4) the lifts open right into the face of the sea breeze, and there is only partial shelter provided. Logic (perhaps not the building regs) would suggest you have the lift openings pointing inland, away from the storms, and provide shelter directly in front of the doors.

5) the bridge element itself is again only partially enclosed and so while you are now even higher and more exposed to the elements right by the sea you lose the solid enclosure of the old bridge and gain one that allows the wind and rain through. Right . . .

6) these bridges must have cost a bomb - I lost track of the amount of time spent assembling & tweaking them. At the time I remember doing a rough calculation about the labour hours that went into the bridge in Booterstown - something like a minimum of 2 years of labour hours, based on at least four blokes there every morning for 6 months. And of those four that I saw, two of them spent a significant amount of time carting all the equipment over the bridges (the new, non-working at the time ones) to the other side every single morning. Obviously the same procedure took place in reverse every evening. A *huge* waste of time & effort.

7) double decker trains . . . .puleeeeaze. Getting single deckers working efficiently seems to be beyond IE in many instances, so I don't hold out hope of double deckers any time soon. It would be good mind you, I just can't see it happening in Ireland in any kind of meaningful timescale.

Other than that they are grand bridges altogether.

z

I quite like the new bridges, though I have noticed they get quite slippery when it's wet too. Last I checked, this was the twenty-first century, so non-slip surfaces shouldn't be beyond the realm of current technology.

For about a hundred grand, I would happily come along an stick little rubberised Xs to the steps that should offer a bit more grip. And I bet that's a darn sight cheaper than their contractors would charge.

I do think that Blackrock, as one of the oldest stations in the country, could possibly have deserved something a little more fitting. It's a tricky one, though, as I'm not a fan of buildings designed to look like they're from a different era.