Michael Moynihan: We have an ideal opportunity to pedestrianise the city centre now
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Last week I wrote here about the plans to revamp the footpaths and pedestrian crossings of Cork, a major undertaking which will cause major upheaval in the centre of the city for a couple of months.
At that time I mentioned what I thought was a pretty obvious point: that ongoing maintenance of those footpaths et al would have made such a large-scale operation unnecessary. For instance, I mentioned those street lights up and down St Patrick's Street which look terrible — strips of posters and flyers half-cleaned off and half-abandoned, giving the metal a streaked, stained look. If those were cleaned properly and regularly — and similar issues addressed in the same way — would we need to shut down the main thoroughfare in town even as tourists descend on Cork for the summer?
Another by-product of the works is disruption of bus routes in Cork — if buses can’t access St Patrick's Street then obviously alternative routes and stops have to be found for the duration of those works. Not great news for those who use buses regularly, particularly those whose normal routes carry them through the centre of the city to destinations across town.
Is it stating the obvious, though, to see this as both crisis and opportunity? The disruption is unfortunate and annoying but could we bite the bullet here and think of it as the ideal way to introduce pedestrianisation for the centre of Cork city?
All of it?
The traffic implications of Cork City Council’s plan? As reported by Eoin English here, the local authority “has warned that traffic diversions and temporary traffic restrictions will be in place and disruption should be expected.
“St Patrick’s Street will be closed northbound from July 1 to mid-August 2024 with a diversion via Grand Parade, South Mall, Parnell Place and Merchant’s Quay.
“The Grand Parade will be closed to north- and westbound traffic from mid-August to mid-September 2024 with diversions via the South Mall, Parnell Place and the city quays.”
Is there a case to be made for shutting down traffic totally in those streets this summer?
If there were, it wouldn’t be the first time this was mooted.
You can open up RTÉ’s online archives and see a report from 2007 in which this subject emerges. Reporter Jennie O’Sullivan talks about the renovation of the old Dunnes Stores building on St Patrick Street: “ ... City centre traders initially opposed pedestrianisation but now agree it works and have welcomed plans to extend it to Cork’s most famous thoroughfare...”
You can go back further into those RTÉ archives and find another report from the same source, this time going back to 1978.
This bulletin features some very atmospheric footage of seventies Cork with a reporter discussing the famous Land Use Transportation Study and its implications for the city centre: “Patrick Street will be closed to through traffic and areas of it and some side streets pedestrianised.”
But wait! Come with me through The Time Tunnel (reference specific to early-seventies kids) and we arrive at another television report on the very same topic. Coverage, in fact, of the (actual) pedestrianisation of a street in Cork.
In this footage a fresh-faced Peter Barry, later to become Tánaiste and Minister in several different government departments, explains to a reporter offscreen that pedestrianisation is here to stay: “I'm certain... in fact I’m sure that this is only the beginning of a number of pedestrian streets in Cork.”
In a foreshadowing of Jennie O’Sullivan’s report, Barry adds his fellow traders were “very keen on it (pedestrianisation), they were the people who were pushing in the last 18 months trying to get the Corporation to bring it in."
That last report was aired in 1971.
If the municipal authority and local businesses were in favour of this over the years why has there been no real progress on pedestrianising St Patrick's Street almost half a century since it was proposed?
As noted, one of its connecting streets was first pedestrianised fifty-three years ago, and other streets leading to St Patrick’s Street have also been shut to traffic in the intervening decades.
The case for banning traffic is well made in this passage: “The Central Retail District is perhaps the most important part of the core of the city. It is known to and used by virtually the entire population of the city and the surrounding area on a relatively frequent basis.
“It is important that it have a strong and separate identity for users. This image will be enhanced if the area is in some way made to differ from adjacent areas. The gateways to the area should be well defined, accentuating the entrances into this important part of the city.
“The primary implementing mechanism proposed is to create a traffic free environment throughout most of the Central Retail District. This will make the area special in the mind of the user, and also provide an environment in which pedestrians will have a special status.”
That’s from a document which a reader kindly forwarded to me after he discovered it in the Cork City and County Archives out in sweet Blackpool.
The document, with its attractively dreamy title (“The Pedestrian Idea ... “), was published by the Department of Town Planning of Cork Corporation in March 1980. The section quoted above shows how much of it is still applicable, even if other parts might spark some debate.
“Given that the major part of the Central Retail District will be pedestrianised, and given the general incompatibility of pedestrians and cyclists in the one area, and the narrow width of most of the areas to be pedestrianised, it is proposed that bicycles like motor vehicles will for the most part be prohibited from the area.
“Bicycles will be accommodated however by the establishment of parking areas for them at convenient entry points to the pedestrianised area ... routes to these stations be developed in order to make it easier for cyclists to get to this important part of the city...”
It’s doubtful that banning bicycles from a pedestrianised city centre would find favour now, but park that for a moment (cough).
It appears that every decade or two the pedestrianisation of Pana comes into vogue as an idea, something worth considering, a notion that might take hold. Then it disappears for another twenty years or so.
Now circumstances have given us an ideal opportunity to pedestrianise the city centre now. Why not give it a go?