What’s the story with the lights on Sarsfield Bridge?

Nearly a year ago (April 2012) the old Victorian light standards on Sarsfield Bridge were removed, supposedly for restoration. As a temporary measure some very tacky and ill-fitting lamp standards were installed. No argument there if it’s not going to be for very long and for safety reasons it’s important that the bridge is lit. Unfortunately, these temporary lights remain in position (they are not even turned on lately) and there’s no sign of the old ones. I’ll try and get a comment from the city council and will update when I do.

http://www.limerickleader.ie/community/community-news/latest-news/work-gets-underway-on-150k-sarsfield-bridge-conservation-project-1-4160344

The demise of the Limerick Leader?

Just when you thought the Limerick Leader couldn’t get any worse, the following headlines appear on the front page today.

“Girl punched in city fight video on You Tube”

“Prostitutes still stalk city streets despite garda sting”

“Viagra use shouldn’t be mocked, says mayor”

It seems that a once decent newspaper is sliding steadily into the abyss. A friend has suggested that since the Limerick Post upped its game a few years ago, the Leader has settled back into the role of trashy tabloid as it is no longer able to compete on quality. It’s not difficult to believe given the current standard. Perhaps it’s to do with the editorial agenda forced on it by its new Scottish owners, Johnston Press.

Whatever the cause, the stories above are hardly newsworthy. Scuffles break out in every town and village in the country every night and they are hardly deemed worthy of gossip, let alone column inches on the front page of the local newspaper. Prostitutes walking the streets isn’t news. You could write that story at any stage and just publish it whenever you’re too lazy to come up with something half interesting. Prostitiutes are always walking the streets and always have been. They do it elsewhere too. As for the new mayor being quoted on the apparent high level of viagra prescriptions in the region, I suspect that somebody in the Leader office rang him up to get an opinion, and this hardly counts as journalism, does it? It would have taken about two minutes to write that story, and maybe another two minutes to call the mayors office to get a quote, slot it in and think of a headline. He should know better than to comment on issues that he knows little about or has nothing to do with, but the Limerick Leader scraping the bottom of the barrel with this kind of thing.

I would hate to see the Leader slide further, but it strikes me that perhaps there’s only room for one decent newspaper in the city?

MIssed Opportunity for Limerick City

Readers of this blog will be aware that the old Jesuit Church on O’Connell Street has been on the property market for some time. The asking price for the church itself and the adjoining building was reportedly in the region of €500 – €600,000. There had been talk about the city council purchasing it and using it as the new location for Limerick City library, which is to be relocated from its current premises in the Granary on Michael Street. In any other city, for this price, and for this quality of building, the local authority would have jumped at the chance to purchase it. Alas, Limerick City Council has let the opportunity slip by and the buildings have been snapped up by a private entity. I’ll post more once further details emerge.

Some earlier posts on this subject can be found by clicking the links below.

https://brianleddin.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/old-jesuit-church-on-oconnell-street-new-city-library/

http://brianleddin.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/strange-comments-by-city-official/

The Duel That Almost Changed History: James Shields Challenges Abraham Lincoln

Reblogged from Irish in the American Civil War:

History is filled with 'what if' moments, those occasions where a slightly different result or outcome may have radically altered history as we know it. One such moment occurred on 22nd September 1842, when Co. Tyrone native James Shields prepared to face a fellow Illinois politician in a duel. Shields' opponent had selected swords as the weapon of choice, confident that his longer reach would be an advantage in the contest to come.

Read more… 571 more words

Wasting Public Money

Last summer it was announced with great enthusiasm by Minister of State for Public & Commuter Transport, Alan Kelly (who is from Nenagh), that nearly €1 million (€880k) would be invested in the development of a cycle lane between Limerick and Nenagh. I had a look at the plans and it didn’t take too long to figure out that this was going to be a monumental waste of good money. I wasn’t alone in holding this view. A number of critical submissions were made to the two local authorities involved during the public consultation phase and the local press even picked up on it, extensively quoting one official in the process (here).

Through the Smarter Travel fund, there was money available to develop cycle lanes in the region. So, when the new motorway between Limerick and Dublin finally opened up, and traffic volumes accordingly reduced on the old N7, it became clear to those in charge that they could get 64km of cycle lane by converting the hard shoulder of the old road. On paper that looks pretty good, and to these decision makers that’s all that really mattered. The fact that a cycle lane was neither sought nor required here and that the investment would provide virtually no benefit to the general public, nor to anyone else apart from those directly involved in the works was immaterial.

Quite simply, the decision to develop this cycle lane was an abuse of the Smarter Travel fund, and a significant waste of public money. While the buck should stop with the Minister, those who devised the plan must surely bear some of the responsibility. But I suspect that a few more white elephants will be pushed through before somebody shouts stop.

The work appears to be complete now, so why not head out the old N7 on your bike and take a good look at how your money is being spent.

How to spend €880,000 (as per the Limerick Post articled linked above)
€440,000 – removal of existing road markings
€80,000 - signage
€90,000 – survey work
€220,000 – civil work

(the balance of the spending, which amounts to €50k, wasn’t explained in the article)

Limerick Smarter Travel Projects

Just in the last few weeks (as reported by Connected Limerick and All About The Triple blogs) it was announced that Limerick is one of three places in the country that is to receive a good chunk of funding over the next few years in order to roll out its Smarter Travel plan. The Limerick proposal has been devised in a rare joint effort between the University of Limerick and both local authorities which have jurisdiction over the Limerick urban area (Limerick City Council and Limerick County Council). €9 million euro will be spent between now and 2016 on this. That’s a good deal of money so let’s hope that it’s spent wisely.

Some recent mistakes

The recent history of investing in Smarter Travel initiatives doesn’t inspire confidence, however. Two examples immediately spring to mind. First, there is the decision by Limerick City Council last summer to spend almost €700,000 on an ill thought out scheme to direct drivers to the multi-storey car parks of the city, the result being the plethora of poorly located and ill-fitting electronic signboards all around the city. Notwithstanding the waste of resources that this represents, that money from the Smarter Travel budget was spent on an initiative that promotes car usage and which goes against the whole raison d’être of the Smarter Travel programme underscores the belief that those at the tiller don’t really know, or perhaps don’t care, what they are doing. I’ve written about this particular issue previously here.

The other example is the decision to spend about €800,000 on developing a cycle track between Limerick and Nenagh. This time it was Limerick County Council and North Tipperary County Council who were behind the plan, with Minister Alan Kelly gleefully cheering the project on as if it would revolutionise the way we go about our lives in the Midwest. But, when you look at what they are actually rolling out, you’d have to wonder at the justification for spending such a large amount of money, there being no clear benefit to anybody except the contractors engaged to carry out the work. Was any due diligence done? Was there any survey of the demand for this? When it became obvious to everybody that this wasn’t exactly a viable commuter route, we were told that it would greatly enhance tourism in the region (should the Smarter Travel budget be spent on tourism initiatives?). Of course, there’s even more holes in that argument. Every other country in Europe recognises that if you want to promote cycle tourism you must build infrastructure specifically for cyclists, and you choose the route wisely, with cyclists in mind (a radical thought). Painting the hard shoulder of an existing national route red and erecting numerous (expensive) signs to tell people that it is now a cycle-way just doesn’t cut it. Here‘s a local newspaper article from last summer which casts doubt on the plan.

How to spend €9 million?

How should the €9 million be spent? It’ll be cut in some way between administration costs and capital expenditure. But what should the breakdown be?

€5 million on administration would keep an office of 20 people going at an average salary of €50,000 per year (way too high in my opinion, but when you factor in the salaries of the senior managers you’ll probably be left with an average of something like this). That would leave €4 million euro for spending on infrastructure. Is it enough? What would you do with it? Perhaps only 10 people are required to staff the Smarter Travel office. That would leave €6.5 million for infrastructural projects. What can you do for €6.5 million that will bring about not just a benefit in terms of jobs for those who carry out the work but a long-term benefit for the city?

Various working documents associated with the project can be viewed and downloaded from the Limerick City Council website here.

Blue Skies & Pain

Although Pink Floyd were singing about something completely different, it was their lyrics that immediately entered my head as the mountain loomed into view on Sunday morning.

Temple Hill in the Galtee Mountains

Blue skies and pain. We were driving towards Angelsboro, a little village on the Limerick/Cork border at the foot of the Galtee mountains, to take part in the first race of this years Munster League, and it was truly a magnificent day for it. Even old philistines like myself and Richie felt compelled to record the stunning beauty of this part of County Limerick and stopped along the way to take a few photos.

There is a down side to running on such crisp clear spring days and it is that you can see all that is ahead of you, and when you’re talking about running up mountains that isn’t always such a good thing. Sometimes it’s better not knowing. While we have been training away for some months on the many tough hills within a half hours drive of Limerick City, neither of us had actually competed before, and up to this point had much of an inkling of what to expect. But looking up at Temple Hill on Sunday morning, it’s summit sharp against that blue sky, there was no escaping the simple fact that what lay ahead was no small amount of pure, unadulterated pain.

I’d like to tell you that I am exaggerating, but I’m not. Yet, even that morning, as I finally was forced to confront the challenge, I still couldn’t have believed just how arduous it would turn out to be. I learned that there are a thousand feelings that one gets when racing against others on an open mountain, and many of them are some mixture of pain, distress and misery. On the lower slopes your lungs heave as you try and match the early pace. Then, as you progress up the mountain it’s the legs, now depleted of oxygen, that complain as you push them harder, so that you might reel in the guy ahead who might be faltering, or simply stave off the tenacious bastard who is hanging on behind you, threatening to overtake but never doing so. Hitting the steeper, open slopes, everything else protests too, and long before you reach the top, there isn’t a part of your body that isn’t screaming. For whatever reason, you don’t stop. My theory on this is that defeat hurts more and for a lot longer than physical pain. Your mind knows it too and by flogging you to your limit it is protecting you from the abject despair that goes with giving up. Either that or at some level we are simply twisted sado-masochists. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between these two possibilities.

I won’t say much more about the pain, except to say that it got worse on the descent. This has something to do with ones legs not being designed to run while accelerating at the rate of gravity. It hurt a lot.

Somehow, for all the torture endured, the whole experience adds up to something genuinely exhilarating and even enjoyable. It helps when the weather gods smile on us as they did on Sunday morning. Even as I suffered on the ascent, all I had to do was look left or right and see the stunning beauty of this part of counties Limerick and Cork. For all the mistakes we’ve made in this country (too many), much of it remains a beautiful place. But it’s not just the weather. Even if we were rain-sodden, muddy messes, running blind through low clouds on desolate mountainy peaks, I know we’d enjoy it then too.

“So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell, blue skies from pain”.

On days like this, you truly can.