Dublin: Encyclopedia II - Dublin - Infrastructure

Dublin - Infrastructure

Dublin - Communications

Radio Telifís Éireann (RTE) is Ireland's national state broadcaster, and has its main offices and studios in Dublin. Fair City is the broadcasters' capital based soap, located in the fictional suburb of Carraigstown. TV3 the state's only private television broadcaster is also based in Dublin, though much of its programming is imported from the UK and the US. It generally aims to attract a young audience. The main infrastructure and offices of An Post and the former state telephone company Eircom, as well as Vodafone and O2 are located in the capital. The capital is also the headquarters of important national newspapers such as The Irish Times and Irish Independent, and commercial radio stations such as Today FM.

Dublin - Transport

Dublin is the centre of the transport system in Ireland (see Transport in Ireland). Dublin Port is the country's most important sea port. Dublin Airport is the most important airport in the republic and the bulk of passenger traffic travels through the airport. Heuston Station and Connolly Station are the city's major railway stations, Heuston connects with the towns and cities in the south and west of the Republic while Connolly serves the Sligo and Dublin-Belfast routes.

Dublin is also the main hub of the country's road network. The M50 motorway, a semi-ring road runs around the south, west and north of the city, connecting the most important national primary routes in the State that fan out from the capital to the regions. A toll of €1.80 applies on what is called the West-Link, two adjacent concrete bridges that tower high above the River Liffey near the village of Lucan. Construction of the M50 took almost 20 years, with the final section opening in June 2005. A court case regarding the destruction of medieval ruins at Carrickmines Castle delayed the final completion of the route. The M50 currently has two traffic lanes going either direction but plans are afoot to increase that to three. The National Roads Authority also intends to increase capacity at many of the motorway's busiest junctions by building triple-grade interchanges instead.

To complete the ring road, an eastern bypass is also proposed for the city of Dublin. The first half of this project is currently under construction, the Dublin Port Tunnel. It is scheduled to open in early 2006 and will mainly cater for heavy vehicles. When finished, Dublin City Council hopes to ban all unnecessary trucks and lorries from the city quays. The second half of the project would involve another tunnelling project, linking Dublin Port to the road network on the southside of the city. Plans for this have never been formalised.

The capital is also surrounded by what have been termed by Dublin City Council as an inner and outer orbital route. The inner orbital route runs roughly around the heart of the Georgian city from St. Stephen's Green to Mountjoy Square and from the King's Inns to St Patrick's Cathedral. The outer orbital route runs largely along the natural circle formed by Dublin's two canals, the Grand Canal and the Royal Canal, as well as the North and South Circular Roads.

The Dublin Area Rapid Transit system is the only electrified railway in the country and serves stations at regular intervals on the railway line along the east coast. A two-line light rail system called Luas opened in 2004 and has proved popular in the (limited) areas it serves. It is hoped a metro system linking Dublin Airport to the city will be the next major infrastructural project.

The bulk of the public transport system in Dublin is made up of bus services operated by Bus Átha Cliath (Dublin Bus), which operates a network of nearly 200 daytime routes (identified by number and sometimes suffixed with a letter, e.g. 40, 40A, 40B, 40C, 40D) and 24 "Nitelink" overnight services which run on Monday to Saturday nights, which are identified by a number suffixed with "N" e.g. 40N). Apart from some tourist buses, all Dublin Bus' services are one-man operated, and daytime fares are determined by the number of fare stages travelled through—fares are payable in coin and only the exact fare is acceptable—if passengers overpay, they are issued "change tickets" which must be presented at the Dublin Bus office in O'Connell Street to be converted to cash. Alternatively, various pre-paid tickets and passes can be bought from Dublin Bus or its agents, and are processed by a validating machine on the right of the entrance door of the bus. Nitelink buses charge a flat fare regardless of the distance travelled.

A number of other bus companies provide services in Dublin, including Bus Éireann which provides services to the more distant parts of Dublin's ever-widening commuter belt. In the absence of an overall transport authority in Dublin, obtaining information about all public transport options available for a particular journey can take some time.

The Irish Government has launched a national transport plan which is expected to cost the government €34.4 billion over the next 10 years. Most of this will go towards the Dublin Port Tunnel, seven new LUAS projects, two Metro lines, DART extensions and an underground station at St Stephen's Green integrating all services. However Irish transport plans tend to go massively over-budget. The best example is the Port Tunnel which has gone over-budget all the way in to the record books.

The Port Tunnel was originally envisaged as a single bore, two lane road to cater primarily for trucks, and which by charging no toll on trucks an extorionate toll on cars to deter their custom, would not need substantial tolling infrastructure. It has been built to motorway standard as two separate tunnels to cater for all traffic and all traffic will be tolled. The tunnels are significantly deeper than originally planned to reduce disturbance to residential areas, and had to be built one kilometre longer to reach this depth and requiried many more ancilliary works to facilitate this, such as demolition and rebuilding of existing bridges.

Dublin - Entertainment

There is a vibrant night life in Dublin — the most internationally notorious area for these activities is the Temple Bar area south of the Liffey. This area has become synonymous with stag and hen parties and tourists, causing many locals to steer clear of the area.

There are several theatres within the city centre, the largest of which include the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre, the Olympia Theatre, and the Gaiety Theatre, which opens its doors after the evening theatre production to host a variety of live music, dancing, and films. The Gaiety's bars are open later than any others in the city. The largest theatre in the city is the Mahony Hall in The Helix at Dublin City University in Glasnevin.

There are two large cinemas in the city centre; The Savoy Cinema and the Cineworld Cinema (formerly UGC) are located north of the Liffey. Alternative and special-interest cinema can be found in the Irish Film Institute in Temple Bar, and in the Screen Cinema on d'Olier St.

Dublin - Industry

Probably the most famous industry in Dublin is brewing: Guinness has been at brewed at the St. James's Gate Brewery since 1759.

During the Celtic Tiger years of the mid to late nineties a large number of pharmaceutical and information technology companies have located in Dublin and its suburbs and the large volume of computer industry in Dublin has led to it being referred to as the Silicon Valley of Europe. Microsoft's EMEA Operations Centre is located in Sandyford Industrial Estate to the south of the city and Google and Amazon have established operational bases in the city. Intel and Hewlett-Packard have large manufacturing plants in Leixlip, Co. Kildare to the west of Dublin.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Infrastructure", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki