Back In August 2009 The Docklands Area Was Depressing

Feeling The Impact Of The 2008 Financial Crash

I USED A SIGMA DP1 WHICH HAD MANY FLAWS

• When I visited the Docklands area of the city in early August 2009, the atmosphere was quite bleak, and broader economic activity appeared to be stalled in the wake of the financial crash.

• There were, however, two major infrastructure projects rapidly reshaping the landscape. While a camera metadata error originally misdated my photographs from this session to February, the visual evidence confirms they were captured in August—a fleeting moment just four months before the entire quarter was transformed.

Here is how the timelines and statuses broke down for both pieces of infrastructure during that August visit:

1. The Luas Red Line Extension (C1 to The Point)

Operational Date: Tuesday, 8 December 2009 Status in August 2009: On schedule and nearing completion. The Details: Ground was broken on the 1.5 km extension from Busáras to The Point in 2007 with a projected two-year construction timeline. By August 2009, track-laying and utility diversions along Mayor Square and North Wall Quay were entering their final stages, with the streetscape heavily disrupted as workers raced toward the finish line. The project ultimately hit its target, opening comfortably within its late-2009 schedule and budget.

2. The Samuel Beckett Bridge

• Operational Date: 10 December 2009 (opened to pedestrians; vehicles the following morning). Status in August 2009: Structurally spanning the river but surrounded by intensive civil works.

• The Details: If you examine my photographs from this session, the bridge is already spanning the Liffey. The structural steel fabric of Santiago Calatrava’s harp-inspired design was fabricated by Hollandia in Rotterdam and arrived in Dublin Port via barge in May 2009. Just weeks before my visit, on 21 July, the massive structure was successfully rotated across the river and keyed into its concrete pier.

• By August, the bridge structure was intact, but the surrounding quays were a chaotic staging ground filled with pallets of granite paving, kerbing, and construction materials needed to complete the approach roads. While the bridge's broader timeline had slipped over the years due to prolonged planning and funding shifts during the transition from the boom era, it was finally entering the home stretch.

Both elements fundamentally altered that stretch of the North Wall and Sir John Rogerson's Quays just four months after this photographic survey.

3. Another thing that caught my attention was advertising for the introduction of DublinBikes

• The dublinbikes scheme officially launched on 13 September 2009, meaning those posters I saw in early August were part of the major pre-launch publicity blitz.

• Late July 2009: Dublin City Council and JCDecaux flooded the media with press releases outlining how the scheme would work. Because it was funded via a controversial deal giving JCDecaux 72 prominent advertising panels across the city in exchange for the bike infrastructure, they pushed the marketing campaign heavily in advance.

• 10 August 2009: Long-term public membership registration officially opened. The big posters I noticed were almost certainly advertising this exact registration drive, encouraging Dubliners to sign up for their subscriber cards ahead of the bikes hitting the streets.

• The Infrastructure: If you were looking closely around the city centre that same week, you would have seen the first 40 stations and 450 heavy silver-and-blue bike stands physically being bolted into the ground (installation had started that June).