RPA publish hybrid route proposals...

Sorry. This may be better off included here.. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054944107

MarkoP11 wrote:

The RPA run the Metro show, they have chosen to have a very very public consultation for the metro. Many hundreds if not thousands of submissions have been made and numerous formal meetings have been held, some on request by effected parties some at the direct invitation of the RPA. I have been to RPA offices in Parkgate Street by invitation, why because the RPA want to listen to people and to discuss their ideas and to defend their own, its constructive and refreshingly honest.

End of the day a decision will be made which will require a balance between cost, capacity, integration, constructabilty and so on. This is complex stuff and unless you know how the pieces fit together its easy complain about decisions which may appear incorrect. The end result won't satisfy everyone but overall I think we (As in the citizens of Ireland) are going to get a very decent bit of infrastructure. The Metro has evolved and changed and in its current form its starting to look very good

Now O/T
Platform 11 is a fully democratic organisation, with a written constitution and is a member of the European Passengers Federation which is consulted at a EU level. Myself and my committee members are well known, we are real people and we do exist there is nothing covert many staff stop and talk to us as do many of the managers, we have met a large number of Kildare and Newbridge commuters in person, I'm well known at public inquiries as well and on a regular enough basis I do talk to management and discuss progress on matters. We hold AGM meetings for members in the normal manner, indeed the 2006 AGM is next Saturday and includes a presentation from the RPA, http://www.platform11.org/news/news.php?year=2006&no=12.html (shameless plug but it proves the point)

Once again Metrobest I suggest you post in the conflict of interest thread, everyone else has, put us out of our misery by telling us all for once and for all of any conflicts of interest eg. having worked on public transport project in Dublin or not as the case may be. I've been upfront as many others have been return the compliment. I know Victor and the other mods don't what a repeat of the flamewar that resulted in the past so thats all I'm going to say.

I'm trying to have any flamewar. Not in the slightest.

This is a disscussion board about transport and given that Platform 11 is prominent transport group in Ireland we should be able to voice our opinions on how it conducts its business.

I personally think that the way you run your message boards there with forums hidden from public view comes across as an organisation that's secretive. This I'm sure isn't the case at all; I'm just saying that this is impression it creates, for me at least.

You have indeed changed as an organisation since I first stumbled upon your internet site and posted on your discussion boards. Mostly for the better. And you've always had some interesting contributors on your message board who I don't think post here. Which is a pity.

I wish you all the best for your public meeting and am delighted to hear the RPA will be giving a presentation at it. This is the same RPA you lambasted constantly, complained never answered your letters, accused of cover ups, etc. Now they're your best friends. Terriffic.

Now if you have any other questions about my conflicts of interest - and if I had any I would have posted in the relevent thread - kindly send me a PM and stop trying to create a phoney "battle" where there isn't one.

Winters wrote:

"The south-east inner city remains a primary and growing destination."

DTO: Platform for Change, Page 14.

The "Trinity" area is a location in the south-east inner city.

The route of the interconnector has been evaluated numerous times and I believe the current alignment has been chosen with factors such as constructability, catchment coverage, geotechnical, tunnelling restrictions, traffic disruption and trip demand as reasons.

I'm sure it has been looked at very carefully and all the factors you mention would surely be very important.

The constructability, geotechnical factors and tunnelling restrictions have been nicely dealt with by that chap from the RPA, who seems to have a fairly can-do attitude to tunnelling.

We may yet get a better view of trip demand and catchment coverage with the LUAS link-up.

The traffic disruption would undoubtedly be huge if building under Dame Street. Much more than, say, York Street. On the other hand, would it be more disruptive than the traffic disruption involved in pedestrianising large parts of College Green? And I think (somebody will undoubtedly correct me) that project may even be part of the long term plan for the city.

St. Stephen's Green North is on higher ground (Dame Street is built where the Liffey walls used to be), work on St. Stephen's Green North would not cause as much traffic disruption as Dame Street, the DTO demand model shows St. Stephen's Green North to be better placed to serve the south-east inner city catchment and tunnelling radii would make it difficult to integrate with Pearse Station AND Dame Street.

All, I'm sure true (though I might have some reservations about the DTO bit, particularly in the context of the likely extension of the metro in the future). As pointed out above, I'm not suggesting that a more central route would be easy to build. But I hope we will someday learn that the more eggs you break, the tastier the omelette. I'm betting though, that we'll learn this lesson too late.:(

If you'll indulge me for a few seconds of complete crayonism:D

To illustrate the point that, if we do things right, the South East city centre could be well served by the metro.

1. Our metro will be a sort of a tram in a tunnel through the city centre. It would be common in many cities to actually have two branches of one line running through the same tunnel. (Frankfurt actually has one such tram/metro line with three branches).

2. There have been suggestions that I have seen to build a metro line from Broadstone to Ranelagh. There is the current suggestion to build the metro from Glasnevin/Drumcondra to St. Stephen's Green.

We might, eventually have both.

So let's say you've got the interconnector running along Dame Street. Stations at College Green and High Street (along with the others). Metro line A goes through the city via O'Connell Street and College Green, to St. Stephen's Green. Metro line B goes through the city from Broadstone to St. Stephen's Green via High Street (interchange point).

Metro lines A and B are then developed gradually over the years. Metro line A (for example) goes out towards Harold's Cross, Kimmage and Walkinstown, via, say, a station at the Bleeding Horse. The possibility would exist to split this line and, as densities increase, to build a branch to Rathmines and Rathgar (and maybe beyond, if it made sense). Most of the building of these lines A1 and A2 could be cut and cover tunnelling along existing roads.

Metro line B is aimed at the existing Sandyford LUAS line. relatively little cost here, as the line is already built. Because of this, money can be used to develop a branch of line B, also by cut and cover tunnelling. This time we'll head towards Donnybrook, which is actually quite far from both the DART and the Sandyford LUAS. Let's put in a simple enough station at the junction of Fitzwilliam Street and Baggot Street and another simple enough station on Burlington Road. Possibly up out of the ground here and along Morehampton Road as a tram to Donnybrook and Belfield.

(The same kind of fantasy would also be happening, concurrently, on the northside, don't forget:D)

In such a scenario, you've got interchanges at High Street, College Green and St. Stephen's Green. One change for everybody to get between any of the metro lines/the interconnector. You've also got four metro stations between St. Stephen's Green and the canal, if you count Burlington Road in there. We might even have more:p

The current densities of the city would not support such a system. It is crayonism at its very worst.:o But I would say it would put everybody in the south east city centre within about a 300 metre walk of a metro station.

Does it illustrate the point?

Winters wrote:

Just where is our city centre? Unlike most German cities which have a central square and designated city centre I would say that Dublin has two city centres/shopping regions, north of the Liffey and south. Luas red line serves north, Luas Green currently serves south, DART 1 and Metro serve both and DART 2 serves the south because of the alignment of the incoming lines.

There's an interesting thing about, say, Frankfurt (as an example of a German city which would have around about the same daytime population as Dublin. Their central S-Bahn line travels East-West under what would be unquestionably the busiest shopping street (the Zeil), with stations at either end. Neighbouring streets would be pretty important in terms of restaurants and bars, etc. This line also goes through the main train station. From any of these three stations, most of the skyscrapers would be about one stop away on the U-Bahn. (A lot of the skyscrapers would have been built at around the same time as the S-Bahn was completed).

With the relatively poor rail transport which we currently have, there may be a tendency to see the whole thing in terms of commuters, though they are obviously the largest group of rail travellers. However, there is most definitely an advantage to the kind of arrangement described above. It actually makes the S-Bahn very efficient as a people carrier, all day, and not just a pretty efficient means of getting people into and out of the city at rush hour.

I've made the point before about the nature of the catchment area to the South and East of the interconnector line between St. Stephen's Green and Pearse Station, basically the Georgian Area of the south city centre. It pretty much doesn't exist outside of about 20-24 hours in the entire week.

If, for example, my imaginary station (from the previous post) at Baggot Street/Fitzwilliam Street were built, I would expect it to be busy between 7.30 and 10 and then in the Evening rush. In between it would be pretty quiet - who's going there at any other time? And at weekends, would there even be any point in keeping it open?

It would, however, be a very useful station to have within the context of developing our metro line to actually serve Baggot Street, rather than seeing the interconnector as the way to do this simply because it brings people marginally closer to Baggot Street.

I would much prefer to see the interconnector being built such that its realistic catchment between High Street and Pearse is, on one side, the South city centre and, on the other side, the North city centre.

Busy all day, every day.

And, in a sense, a much better way to ensure that there is a very good reason for running 12 trains every hour through the tunnel.