[Article] Costly Metro North finally hits buffers

n97 mini wrote: »

I hate these Independent articles who only cite "government sources".

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/costly-metro-north-finally-hits-buffers-2829945.html

I don't think anyone was seriously thinking MN was ever going to happen anyway, considering we have two disjointed Luas lines, and two suburban routes still awaiting electrification.

They'll never electrify those routes. Anyone remember the consultants' reports of not long ago recommending the de-electrification of Bray-Greystones? DMUs are here to stay, especially considering what was spent to buy them.

It has also emerged that construction of a new DART line to Dublin Airport will cost just €200m, less than a tenth of the cost of Metro North

They won't build this one either. Doesn't serve enough new destinations and the route is a roundabout one that can't compete with roads; calling it a "high-speed" route is a misnomer. Never mind the ridiculous-enough cost of €49.5 million per mile; not as absurdly high as the €487 million per mile for Metro (which shouldn't even cost that much if built underground all the way to Estuary or even all the way to the middle of nowhere in Belinstown as some older maps show), but if France is building high-speed railways for €20 million per mile even around areas as "developed" as Balgriffin, the costs for the roundabout DART spur should not be over double that. (What, no Swords extension?)

Judgement Day wrote: »

Hopefully to be followed by the binning of DART underground.

Dart underground is a seriously important piece of infrastucture and should not be binned. The Connolly Station is jammed at peak times and leads to a very shoddy service on North and Southbound routes. Dart underground will double capacity and cut a lot of costs.

seanmacc wrote: »

Dart underground is a seriously important piece of infrastucture and should not be binned. The Connolly Station is jammed at peak times and leads to a very shoddy service on North and Southbound routes. Dart underground will double capacity and cut a lot of costs.

Exactly how? On top of spending €2 billion for the tunnel, you've also got to buy a great deal of new EMUs (which put relatively new DMUs out of work prematurely) as well as the overhead electrification to run them with (the proposal includes electrifying the Maynooth line, which technically could keep operating with DMUs on a Maynooth-Bray line); also you'll need to retrofit older maintenance facilities that are set up to work with diesel engines and DMUs to service EMUs now, or build new facilities if they can't be upgraded.

Cut a lot of costs how, therefore? Like I already mentioned, the capacity at Connolly has been deliberately reduced by IE (they've made platforms shorter as well as reduced the number of tracks; remember the original inset Platform 4 and the run-around track that used to be by Platform 7?); the RPA seems dogged about using the Broadstone line instead of letting IE use it as a commuter terminus (this would relieve the ever-shrinking Connolly for far cheaper than the "DU" project would as well as shortening the journey towards the city centre for trains to Maynooth/Longford/M3); the Phoenix Park Tunnel sits idle (wouldn't cost too much to rebuild a single junction to divert trains from Kildare into the Docklands station if deemed necessary if they run through the PPT, and they can stay DMU), and ultimately "DU" takes trains further away from the city centre than they presently go, especially for the Northern Line. Not enough to say that EMUs nominally have a lower operating cost than DMUs.

n97 mini wrote: »

I don't remember the report but it's barmy to suggest running on diesel when the line is already electric.

The name of the report in question is the "Strategic Rail Review"; it came out in 2003 or so. (AFAICR, the recommendation was to get rid of the wires from Bray to Greystones, but some other sources claim it was actually to de-wire from Greystones all the way to Pearse, which makes no sense whatsoever.)

n97 mini wrote: »

Once installed electric offers soooo many advantages:

• Far simpler and cheaper maintenance of stock
• Far greater acceleration
• Greatly reduced noise
• No local air pollution (something diesel is responsible for the majority of in most urban areas already)
• The ability to source fuel locally

You can add regenerative braking to the list; the energy can go back into the electrification grid instead of being all disspated as heat. Stock is cheaper to maintain due to having fewer moving parts, and none that would have to suffer from heat fatigue as internal combustion engines would.

n97 mini wrote: »

There was consultation recently with ABP about electrifying the Maynooth line. Something I think won't be done, but not because they (Leo) don't want to do it.

I suppose I can't blame him; it'd be more prudent to get all that you can out of the existing rolling stock instead of running out and buying new stuff (e.g. buying the 22000-class DMUs instead of moving the Mark 3s to other intercity duties after buying the Mark 4s).

We have to learn to stop "fixing" things that are not broken and when we undertake a project to apply common sense.

The rail network as it is is broken as it is. two light rail systems not joined and two rail systems not joined. it doesn't make sense to move one line out to bring one in

You mean like was done on the Harcourt Street Line?

If "common sense" prevailed, then there would be no Luas at all and we'd have the Broadstone and Harcourt Street lines joined as "heavy rail". We'd also have new commuter railway lines going out to as many Dublin suburbs as possible, and an airport rail link since the 60s at least. And oh yes, all of the general railway network would have been re-gauged from 1600 mm to 1435 mm. If anything contributed to the Irish railway system being "broken", it's excessive closures and shrinkage of capacity at city centre termini.

thomasj wrote: »

Exactly it isnt and we have two rail agencies fighting over land, two different types of rail, two unconnected light rail routes.

it doesnt mean we cant start to learn!

At this stage given what could nearly have been with the broadstone-harcourt line maybe its better having the finglas-broombridge-sandyford-brides glen link up.

At this stage, I would settle for something that at least mitigates the unconnectedness of Luas and DART at the very least, e.g. converting Luas to tram-train, which would allow Luas trams to run to Malahide, Howth and Bray for example. However, the different track gauges don't help that notion out very well, nor do the different platform heights; although you can have two platform heights at various stations, the track gauge difference can get expensive, even if you get around that by using dual gauge track.

Edit: for those unfamiliar with tram-train, the version in Karlsruhe, Germany is the one most often imitated nowadays. Upper image shows "Stadtbahn" tram on street alongside "Strassenbahn" (which doesn't run on the general railway network); lower image shows the tram-train on Deutsche Bahn opposite an ICE train.

Personally I find one of the attractions of the Luas (Green Line) over the DART is the frequency of service and the added penetration right into St.Stephen's Green which the old heavy rail Harcourt Street line failed to deliver. Conversion of the Green line into a DART type operation - regardless of operator - would be a retrograde step in my opinion. Anyway, it will never happen now especially after the bizarre but scenic extension into the twilight zone beyond Sandyford.

SeanW - I grew up in the Greater Dublin area (spent the best part of 30 years there) and I have nothing against the city. My main gripe with the various grandiose transport plans is the cost, the people behind them (CIE with DART underground) and I don't trust the establishment to do things properly. Both DART underground and Metro North belong to the era of Thornton Hall, PPARS and e-voting machines - the stuff of La La Land - even if they were affordable were they ever desirable?

bk wrote: »

I'm sorry, but who in their right mind wants IR operating Luas? No one, a major attraction of Luas is that it isn't operated by IR and CIE and is instead operated by an efficient private operator, with no stupid strikes or moronic work practices

I don't recall Veolia being efficient enough to stay in Britain, back when they were Connex. Last I saw, the RPA isn't a private company, and Veolia is a foreign company; why no Irish private company to run the thing?

The matter of public operation and unionisation are different; after all, private corporations can be unionised, so that's a matter of union reform, and public operators can be efficient.

Not to mention, it's not impossible for two different companies to operate over the same rails. The Karlsruhe Stadtbahn operates over Deutsche Bahn's rails and is not operated by Deutsche Bahn but by the Karlsruhe Transport Authority and Alb Valley Transportation.

markpb wrote: »

Docklands has a Luas right now, Broadstone doesn't. Docklands is in the IFSC which is a major employment area, Broadstone (and Finglas) aren't. And yet, Docklands is quite quiet. Maybe it's because it doesn't have a direct link to Finglas

Looks like expectations for Docklands station were a little overestimated? Docklands is to the periphery of the IFSC. Connolly is actually closer to the major campus of the IFSC than Docklands is. If Docklands were indeed a more desirable work-commuter terminus, then IE would not be waiting for their DART Underground and would build a connector to Docklands from the GSWR loop line so that Kildare trains (DMUs) can operate via the PPT to serve it.

And are we raising the matter of a rail link to Finglas? The only possibility was in the indirect Metro West proposal, which would have been a two-seat ride with a forced connection at Ballymun onto Metro North, and that at Meakstown. And that would have been a three-seat ride to the Docklands, what with needing to connect with the Red Line.

dowlingm wrote: »

Docklands was supposed to be a band-aid to get us through to Interconnector - remember? Bit much to expect it to carry the load of a full blown terminus like Connolly. Plus the good times were never supposed to end, IFSC moving ever eastwards, Dublin Port evicted to Balbriggan, etc.etc.

All one had to do was keep one's eye on what the ECB was doing, because once Ireland joined the euro, things were going to start going Germany's way and the way of no other country that was part of the union.

Besides, a connection from Heuston to Docklands via PPT and the MGWR loop line could still be built today.

I'm not sold on reopening Broadstone - yet another terminal station as if Dublin didn't have enough of them. We can't even get Hansfield open for the love of god

Eh? It's only IE's fault that they use Connolly's and Pearse's through platforms as terminal ones, never mind all the platform and track closings they've been performing on Connolly since the late 1970s. After Docklands, the only purely terminal station in Dublin is Heuston. This doesn't say anything about whether terminal stations are good or bad; I don't see them as bad. If I were still living in Leixlip, I'd prefer to go to Broadstone instead of having to put up with the slow west-to-east crawl to get to Connolly. Imagine if all of Dublin's railway stations were still in terminal configuration (Kingsbridge, Broadstone, Amiens Street, Westland Row, Harcourt Street) and were never connected?

AlekSmart wrote: »

Ah now Dowlingm, let's give credit where credit's due....The Private Rail Security notion was a CIE, albeit DART "innovation" in Dublin.

However it needs to be far more integrated with the Gardai in so many ways for it to become a true "Transport Police" operation.

DART is still CIE. I recall the 8100/8300 class delivered with no DART logos and instead two "broken wheels" on the cab ends and one broken wheel logo on each flank. Also remember them being hauled around the system on test runs prior to overhead wire startup, using the former C-class (Metrovick 201s) and compromise couplers.

How efficient would things get with integrating "private security" with the Gardaí anyhow? Many passenger rail systems I know of have their own independent police forces that are not integrated with any state-run police force. The Guards would need special training to patrol a railway alignment, especially due to liability issues if a Guard were to be struck by a train or a tram.

AngryLips wrote: »

No. Toilets on the Luas? That's just disgusting

If they don't put toilets on DART EMUs, they sure wouldn't put toilets on a Regio Citadis Hybrid.

dowlingm wrote: »

Varadkar has mentioned Maynooth electrification which I think is significant considering he's the TD for an area near the line.

CIE - I don't see tram-trains working because I don't think the RSC will be able to make RPA and IE play nice, especially since given their defiance of EU policy on separating infrastructure and operations IE can (and likely will claim) "my ball, going home". There may also be platform height issues as well as the necessity for the trams to support 750VDC for street running but also perhaps 1500V on the mainline.

IE missed the boat on dual mode trains all right but the boat they missed was not tram trains - it was B 81500s for the Northern Line and Wicklow Line.

No use bothering with Maynooth electrification. That'll only mean more DMUs to cut up. The demand for additional railway services along that corridor is not that high. It'll only undermine Varadkar because then that becomes his "pet project".

Regio Citadis could support both 750V and 1500V overhead; they could even run on high-voltage AC electrification such as on Germany's mainlines, and of course the hybrid version doesn't need an electrification system. I already mentioned platform height issues, something that the RPA introduced; it's not like dual platforms couldn't be built on the DART lines if really needed, and besides the dual gauge problem would be the greater hurdle. And don't worry; the more centralised the power gets in Brussels (and it's getting there), the more readily they could make CIE and RPA "play nice" if they felt like it.

SNCF's B81500s would have no function in Ireland, especially on the Northern Line and former DSER south of Greystones. No use bothering with a dual-mode E/DMU unless you were going to run underground. There would definitely be platform issues if you tried to adapt those trains to run in Ireland though, since they are built for low platforms.