Why will Metro North be light rail?

Hamndegger wrote: »

RPA were the body who undertook the work and dealt with tendering of same, including the overrunning of budget of same, the faulty trackwork in Tallaght, the 2 year late roll out and the lack of connection. I am privvy as to the reason why they didn't meet, lets just say there would have been, ahem, "budget issues" if it had have gone the way it was planned to

Yes this happened, but the end result was the most successful and popular public transport machine in the history of the state. All the above would mean something if Luas flopped.

I love to know how much CIE have wasted over the years and cock-ups they have made. I am sure the cost to taxpayers in strikes alone would cover it. The mini-CTC farce...?

The CIE bus drivers and conductors almost destroyed the commercial heart of the city centre of Dublin with one mother of a strike in the early 1970's which the city took decades to recover from.

Let Anto and Deco cast the first stone...:D

bk wrote: »

I originally didn't get it, there has only ever been three serious proposals put forward, the original crappy cheap Metro, the current good Metro and a heavy rail spur off the Northern line.

It was the last that I thought you were originally talking about and I think we can both agree that it is a very bad option.

You idea of heavy rail on the Metro route is interesting and worth discussing.

The advantage is it would allow about an extra 200 - 300 passengers per train, but I'm not really sure the extra capacity is required?

Metro can do 24,000 per hour per direction, which is 6 times the Luas, seems to be more then sufficient (FYI, Swords has a population of 34,000).

The disadvantage is that it would probably cost about an extra billion euros (due to more complicated signalling, electrics and cost of carriages).

It couldn't integrate with the Luas Green line and would unfortunately be run by CIE (yes I know yawn, but it is an important point for me and seemingly many others).

Also Transport21 Fan points about standardised Metro equipment versus no standard Dart equipment makes a lot of sense to me.

The RPA certainly seemed to very quickly buy and add the extra 10m to the existing trams, it seemed to be a very painless process. On the other hand, IR can't even seem to get 20 Dart carriages refurbished, taking over two years.

If IR needed to buy new Dart carriages tomorrow (which they really do), while they certainly could make a special order, it would probably take very long to complete and probably cost twice as much as standard equipment. I really get the impression that if the RPA needed to do the same, they could get them very quickly.

It is not an unimportant point. I just don't see that much advantage to using heavy rail in the tunnel versus lightrail.

I don't get your point about standard equipment. DART trains are in use elsewhere in the world (perhaps not the original units that I am aware of). The DART is the standard in this country so a new line would be integrating with the standard. The LUAS units in service now are entirely custom built for Ireland - they may well be based on a standard chassis - but they are built to order and to the RPA spec. Same with DART units.

Green Line integration - we all know that this can happen in theory but in reality this is never going to happen.

CIE v RPA - Yawn, yawn, yawn. the fact of the matter is that CIE have upped their game substantially in the past decade. Yes they have issues that have been discussed them at length. This is where the notion of the RPA falls over - it would be better if we had one agency responsible for planning and tendering out all new rail lines. If IR need a new line they go to the RPA who tender it and build it and hand it over. I would be very Dubious about saying that the LUAS operator is somehow better than CIE as it is difficult to compare. In any case, why not tender out new lines to other operators as a matter of course? At the end of the day, the planning of infrastructure can not be done on the basis of who will run it in the future.


BTW I don't think that sticking in 10m sections into LUAS trams is even remotely comparable to refurbishing the original DART carriages!!

the Heavy rail option to swords (as a new line) may well work out more expensive but would be worth it the long run as, in conjunction with other upgrades, a good quality DART (metro) system in the Dublin area. let the trams fill in the gaps between the rail lines.

Hamndegger wrote: »

What is this mini CTC "farce" you refer to?

Ah now, you are just messing.

Hamndegger wrote: »

And what were the reasons for the bus strike in the 1970s?

The removal of conductors from double deckers. At the time CIE was the only public transport operator in the city and the strike was a disaster for the city centre. It lasted something like 3 months, led to dozens of shops closing and hundreds of lay-offs. CIE unions were doing to the centre of Dublin at the time using "industrial unrest" what the IRA were doing to Belfast with sextex. Destroying the commercial heart for an undemocratic agenda.

Rather than rolling your eyes, I suggest you ask the people who had to try and find an army truck to take them to work and back when there was one during them halcyon days of CIE broken wheel (was an apt logo) yore...:D

It was still going on right into the early 1980's when the conductors issue was still a big deal.

CIE bus conductors were mostly a shower of robbers and theives anyways. Many of them were robbing the company blind by charging a lower fair and putting the "dropsie" in their pockets. This is why they were gotten rid of. They and the bus drivers would head to the CIE club at the end of the shift and count their dropsie coppers and get a few extra discounted pints. Jobs and free pints for life thanks to several forms of taxation - both statutory and improvised.

You see, there is the enthusiast history of public transport in Ireland were "great characters" shunted the wagons at the North Wall in their "salt of the earth" ways, but there is a far more earthly CIE employee history which drove public transport users away in their millions. I would say the most hated people in Dublin during the 1970's and 80's were CIE staff. There was a very valid reason for this.

The IRRS journal is not the last word in Irish public transport old chap, not by a long shot. There is a far more unpleasant and more real history which only the poor bastards who had to depend on the NBRU to get to work and make a living know about. One of the more terrible strikes on the early 1980's led to armies of people walking from West Tallahgt to their jobs in the city centre during the harsh winter months. While the usual Liberty Hall bearded mullahs were on the news every night talking about how "working people in this country deserve better conditions"

Well a certain type of "working person" that is...

Hamndegger wrote: »

They are a PR stunt of sorts; effect on people and they will take notice of you and your cause etc, but they can and often do achieve some positive results to the strikers as well as being a strong tool for the worker.

True, I don't dispute this. I find with CIE that the public no longer have sympathy and just look at the unions as greedy now. It is unfortunate as they have over used striking and lost public support.

Metro North, the interconnector and Luas would all be better served under one transport body though. Quite frankly I wouldn't care what it was if we had integrated ticketing at a reasonable cost.

Transport21 Fan wrote: »

Dual gauge is technically possible but legally not in this country for loads of reason and all of them sound.

This kind of 'CIE or Bust' crusade still going on was sorted out years ago when the Luas was taken out of the hand of the CIE Light Rail Office (Blessing Upon They Who Decided This) and turned it over the RPA. From what I recall the Government at the time had to literally force the CIE heads to put tracks on the Harcourt Street line - they wanted a busway.

Still going on about Luas/Metro not standard gauge in 2007 is like some wishful thinking to go back to the CIE Monopoly of the past and try and fix something which has worked out to be fantastic. It's rooted in this notion that the Luas was a failure and should of been a CIE train driven by a bloke called Anto who got the job cos' his old man was a CIE train driver too.

The very idea of even remotely trying to put across the idea that Luas is a failure is really odd to me. The two Luas lines are carrying numbers of passengers which CIE took decades to achieved. The answer for this is simple. The Luas is excellent considering the limitations imposed upon it by Cowardly Bertie and Co. In fact, it's the greatest piece of public transport in the history of the state.

Best of all the Metro will be even superior to that. So what's the problem? If anything is the RPA which should reform Irish Rail and not the other way around.

I know there are a some soviet-wannabe headbangers, CIE union extremists and a fair few "gay for CIE" types on this board, but at some point they are all going to have to accept that the millions of people who use the Luas every year are there for modern service which CIE has never and still does not offer its passengers.

It's a different world now and CIE are no longer holding all the cards and the vast majority of Irish people are happy with this.

T21 we'll set up a special RPA v CIE board for you. Can you please stick with the topic that's being discussed and not go of Hardly a reasonable comparison.f on your 'I hate CIE' rant. Some of your comments border on ridiculous e.g. the one about CIE taking decades to reach the figures the Luas achieved. how stupid a remark is that?!? Of course they did, because the powers that be stagnated urban transit for decades through zero investment.

Nobody has said LUAS is a failure. It was going to be a success irrespective of who built it. I don't think anybody could have made a mess of it once it was built. Nobody is suggesting that the LUAS should have been a IR train driven by a IR driver as you seem to think.

It is unreasonable to compare LUAS to DART as the comparisons can't be made for a whole range of reasons.

You have completely misconstrued my point about standard guage. What IR have here is our standard as the majority of rail is to this standard. The likilhood of ripping it up and starting over again seems improbable to me (as probable as the Green line becoming a metro). There are no issues in obtaining rolling stock so no problem.

In relation to tilt trains, who cares? We have 1,872 km of rail. The Dublin- Cork line is 272km. Would tilt train units have a benefit here or on any line? Probably not. The money would be better spent on removing restrictions that are on the various lines at the moment.

Hamndegger wrote: »

RPA were the body who undertook the work and dealt with tendering of same, including the overrunning of budget of same, the faulty trackwork in Tallaght, the 2 year late roll out and the lack of connection. I am privvy as to the reason why they didn't meet, lets just say there would have been, ahem, "budget issues" if it had have gone the way it was planned to

First, please note that I'm not trying to blame CIÉ for anything, and the RPA is far from perfect itself. I try to stay away from the RPA-CIÉ and public-private name-calling contests as much as I can. However...

The Government decided in 1998 that there wouldn't be a surface connection between the lines. This was well before there was an RPA (the RPA was only operational in December 2001 and took over the Luas project slightly later). The Metro (which originated from the DTO) superseded the Government's idea of an underground connection in 2000; there was still no RPA at this point. The connection never went through the planning process in any form - the original scheme was withdrawn at public-inquiry stage when the Government decided against surface operation. If it was just a question of the RPA running out of money, surely they would have got approval for the connection and then failed to build it. The surface link wasn't included in A Platform for Change, and the idea only seems to have been revived about 2004.

I agree the RPA has to take responsibility for a lot of things that happened to the Luas project on its watch, but I'm not so sure that this was one of them.

PS: In relation to gauge, the first tram was in Dublin and the first track laid at Red Cow before the RPA was set up (the Merrion Square display was in November 2001, and the first track was laid around the same time). The matter was debated at the Line A public inquiry, which happened in late 1998 (again, pre-RPA): http://www.transport.ie/upload/general/2632.pdf#page=7. Furthermore, the main construction contract was awarded in spring 2001, though I agree the RPA was poor at managing it once it took over.

I think it highlights that irrespective of who builds or runs what, ultimately we are going to have continuous problems with infrastructure until we have sound central planning that is not based on politics and have an overall authority that ensures that the services are delivered to a particular standard. At the moment the RPA are off empire building as are CIE and it's almost as if the commuter is secondary.