Wasnt the whole Luas thing a balls ?

Propellerhead

Garret claims that in 1997 that he met the consultants working on the Luas project and that, most unfortunately according to Garret, no economists were part of that team.

Did Garret mean an economist like TCD's Sean Barrett? Sean was a vehement opponent of the DART project and advocated the full abandonment of the railway system in the 1970s and 1980s. Let's also not forget that Garret himself declared at the formal opening of DART in October 1984 (months after the actual opening in June) that he would not have sanctioned the scheme if he had been in government in 1979 and that his goverment dropped the ball over the expansion of DART to Tallaght, or even the provision of the busways to Dundrum and Mount Argus to Tallaght which were also part of the DART scheme and if implemented would have been of some use.

Garret's track record on the implementation of decent public transport is one of the worst in the history of the State and his interventions on the Luas project resulted purely in the delay of the scheme and nothing else. One could be forgiven for thinking that Garret was part of the long dismal line of those who all but destroyed the public transport infrastructure and whose real bottom line was that public transport was a residual service for those too poor to afford to run cars.

Winters

Maskhadov wrote:

is it really worth spending all that money just for 6 years ?

Money for the Luas link-up or for a shuttle bus service?

luckat

Look at the Greater Dublin Area Rail Network plan. *Why* is there a giant gap in the middle on the southside - in the very area that has the largest commuting population, Harold's Cross, Terenure, Rathmines, etc?

www.transport.ie/upload/general/7048-5.pdf

Is this deliberate? Is it mad?

MarkoP11

Propellerhead wrote:

Garret claims that in 1997 that he met the consultants working on the Luas project and that, most unfortunately according to Garret, no economists were part of that team.

Still there would have been a financial evaluation. Relying on existing numbers is still something the RPA have been shown to do, there numbers for Metro where way off and have now been revised

Propellerhead wrote:

Did Garret mean an economist like TCD's Sean Barrett? Sean was a vehement opponent of the DART project and advocated the full abandonment of the railway system in the 1970s and 1980s

How does Sean Barrett get home, yes by train talk about hypocritical

A lot of people forget this country almost went bankrupt in the mid 80's, CIE had to borrow the money for the DART as the EC money never reached CIE it only got as far as the DoF, that forced a halt to any further development as it imposed a huge interest bill making the DART heavily unprofitable (it made an operating profit for several years if you ignored the interest) There where so many things going on at the time, its not widely known but in 1983 CIE came within an inch of signing a deal with Linke Hoffmann Busch to open a rolling stock factory at Inchicore if that had happened things would be very different

The biggest tragedy of all was the loss of the DART to Tallaght, Harcourt Street was only pencilled in as a potential bus way at the time. Tallaght City Centre in 20 minutes with twice the capcity of Luas

MarkoP11

luckat wrote:

Is this deliberate? Is it mad?

Is it a bird is it a plane no its the orbital metro, draw a straight line from Stephens Green to Harolds Cross then Tallaght

Its there alright but expensive and not funded

luckat

How do you mean it's there, Mark? I can't see it on the map.

MarkoP11

The map shows what will be built (if you believe them) by 2015

The full map is http://www.dto.ie/platform.pdf thats the end goal some changes since 2000 but thats the overal target

T21 includes funds to study the southern leg of the orbital metro as well as 3 other Luas line, but does not include funds to build them