Michael O'Leary on the Right Hook Last Night

Davidth88

Hi,

Did anyone ( obviously Dublin based people ) hear MOL on the ' Right Hook ' last night .

He made some very interesting points about T2 at Dublin Airport and the
proposed Metro.

His point about T2 , was the usual , we could have done it for free , where is the money that DAA made from selling GSH gone , why would we have to pay for this in advance stuff.

His point about the Metro , was how many people would forgo their cars to travel to DUB via a metro that starts in the City Centre ..... his example was would a person in Foxrock drive to St Stephens Gn , where there is no parking to get a metro to the airport....

If you didn't listen to the usual MOL bluster/language his points were pretty well made and valid.

What do people think , is T2 good value for money/in the right place

Would a Metro on the proposed route be the panacea that the gvmt is making out ?

loyatemu

a person in Foxrock could get the luas to Stephens Green and then the metro to the airport

markf909

Surely the point is that it is now about more than the airport.
It is a new rail link to Swords that just happens to serve the airport.

Davidth88

I actually agree with both of you , I was just thought people would be interested in hearing about the interview from MOL last night,

In my view any metro would be good , it's lunacy that the airport isn't connected by a direct rail link. For some reason MOL was stating that only 20% of people would use it ..... I wonder where he got those figures from ?

The point of Swords , is true , just something that has occured to me , if you are building a rail link out that far why not loop it round and join the Dublin/Belfast line in North county Dublin somewhere ? This would build in redundancy and also mean the airport has a direct rail link to the North also....

MarkoP11

Internationally accepted number is 20-25% of air passengers will use a rail service to Airport if it runs at 15 minute or better service. This does not include staff commuting

Irish Rail did the numbers and got 4.4-5.6 million passengers on a spur from Howth Junction (and be profitable). The heavy rail option would offer a much better level of intergration but the cost building a new line from Connolly (4 track existing to Portmarnock) to Airport to Donabate is not palatable

5 million is huge number of people for one destination, add in the staff and you have serious reduction in local traffic. Note a significant % of airport staff live in Swords.

Thankfully anyone coming in on the Maynooth line, the southside DART, Green Luas and Red Luas and post interconnector Hazelhatch inwards all have a direct one change to get to the Airport

Davidth88

Marko

That makes a lot of sense to me , so St Stephens Green would become the defacto centre of the transport system .I was just thinking aloud really with the extension of a new metro system to the Dublin Belfast line would give you some redundancy , something any decent metro system should have , ie if the line from the Airport to St Stephens went down you could travel north at least .....

I wonder why MOL is so anti the idea of a metro then ? It has to make sense .

MarkoP11

Davidth88 wrote:

I wonder why MOL is so anti the idea of a metro then ? It has to make sense .

He can't see the direct benefit, his planes are full leaving Dublin so people can get to the airport already, how they do and how long it takes is of no concern

Ryanair will of course get lumped with increased charges since the DAA are going to have to hand over cash to the RPA to get the station under the terminal and not out at the Great Southern

Davidth88

OMG , are you serious ........ so the DAA is paying RPA to put the station in the right place ... that is totally mad !

I don't suppose that the station is being build under the new terminal at the same time as the terminal is being built, even if the line isn't built then that would make sense wouldn't it ?

I know that when the terminal 4 station was built at LHR , the line was run all the way out to the new T5 space , even though it wasn't built, or even being built for another 15 years .... this meant that a trip from T4 to T1/2/3 took about 15 mins but it made a lot of sense

John R

Davidth88 wrote:

I wonder why MOL is so anti the idea of a metro then ? It has to make sense .

Because he is a greedy selfish asshole. Metro is of no direct benefit to his bank balance so he disagrees with it.

His main obsession is airport charges and as Metro is going to cost DAA money he probably fears higher charges for FR because of it.

Don't FR also have a nice earner selling Aircoach tickets onboard for commission?

Hobart

John R wrote:

Because he is a greedy selfish asshole....

1 Week ban. Any personal abuse on this forum will not be tolerated. Please try to make you point, without resorting to personal abuse.

FlutterinBantam

Mo'l is interested in one thing and one thing only FR share price..... Anything that may add cost and reduce bottom line is a no no.
Iwould agree with him to a certain extent ,in the fact that anything that Aer Rianta now the DAA turn to, tends to come at way way above estimate and tends to be not properly thought out...Eg. Pier C.

I would not blame him for being sceptical about these plans.

Davidth88

I can understand MOL only being interested in the Ryanair share price , thats his job and he seems to do it pretty well ( although he makes no friends the way he goes about it )

But if DUB is easier to get to more people will want to fly from there etc etc this must be good for his business ... then again this is the same company that flies to an airport 60Km from Frankfurt ( Hahn ) , and however far from Paris that airport is they fly from and expect people to take a dodgy bus service ......

Ok... maybe I have just answered my questions

jd

MOL has very little to do with Dublin City- he commutes to the Airport every day from Mullingar ffs. I doubt he understands or cares about urban living.

wwhyte

Davidth88 wrote:

What do people think , is T2 good value for money/in the right place

I think the northern site that Ryanair were talking about a few years ago would have been much better. The really important resource for a terminal is frontage. The proposed T2 improves things over the current situation but could have been a lot better.

Red Alert

A 'metro' is a silly compromise. It introduces a third rail system 'island' (the other one being the LUAS - technology will be duplicated, rolling stock can't be cascaded/transferred, and yet another level of corporate bureaucracy comes into play.

I would go for the heavy rail option and dump this metro nonsense.

Moriarty

I was under the impression that metro and luas lines would be of the same gauge and standard so that eventually the services could run on each others lines..?

MrPudding

Davidth88 wrote:

... then again this is the same company that flies to an airport 60Km from Frankfurt ( Hahn ) , and however far from Paris that airport is they fly from and expect people to take a dodgy bus service ......

Ok... maybe I have just answered my questions

Is it only 60 now. Sh1t, when I flew there recently by mistake it was 120.

As for beauvais. I flew there once and our flight was late. The bus, for which the sole reason of it being on this earth is to take passengers from the Ryanair flight to Paris, left on time!

MrP

MarkoP11

Luas and Metro will share same gauge and platform heights, its unlikely the metro trains will be able to take Luas style 90 degree corners but they will be able to run on Luas tracks it appears

Winters

Metro will be designed to take 2.65m metro carriage width, Luas carriage width is 2.4m. (Width at platform level is same on both). As far as I am aware the only section of the entire Luas network that is capable of taking 2.65m width is from Ranalagh southwards.

Thus Luas can run on metro but metro cant run on Luas except for that section and the upgrading of infrastructure it would need like power and platfroms etc.

Wiki Porto metro, it is the best example of what the RPA are trying to achieve since they took over the Luas from CIE.

Moriarty

Can you link me to somewhere that confirms that winters?

Navan Junction

Madam, - It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry when Minister for Transport Martin Cullen, pens an article claiming that the "Dublin metro makes economic sense" (Opinion & Analysis, September 4th).

The Dublin metro makes even less sense than wasting €50 million on electronic voting machines. Linking Dublin airport to St Stephen's Green will not encourage any early morning passengers from around the city to do anything other than drive to the airport on the already congested M50. The airport metro will carry fewer than 20 per cent of passengers using Dublin airport. Wasting €1.5 billion (at current estimates) providing airport access for this small visitor group, who are already well served by competing bus services, is economic lunacy.

If this Government knew anything about transport - and it doesn't - then it would scrap this madcap plan to waste €1.5 billion of taxpayers' money building an airport metro which passengers neither want nor need. This money would be far better spent building an outer orbital ring road outside the M50, relieving the intolerable congestion on the M50, and providing better access to Dublin airport for cars and buses, which is how the overwhelming majority of passengers will continue to get there.

The sooner this Government stops wasting money on transport projects that don't work, the better. The similarity between the airport metro and electronic voting machines is that both will prove equally useless. However, the metro will cost 30 times more.

- Yours, etc,

MICHAEL O'LEARY, Chief Executive, Ryanair, Dublin Airport.

markf909

Mick O'Leary should stick to talking about his planes.

Anyway on a light hearted note, with him dead set against the project you can be sure this will make the govt more committed to building it

jjbrien

markf909 wrote:

Mick O'Leary should stick to talking about his planes.

Any on a light hearted note, with him dead set against the project you can be sure this will make the govt more committed to building it

Maybee thats his plan.

Winters

Moriarty wrote:

Can you link me to somewhere that confirms that winters?

No I cant, Sorry - it was mentioned to me in one of the open days. I would encourage you to contact the RPA who will be able to answer your questions.