Luas Broadstone-Liffey Junction

Tadhg17

Is most of this alignment to Liffey Junction separate from road traffic?.Also Has there been any news recently about bring the Luas to Liffey Junction?.

MLM

I presume they'll use the old line into the former broadstone station

Pineapple stu

In all honesty, would you want it to go there. It wouldnt get left alone. Look at the mess they have done to broombridge station.

John R

Tadhg17 wrote:

Is most of this alignment to Liffey Junction separate from road traffic?.

Yes, it is the former Midland railway alignment that is in a deep cutting most of the way. Take a walk down Cabra Rd or North Circular Rd from Phibsborough and you can see most of the route from the overbridges.

Although I seem to remember seeing an alternative alignment proposed using the former Royal Canal spur which is to the East of Phibsborough Rd. If that is used they would dig the bed out to run under the North Circular similar to the old Guinness Grand Canal spur used for the Luas Red line.

dowlingm

If they decked over the cutting it might reduce the vandalism opportunity and provide a linear park or cycle track?

Transport21 Fan

Several developers are buying up all the land and sites in and around Liffey Junction and have been for a while. The eventual hope is to redevelop Liffey Junction area as a Spencer Dock type job. They have already scooped up most of the old factories along Bannow Road and are also buying up houses in Cabra West. There will be high density housing all the way from Ashtown to Phisborough. It's the biggest remaining brownfield landbank on the northside of the city. A huge site really.

The restoration of the canal as an amenity similar to what happened in Manchester, is also planned and by all accounts it sounds like a very nice project. The Luas up through Broadstone is to be paid for by developers.

Broombridge is to be closed and a new IE station built to interchange with the Luas at Liffey Junction and possibly the line to Inchicore via the Phoenix Park tunnel when the locomotive works are sold off.

Like everything else for Dublin in T21 Liffey Junction as a rail/Luas interchange is being driven almost exclusively by property developers. Which on one level is sad as this allows our Government to leave public transport development to big business, but on the other hand it does get Luas and Metro lines up and running, as well as new IE stations built.

As demonstrated by Midleton and Navan - the present Government are pathetic at actually getting rail infrastructure started, let alone completed. Basically the DoF hates spending money on rail and releasing funds, so in a way we should be thankful for property developers as without them it is likely Dublin would have no chance of any serious rail/metro/tram investment.

loyatemu

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Broombridge is to be closed and a new IE station built to interchange with the Luas at Liffey Junction and possibly the line to Inchicore via the Phoenix Park tunnel when the locomotive works are sold off.

what has selling the inchicore works off got to do with anything? the tunnel comes out at heuston.

joolsveer

The line which goes under the park doesn't pass through Liffey Junction - it joins the main line nearer Cross Guns.

Transport21 Fan

loyatemu wrote:

what has selling the inchicore works off got to do with anything? the tunnel comes out at heuston.

Financing the whole thing. CIE management are very eager to develop the PPT tunnel route and now that the Interconnector is in the bag it's no longer a political football to be hidden away from Olivia Mitchell.

The project needs to be self-financing. But there is a problem which cannot be avoided - that the line would only be busy at peak-commuting times and would be dead most other times including the weekends. The passenger projections are rubbish. This is what makes the PPT route still unviable. What will make it viable is generating more traffic. Hence CIE's eagerness to develop a station at Croke Park which will also serve the Mater Hospital (somewhat). Money has to come from somewhere for all this.

There won't be any need for more than a handful of locomotives on Irish railways in a few years. A small service depot anywhere will be enough. So they might as well sell off Inchicore and use the money to upgrade the PPT tunnel route.

Inchicore will be a massive landbank worth gazillions and CIE also have plans to put a box on top of the yards at Hueston and build on the air rights as well as develop the land were the old keg loading yard was at Heuston.

This is what's paying for many exciting non-T21 rail and bus projects CIE have in their bag. Selling off Inchicore and Liffey Junction would finance new stations and services - including the PPT tunnel and why not, if it gets us a fantastic rail and bus network in the end.

Transport21 Fan

joolsveer wrote:

The line which goes under the park doesn't pass through Liffey Junction - it joins the main line nearer Cross Guns.

Runs almost directly underneath it. Multi-level station might be possible. An engineering study will be needed as well as major re-signalling from Connolly to Islandbridge. But it's not 'Extreme Engineering' on the Discovery Channel we are talking about either. CIE/IE are well capable of undertaken this if they want to.

Transport21 Fan

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Runs almost directly underneath it. Multi-level station might be possible. An engineering study will be needed as well as major re-signalling from Connolly to Islandbridge. But it's not 'Extreme Engineering' on the Discovery Channel we are talking about either. CIE/IE are well capable of undertaken this if they want to.

just to add to this the junction at Phisborough will be a very complicated project too and will cost a fortune to make it more flexible for running trains from the Docklands and under the Phoenix Park. Reopening the PPT route to trains is a major undertaking but will have to be done one way or another. CIE are working on a plan - but how they intend to tackle this still not clear.

gobdaw

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Runs almost directly underneath it. Multi-level station might be possible. An engineering study will be needed as well as major re-signalling from Connolly to Islandbridge. But it's not 'Extreme Engineering' on the Discovery Channel we are talking about either. CIE/IE are well capable of undertaken this if they want to.

Would there be sufficient straight track on PPT to provide platforms?

Certainly if Liffey Junction Luas were to, instead of following original trackbed to the actual junction, cross the Royal Canal and the Mullingar line and continue out to the Finglas Road, a nice start to a line to Finglas would present itself (if a route through Clarmont presented itself!)

Doubling or mirroring Glasnevin Junction would permit trains from PPT to access Docklands.

It Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus years-old proposal of developing air-rights of rail is now to be implimented, maybe concideration of retaining Docklands' ground rights (and Docklands itself) should be considered while still developing overhead.

Transport21 Fan

gobdaw wrote:

Would there be sufficient straight track on PPT to provide platforms?

Under LJ? Don't think so - but there is room on the Cabra side in the cutting. It's deep down, but do-able.

gobdaw wrote:

It Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus years-old proposal of developing air-rights of rail is now to be implimented, maybe concideration of retaining Docklands' ground rights (and Docklands itself) should be considered while still developing overhead.

I think this going to take off in a big way. CIE has been told to pay its own way and develop its land banks. A point will come were all the excess yards and other sites are gone and it's literally just the track that's left. Exploiting the air right above the tracks is the next logical step. Pretty common practice in the far east and there was a Swiss architecture display at Logan Airport in Boston last year which showed a plan to box in an entire railway line in some Swiss city and develop a linear urban quarter on top of it.

I used to be against CIE selling off its land banks as I thought there was a future for rail freight. I understand now that this landbank gives CIE fantastic leverage to develop public transport on their own terms by exploiting the land. You can't blame them really.

Docklands is here to stay. No way is that station a temp structure. It looks like it designed to last 100 years.

Victor

Transport21 Fan wrote:

There will be high density housing all the way from Ashtown to Phisborough. It's the biggest remaining brownfield landbank on the northside of the city. A huge site really.

Technically, alot of it is greenfield, i.e. it has never been built on.

Transport21 Fan wrote:

There won't be any need for more than a handful of locomotives on Irish railways in a few years. A small service depot anywhere will be enough. So they might as well sell off Inchicore and use the money to upgrade the PPT tunnel route.

Sure, they needn't have an urban works, but where are you going to store / service all the other rolling stock?

BendiBus

Victor wrote:

Sure, they needn't have an urban works, but where are you going to store / service all the other rolling stock?

Portlaoise, Drogheda, Limerick & Fairview?

Victor

Fairview won't take anything like 500 EMUs.

bk

Victor wrote:

Fairview won't take anything like 500 EMUs.

OT, there is a building being built next to the DART lines between Clontarf Road Dart station and Alfie Burn Road, is this a CIE building and what is it for?

Zoney

They should store more at Limerick once the Limerick to Galway line is opened up. It'll then be a well-connected hub on the western side of the network.

Victor

That won't be much use for Dublin commuter services.

loyatemu

bk wrote:

OT, there is a building being built next to the DART lines between Clontarf Road Dart station and Alfie Burn Road, is this a CIE building and what is it for?

its some sort of traditional music and arts centre
http://comhaltas.ie/locations/detail/clasac/photos/P83

bk

loyatemu wrote:

its some sort of traditional music and arts centre
http://comhaltas.ie/locations/detail/clasac/photos/P83

That looks really good, while I'm not mad about traditional Irish music myself, I'm very glad to see nice cultural amenities being built rather then just more apartments.