Article: Planned Dublin metro line to cost more than €5bn

Slice

Two articles from today's Irish Times:

Planned Dublin metro line to cost more than €5bn
Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Dublin's proposed metro line linking Swords with St Stephen's Green is set to cost more than €5 billion, The Irish Times has established from documents released by the Department of Transport under the Freedom of Information Act.

Although all monetary figures in the documents are blacked out, it is possible to discern that the estimated cost of the 17km metro north line was put at €4.58 billion in 2004 prices. With construction inflation and additional expenditure, it would now be well over €5 billion.

The extra spending arises from the provision of an additional underground station at Parnell Square as well as a promise that the section of the route running through Ballymun would be underground, rather than on the surface as originally proposed.

The price tag for the city's first metro line makes it by far the most expensive infrastructure project in the history of the State - at least three times more costly than the M50 (€1.6 billion) and six times more than either the two Luas lines or the Dublin Port Tunnel.

As well as metro north, the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) is pursuing plans for metro west, a 25km line linking Tallaght with Ballymun, via Clondalkin, Blanchardstown and a number of Luas lines, serving Citywest, Docklands and Cherrywood/Shanganagh.

No estimates of the likely cost of these projects have been revealed by the Department of Transport or the RPA, ostensibly on the basis that the figures are commercially confidential.

However, it is more likely that they are being suppressed for political reasons.

The documents were released after an appeal to the Information Commissioner, following a Freedom of Information Act request in November 2005 seeking details on the Government's €34.4 billion Transport 21 investment programme.

They show that Iarnród Éireann submitted a 10-year capital programme, with an overall price-tag of €3.4 billion, to electrify much of Dublin's suburban rail network and build an underground rail interconnector between Heuston Station and Spencer Dock.

Iarnród Éireann has conceded that the original estimate for the interconnector, which would have intermediate stations at Thomas Street, St Stephen's Green and Pearse Station, would now be substantially dearer than the original €1.3 billion estimate in 2002.

The Cabinet subcommittee on infrastructure gave priority to the metro north project, however, and the RPA recently submitted it to An Bord Pleanála for fast-track planning approval.

Basic stations planned to keep cost of metro line to €4.58bn
Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Underground stations with bare concrete walls, no canopies over entrances, no escalators from street to concourse levels and fewer ticket machines are among the "value engineering" elements of the planned Dublin metro line linking St Stephen's Green with Swords.

According to documents released belatedly under the Freedom of Information Act, the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) said these "trade-offs" were needed to cut the capital cost of the project to €4.58 billion - an estimate cited in one letter dated July 8th, 2005.

Though all monetary figures in every document were blacked out to maintain strict confidentiality surrounding the metro project, it is possible to discern on close inspection that the overall cost of this 17km line was estimated by the RPA at €4.58 billion in 2004.

The relevant letter from Julie O'Neill, secretary general of the Department of Transport, to David Doyle, deputy secretary general of the Department of Finance, noted that this figure comprised "direct construction cost, risk contingency, fees, insurance and VAT".

In 2003, an RPA estimate that a metro line linking Dublin airport with the city city centre would cost as much as €4.8 billion led to protests from politicians and commentators who believed that the price was too high compared to other European cities, particularly Madrid.

Two years later, Ms O'Neill explained that the more recent figure of €4.58 billion was "the estimated cost that a private bidder would have to spend to build the metro before taking financing costs into consideration", based on the RPA's more economical proposals.

Since then, the estimated cost would have risen due to "construction inflation" as well as the commitment made by Fianna Fáil before last May's general election to route the line underground through Ballymun and the plan to provide an additional station at Parnell Square.

Estimates of how much it will cost to go underground in Ballymun, rather than at surface level along its main street as originally proposed, range from €200 million to €400 million. The cost of the additional station, even with no frills, would be as much again.

In its outline business case for metro, submitted to the Department of Transport in November 2002, the RPA said the benefit-to-cost ratio of a line from Swords to the city centre would range from 0.65:1 to 0.81:1, based on discount rates of 5 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively.

The equivalent benefit-to-cost ratios of a line from Swords to Bray were put at 0.91:1 or 1.14:1. In other words, the only metro that would pay off in economic terms would be a line running all the way from Swords to Bray (assuming a 3.5 per cent discount rate).

By comparison, as RPA chief executive Frank Allen told the department in February 2005, the benefit-to-cost ratio of a city centre link between the two existing Luas lines would be 3.6:1 or three times more than the best scenario painted for the metro line's performance.

But the agency was undeterred by its own projections. "It is important to recognise that standard cost-benefit analysis [CBA] includes only those benefits that can be easily monetised and as a result ignores some of the most important benefits of improved public transport.

"It is largely for this reason that major international transport projects have been justified with CBA results of less than 1:1," it said. However, the only two examples cited in the report were London's Docklands Light Railway (0.5:1) and Jubilee Line extension in London (1:1).

In both cases, according to the RPA, the investment was justified on the basis of wider benefits of regeneration and social inclusion in London's docklands. Similarly, it argued, Dublin's economy, society and environment would benefit from building a metro serving the airport.

But the report conceded that an airport-city centre line "has a relatively poor economic performance". This was to be expected as it included "the most expensive part of metro . . . without yet reaching the range of markets" that would be served by extending it to Bray.

Although the government had decided in January 2002 to proceed with a metro linking Swords with Bray, the southern leg of this route - now partly served by the Sandyford Luas line - was not included in its Transport 21 investment programme unveiled in November 2005.

Instead, a second orbital metro line linking Tallaght with Ballymun, via Clondalkin and Blanchardstown, made it into the €34.4 billion programme - even though none of the documentation released by the Department of Transport shows that it was subjected to any study.

In its outline business case for the Swords-Bray metro line, the RPA estimated that it would carry 59 million passengers per year, of which nearly nine million would be going to or coming from Dublin airport - representing just 20 per cent of all airport-related journeys.

According to the RPA, metro patronage "is highly dependent on the extent of system phasing and implementation of a sustainable urban development strategy which supports public transport" - notably the adoption of "road demand management" (ie, congestion charging).

As its November 2002 report said, the RPA "has not included road demand management in its central economic case. If the Government implements a road demand management strategy before metro opens, it will substantially improve the metro business case".

Even though the projected 59 million passengers a year would be about three times what the Dart carries, the agency predicted that patronage could rise by up to 20 per cent annually and 30 per cent at peak times if road congestion charging was introduced in Dublin.

With the metro expected to cause land values to rise in the area it serves, the RPA said the best way of capturing at least some of these gains to offset costs would be to use Section 49 of the 2000 Planning Act to levy all new developments within a 1km radius of each station.

In its cost-cutting "revised proposal" for the first phase, submitted in June 2003, it drew attention to the proposed savings, saying they "do give rise to certain trade-offs (ie, lower station specification than in metros in cities such as Copenhagen and elsewhere)".

The RPA also pointed out that the introduction of 24-hour working, if permitted in Dublin, would reduce the tunnelling construction timetable by three months, and it recommended "24-hour tunnelling in areas where its impact will be low" - mainly non-residential areas.

"Economic analysis shows the revised metro proposal to be much stronger in cost-benefit terms", according to the agency. The benefit-to-cost ratio had now risen to 1.31:1, compared to the much lower ratios projected in the outline business case of November 2002.

The RPA also proposed that the Government should simply announce an alignment for the airport-city centre route, without prior public consultation, saying that "a Government announcement of the route would reduce the risk of [legal] challenge" in the High Court.

At the time, it was assumed that the proposed metro line would be approved without further delay by the Cabinet sub-committee on infrastructure, so that it could be built over four years from 2006 to 2009 as a public-private partnership (PPP) project.

"Cost estimates were prepared in anticipation of a Government decision in December 2002 and subsequently, following submission of the revised proposal, a Government decision in mid-2003. Estimates need to be adjusted to take account of escalation in capital costs since then".

As the RPA noted in March 2005: "Twenty months have now passed since submission of the revised proposal, and RPA has stood down its engineering, financial and legal consultants. It is estimated that remobilising this team will take four months.

"Adding this remobilisation to the 20 months equates to a 24-month overall delay from when the revised proposal was submitted. This time needs to be added to the programme envisaged in June 2003, thus giving a revised construction end-date of December 2011".

Chris_533976

Underground stations with bare concrete walls, no canopies over entrances, no escalators from street to concourse levels and fewer ticket machines are among the "value engineering" elements of the planned Dublin metro line linking St Stephen's Green with Swords.

Uh oh. Irishness at it again. Well done lads. Build the stations, but screw the passenger with simple things.

Prof_V

A couple of observations:

The benefit-to-cost ratios published in the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport's report were 1.31:1 for the Airport line (as quoted for June 2003 in the article) and 1.59:1 for the Swords extension (alone), both at 5% discount rate. This is for the plan as it stood in late 2003; since then, there've been changes that would increase costs, but also some that would raise benefits (such as interchange with the Maynooth line, better access to the airport, Parnell Square station etc.)

It's not clear what year the patronage figures quoted here were projected for. The above report quotes 26.35 million for a city-Swords line in 2010. The RPA now uses 34 million, presumably for a later year (the report implied a rise of nearly one-third between 2010 and 2016) though additional stations and interchanges, plus other T21 projects, would also drive the number up).

"Just" 20% of air passengers is actually a pretty decent rail share by international standards; even bigger airports with rail services in several directions rarely manage better than 25%.

I suspect the 2002 material reflects, at least in part, the fact that what was envisaged then was closer to a heavy metro. (Also, don't forget this was at the time when it was being confidently predicted that Luas would only carry half the numbers projected).

As for the comparison between Metro and the Luas extension, it's hardly apples-to-apples. Minor extensions, unless they're completely crazy, are always going to have very good cost-benefit performance. And, of course, said extension will also now cost considerably more than would have been predicted two years ago.

gjim

It's not clear what year the patronage figures quoted here were projected for. The above report quotes 26.35 million for a city-Swords line in 2010. The RPA now uses 34 million, presumably for a later year (the report implied a rise of nearly one-third between 2010 and 2016) though additional stations and interchanges, plus other T21 projects, would also drive the number up).

I'd love to see the actual figures and calculations. I mean, even 34 million journeys at 2 euros operational profit a pop (and that's being extremely generous) isn't going to make any sort of dint in a 5 billion capital cost financially.

As for the comparison between Metro and the Luas extension, it's hardly apples-to-apples. Minor extensions, unless they're completely crazy, are always going to have very good cost-benefit performance. And, of course, said extension will also now cost considerably more than would have been predicted two years ago.

Yeah but there's a basic flaw in this analysis (for extensions) as it ignores the loss of utility on the rest of the line. For example, the Green line is now basically jammed to the extent that it's almost useless for commuters going into town at rush hour if you live closer than Cowper. Extending the line will, in isolation, be justified in terms of the cost and benefit of the extension. However, it won't take into account that the line will now be useless to people any closer than Windy Arbour.

I hope their analysis isn't as simplistic as this but it would explain why the priority seems to be on extensions rather than new lines. For example, adding 8km to the Sandyford end of the Green line might cost marginally less than building a new 8km line somewhat in parallel, say through Harold's cross toward Templeogue but the latter would have the capacity to carry twice as many passengers in and out of town than the former.

Prof_V

gjim wrote:

I'd love to see the actual figures and calculations. I mean, even 34 million journeys at 2 euros operational profit a pop (and that's being extremely generous) isn't going to make any sort of dint in a 5 billion capital cost financially.

That's not quite what economic (as opposed to financial) CBA is about; essentially it's comparing the benefits to society - journey time savings, reduced congestion and accidents, (sometimes) reduced pollution, etc. etc. with the capital and operating costs of a project. Very few rail projects - essentially just extremely minor schemes plus a few special cases like certain bulk freight lines - will cover their capital costs from fare income. (Of course, the fact that DART was expected to do this is another story...)

McSpud

gjim wrote:

Yeah but there's a basic flaw in this analysis (for extensions) as it ignores the loss of utility on the rest of the line. For example, the Green line is now basically jammed to the extent that it's almost useless for commuters going into town at rush hour if you live closer than Cowper. Extending the line will, in isolation, be justified in terms of the cost and benefit of the extension. However, it won't take into account that the line will now be useless to people any closer than Windy Arbour.

Apparently by not including the extension to Swords the RPA are hiding those costs but also not recognising that the Metro as currently planned will not match demand as only similar capacity to the Luas Green.

Iarnroid Eireann could just extend the Dart & Arrow services but then how could the RPA justify their jobs with nothing to manage?

:rolleyes:

Idbatterim

€5 billion! €5 billion!, i think that figure is so insane, so incomprehensible that it might as well be €10 billion, €15 billion. For that amount why not just run a non stop bus service with flyovers etc into the city centre via the port tunnel to connect to connolly, from where you can make a connection? Heres an idea stop messing around with Dublin Airport, build a completely new airport from scrath somewhere in North County Dublin on the coast I.e no need for planes to fly over land. Also fuel could be transported by tanker ships directly to the airport. Also the council currently have a cap of 35 mpa on the airport, when T2 is completed the DAA want to reduce the capacity of T1 from 25 million to 15 million and want to spend several hundred million to do this!!! Extend the dart line to the new airport, it would also have access to the M1, then with the interconnector, you could travel from the airport to connolly, stephens green and heuston all the major current and future interchanges. Then rezone the thouands of acres of Airport and surrounding area that cant be developed due to the airport, into retail, industrial and residential developments, worth probably a figure thats almost incomprehensible. In alot of ways the proposed metro is being built to serve the airport, Say T2 is to cost €1 billion, the metro at €5 billion will probably cost more to build than a new adequate airport on a greenfield site!

therecklessone

Idbatterim wrote:

Heres an idea stop messing around with Dublin Airport, build a completely new airport from scrath somewhere in North County Dublin on the coast I.e no need for planes to fly over land.

I'm guessing you haven't thought that one through...

luckat

It'd be handy if they'd just run the 16A more often while they're building the dratted thing.

Last time I was on a plane I got the Airlink (too early in the morning for the 16A) out, and on the way back I came out and stood at the 16A stop, only to discover that there wasn't one for 50 minutes. Bleagh. I'll go back to driving to the airport.

Idbatterim

what havent I thought out the recklessone?

therecklessone

Idbatterim wrote:

what havent I thought out the recklessone?

Lets say for example you build your fictional airport. You put a runway in that is on an east/west axis, so that arriving flights can approach over the sea and touchdown as close to the coast as possible. Except for two small problems...

1. You will have departures...they need to use the same runway as the arrivals...they need to depart into the wind...if the wind favours arrivals landing from the east, it favours departures to the west, i.e. over land.

2. The wind changes, as it has a tendency to do. Now the wind favours the easterly runway, and you have aircraft flying downwind legs over land before turning on to finals.

McSpud

luckat wrote:

Last time I was on a plane I got the Airlink (too early in the morning for the 16A) out, and on the way back I came out and stood at the 16A stop, only to discover that there wasn't one for 50 minutes. Bleagh. I'll go back to driving to the airport.

I attempted to use the Airlink just the once from O'Connell Street & never again.

* Took me 5-10 minutes to find the stop but (lets just that down to me) no bus went past me
* Timetable said was due at something like 7.30 but it never arrived & by 7.50 & no sign of bus i gave up & got the taxi.

It might be acceptable for regular buses to be late but I assumed an air link would need to be on tighter schedule as 20-25 minutes will cause people to miss departures.

:mad:

BrianD

The RPA are effectively CIE Mk II and fast becoming another bloated tax payer funded quango.

The articles in todays papers are interesting as they finally confirmed to those who could not see it:

Metro is just a fancy LUAS. I can't understand why the RPA can't call them LUAS lines - though I presume that Metro sounds sexier and more promising.

how can those in the RPA justify their overpaid jobs by coming up with a glorified tramline that won't go to Swords (probably), has poor linkages with other tranport modes and is going to cost €5bn?!?

Even if they do bring Metro North they are talking about a Swords-Bray metro. Odd last time I looked Bray already had a DART link to the city centre. So the RPA believe that duplication is a good thing?

No frills stations? What's that about? How can culling a few ticket machines and escalators be a saving on a project that is already costing billions?!? Once again the RPA are demonstrating that they have no idea how to develop and manage a project.

Though not the RPA's fault it is incredible that the Government has sat on an integrated DART project since 2004 (or in reality 1984). We could by now have a 3 line DART service in operation.

KC61

McSpud wrote:

I attempted to use the Airlink just the once from O'Connell Street & never again.

* Took me 5-10 minutes to find the stop but (lets just that down to me) no bus went past me
* Timetable said was due at something like 7.30 but it never arrived & by 7.50 & no sign of bus i gave up & got the taxi.

It might be acceptable for regular buses to be late but I assumed an air link would need to be on tighter schedule as 20-25 minutes will cause people to miss departures.

:mad:

That's very odd as I've never experienced anything like that with the 747/748, and I'm a fairly regular user of same. They tend to be very reliable, and the inbound journey is now virtually guaranteed to take less than 25 minutes to O'Connell Street through the use of the Port Tunnel.

KC61

luckat wrote:

It'd be handy if they'd just run the 16A more often while they're building the dratted thing.

Last time I was on a plane I got the Airlink (too early in the morning for the 16A) out, and on the way back I came out and stood at the 16A stop, only to discover that there wasn't one for 50 minutes. Bleagh. I'll go back to driving to the airport.

There is also the 41 service from the Airport to City Centre, covering most of the 16A northside route. If you were going to south Dublin, it is possible to take the 747 to O'Connell Street and catch up with a departed 16A or catch a 16.

Winters

First of all, the the poster who wanted to move Dublin airport... I think you'll find it's already in North County Dublin... and you would have to go much further afield to find any sort of available, suitable and big enough land bank to cater for 35+ million passengers.

Moving Dublin airport is ludicrous. Just because it's poorly laid out doesnt mean it should be moved.

As for the metro, the Porto Metro is the example that the RPA are using and seeing as the frequency shall range from one tram every 40 seconds/3mins etc then people shall not be waiting in stations that long. Look at the Porto stations for an example or what they are proposing.

jrar

Underground stations with bare concrete walls, no canopies over entrances, no escalators from street to concourse levels and fewer ticket machines are among the "value engineering" elements of the planned Dublin metro line linking St Stephen's Green with Swords.



Yep, why do it right first time when you can always go back and re-do it in the future at a cost which turns out to be many multiples of the original.....it sounds like the rail equivalent of the M50 junctions !

mickoneill30

jrar wrote:

Underground stations with bare concrete walls, no canopies over entrances, no escalators from street to concourse levels and fewer ticket machines are among the "value engineering" elements of the planned Dublin metro line linking St Stephen's Green with Swords.

Any idea where you're getting that info from. It would be nice to give links when you're making statement like that.

From http://www.rpa.ie/?id=327

Q. Will there be escalators and lifts in the stations?

A. Yes. All stations will be fully accessible. There will be lifts from street level to platform level in all stations and escalators where required.

Winters

The mined stations will have escalators and the open box constructed stations will more than likely have steps. Every station shall also have lifts, that's law. It all depends on the depth from the surface though.

The RPA are just simplifying the station designs. We, the tax payers, cant give out about the cost as well as demanding ornate luxurious stations!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Esta%C3%A7%C3%A3o_trindade_Metro_do_Porto.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Porto_metro_cdm.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_Metro

Interesting to note:

As of 2007, the total cost of Porto Metro mass transit public transport system stands on 3,500 million euros - over 1% of Portugal's GDP. The first phase of the project alone, which was led by the mayors of several Grande Porto (Greater Porto) municipalities including Valentim Loureiro as a chairman of the state-owned company, was 140% more expensive than initially planned which means a slippage of over 1,500 million euros. The Porto Metro state-owned company has reported losses every year, reaching a record loss of 122 million euros in 2006

KC61

mickoneill30 wrote:

Any idea where you're getting that info from. It would be nice to give links when you're making statement like that.

From http://www.rpa.ie/?id=327

Q. Will there be escalators and lifts in the stations?

A. Yes. All stations will be fully accessible. There will be lifts from street level to platform level in all stations and escalators where required.

The lack of escalators etc. was in the Irish Times article yesterday.

MarkoP11

It think it is very important to note Frank McDonald is working off information requested under FOI in November 2005 which was only recently released, a lot has changed since

It is important to note there where 4 distinct stages in the metro

1. Gold plated 2002 version which had a publically admitted cost of 4.8 billion
2. The cut down version after the panic of seeing the 4.8 billion one, this is the one Frank is chasing from 2004
3. The one put out to public consultation which is a lot more like option 1 than 2, option 3 is somewhere between 1 and 2 in terms of specification. Most of the capacity issues are solved here
4. What is being built with the better interchange at Drumcondra and O'Connell Bridge, brings us to a fairly decent modern metro with good interchange

End result is we are back at the 5 billion tag, but this is a PPP so the actual cost in real terms is about 2 billion but the cost to the state over the PPP is about 2.5 times that

I will shamelessly plug the fact this has been discussed before and I know it caused some serious trouble in the DoT and the RPA though there was a sly grin down in IE as a result.

gjim

Hi Prof_V. Yes you are right regarding "economic" CBA. However, I'm always suspicious of such numbers. There are presented as hard scientific data but in reality they are a distillation a whole load of guesses, estimates and figures pulled out someone's ass.

With a capital cost for this project of 5 billion and the given projected passenger numbers, each passenger trip would be required to deliver over 8 euro in economic benefits a trip to cover the cost of capital at 5% (in reality, if a PPP is involve the cost of capital will be double this). Now if you're the RPA it's in your interest to factor in as many benefits as possible. Even taking two obvious benefits: time savings for passengers and the environmental savings how are these quantified? There is so much leeway in coming up with figures for these benefits, the result of such analysis, in isolation, is pretty meaningless.

The only way to ensure the figures aren't complete nonsense is to use the very same analysis to look at the benefits of similar or comparable projects. Given the Luas cost 800 million and handles over 20 million journeys a year, I can't see the airport metro comparing very well. If this analysis supports the 5 billion euro metro line, then I suspect the same analysis would support spending 4 billion on the two disconnected Luas lines which we know for sure is nonsense. How about even using the same analysis to compare this metro with the old idea of the DART spur, costed a few years back at 400 million? Or even a simple high frequency bus service going via the Port Tunnel? Given the option of the single Metro north project or increasing the size of the Luas network 6 fold, which offers superiour benefits given the costs would be roughly similar?

Slice

I think the lack of consistency in planning arising from continued political interference is the main point of the article. It's an unfortunate combination of over-sensitivity to ever-changing public opinion and a propensity to let the planning of major infrastructure proceed based on narrow or ill-informed considerations that's the issue with Government. It's why 3 years after the opening of the Luas we are still looking at the exact same set of circumstances with Metro that caused Luas to spend more time on the drawing board than under construction. Remember how first they were meant to link up, then they weren't, then the Green line was meant to go underground, then it wasn't and now it's going to be linked up. There is no excusing this type of carry-on at the expense of a city that's coming to a standstill and what's worse is that there is no accountability for those who are causing all the delays.

Here is today's IT editorial;

Metro project raises questions

The disclosure in yesterday's Irish Times that Dublin's first metro line, from St Stephen's Green to Swords, will cost at least €5 billion and probably much more by the time it is finished is quite stunning. The 17km route, much of it underground, would be the biggest single investment in public infrastructure in the history of the State.

Yet the staggering price tag for Metro North has only surfaced because one of the figures in documents released to this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act was not blacked out sufficiently to obscure it. And this was nearly two years after the request for access to the documents was first made, a day after the government unveiled its Transport 21 programme in November 2005.

Serious questions must be asked about the priority being assigned to the metro project, as opposed to other schemes in the €34.4 billion investment programme, such as the strategically important underground rail interconnector between Heuston Station and Spencer Dock. The real danger is that Metro North and Metro West, which would link Tallaght with Ballymun via Clondalkin and Blanchardstown, will gobble up so much money that there won't be enough left to fund the interconnector, which alone offers the prospect of integrating Dublin's disparate transport "system" by linking suburban rail services with the Dart and Luas lines.

The cost-benefit analysis of Metro North, as a stand-alone project, is not impressive. Even with "value engineering", such as the no-frills stations currently proposed, the benefit-to-cost ratio is put at 1.31:1 - nearly three times lower than the equivalent calculation by the Railway Procurement Agency of a city centre link between the Tallaght and Sandyford Luas lines. Yet why should Dublin settle for underground stations with bare concrete walls, no canopies over entrances and only a lift and staircase from street to concourse levels? If the metro is to be built, it should be built well. As architect Norman Foster said in a recent television programme on his breathtaking Millau Viaduct in France, the things that make connections - bridges, airport terminals, stations - are more important than buildings in forming people's perceptions of the public realm.

Metro North would only make sound economic sense if it continued southwards from St Stephen's Green to Ranelagh, Sandyford, Cherrywood and Bray - in effect, supplanting the Luas Green Line. Pursuing it as a discrete project is highly questionable, particularly as it would do little or nothing for people living on the extremities of Dublin's commuter belt. And it has never been adequately explained why a metro is needed at all rather than, say, an extensive light rail network - such as in Bordeaux, where the city has been transformed by a tramway system that will end up costing only €1 billion.

Whatever about the sensitivities associated with public-private partnership (PPP) projects, the public is entitled to know, at least in ballpark terms, what major pieces of infrastructure are likely to cost. It is wrong for the Government to keep taxpayers in the dark.

Chris_533976

Very good article that IT journal one.

MarkoP11

Wonder what the fuss is about the 5 billion, its been in the public domain since 2004, its here http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/Committees29thDail/jct/metro-report/document1.htm

Frank McDonald as always does his homework and getting the exact numbers on paper is always good for the public, the fact it took 21 months to get the paperwork is shocking, the DoT are great at taking every last day in the FOI process

Metro capital cost is about 2 billion, its the financing which makes it look like 5 billion

ballooba

I've experience dealing with the RPA. They spend money like it's going out of fashion. It was the best christmas ever in my house. In September. Jokers.

niall2j

MarkoP11 wrote:

End result is we are back at the 5 billion tag, but this is a PPP so the actual cost in real terms is about 2 billion but the cost to the state over the PPP is about 2.5 times that

Can I ask, if the mark up is so great for pursuing a PPP style delivery of the project, then what is the case for doing so? Would it not make more sense for the government to fund the full cost themselves and simply contracting out the operation of Metro North thus significantly reducing the overall cost from €5bn or so?

Or would this provide an unacceptable drain on their available capital?

Slice

PPPs were brought in at the insistance of the PDs based on idealogical grounds; given the disaster of the PPP for the refurbishment of the London Underground and the demise of the PDs is it not time we put this little puppy to sleep??

Prof_V

gjim wrote:

Now if you're the RPA it's in your interest to factor in as many benefits as possible. Even taking two obvious benefits: time savings for passengers and the environmental savings how are these quantified? There is so much leeway in coming up with figures for these benefits, the result of such analysis, in isolation, is pretty meaningless.

The approach is more-or-less standardised (not yet to the same degree in Ireland as it is in, say, the UK, though). The relevant document is http://www.transport.ie/upload/general/5830-1.pdf. However, as this is dated 2004, it won't have applied to some of the RPA's early analyses, though I think there was some standardisation before then, particularly in respect of values of time.

The only way to ensure the figures aren't complete nonsense is to use the very same analysis to look at the benefits of similar or comparable projects. Given the Luas cost 800 million and handles over 20 million journeys a year, I can't see the airport metro comparing very well.

It's difficult to compare a journey on one system directly to a journey on the other. Metro is likely to have longer average journeys and higher time savings even for journeys of equivalent length. Remember too that the Metro will have a minimal permanent effect on road capacity compared with Luas, so there'll be a lot less in the way of traffic delays due to the system. This can be a significant disadvantage to street-running rail lines.

Incidentally, I think the methodology is back-validated, as far as possible, in the ex-post assessment of completed projects (like Luas), but I'm unsure of this.

I do accept your point about cost-benefit methodology affecting the result; for instance, the Cork suburban rail project had a benefit-cost ratio of 1.11 in the Strategic Rail Review but 2.4 in the parallel IÉ feasibility study. This is one of many reasons why you can't use CBA alone to make a decision.

Just to stress again, too, that larger projects tend to have lower benefit-cost ratios. 1.31:1 isn't stellar by those standards (though, on the same figures, going to Swords would raise the ratio somewhat), but it's hardly poor.

Prof_V

Slice wrote:

PPPs were brought in at the insistance of the PDs based on idealogical grounds; given the disaster of the PPP for the refurbishment of the London Underground and the demise of the PDs is it not time we put this little puppy to sleep??

I'm inclined to agree with you as far as this particular project is concerned, but I'm not sure how applicable the London Underground example is. The PPPs (more than one for different sections of line) on the Docklands Light Railway, which are more directly comparable as greenfield projects, work better, though I've never seen any proof they were cheaper than public procurement.

dowlingm

MarkoP11 - is the IE Northern Line option to the airport still available, and if so for how much?