Dublin Metrolink (just Metrolink posts here -see post #1 )

Amirani

The Oslo system for those unfamiliar:

strassenwo!f

Aard wrote: »

Huh? Not affilliated at all. The first I heard of it was this thread.

Sorry Aard. I got the impression from your pithy posts that you were aware of the logic behind this three-line proposal for Dublin. This is not a common arrangement on metro networks.

Rock of Gibraltar

Dublin Airport to Heuston is a good idea but only as an addition to the current Metro North proposal, a heavy rail link that is continuing onto the Northern line to Belfast. That way we could have a situation where you could get to Dublin Airport from most rail stations in the country with no more than one change, or none from the two other largest population centres if Cork-Heuston-Airport-Belfast services were run. In my opinion that should be the objective of any airport rail link.

The current Metro North plan is great and needed as a commuter route and for getting around the city but it won't be as useful for air travelers as it is hyped up to be. It's also going to be a real pain for commuters mixing with tourists with large bags and suitcases.

Aard

strassenwo!f wrote: »

Sorry Aard. I got the impression from your pithy posts that you were aware of the logic behind this three-line proposal for Dublin. This is not a common arrangement on metro networks.

Pithy posts maybe, not for having an understanding of the proposal, but for being familiar with metro systems around the world. It is indeed an uncommon arrangement. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would like to have seen some sort of Environmental Assessment for the proposal. In fact that goes for any major transport infrastructure in Dublin. I don't have any opinion on the Cormac Rabitte plan, other than that it has produced a pretty map.

xper

This proposal, as presented, is just advanced crayon drawing centred around the author's inexplicable fixation that the Phoenix Park Tunnel must be incorporated as a centrepiece into Dublin's future passenger rail network.

It's got serious practical and strategic issues...

It proposes that separate tracks (and therefore platforms) be built along the existing Heuston-Adamstown and Docklands-Coolmine alignments. There simply isn't any room for this work without massive and expensive CPO-ing of neighbouring property (and it simply doesn't acknowledge the expansion of the Kildare line to 3/4 tracks). You have to ask why this would be required. The scheme appears to be at pains to keep its operations separate from Irish Rail, leaving longer distance commuter services to the incumbent body. Are we to have separate platforms as well? This smacks of cherry-picking a more profitable short-distance commuter market by this consortium over integrated services for the actual commuters. This is not what we need. The existing lines, if the heavy rail gauge is used, should have sufficient capacity to run traffic from multiple services at a frequency that would meet demand.

The Phoenix Park Tunnel is not the panacea to Dublin's commuter rail problems. For an urban line, it serves relatively few homes or destinations along its length and is relatively inaccessible. It runs perpendicular to the primary commuting direction (in/out of the city centre). The location and configuration of the junctions with other rail lines at either end, especially the southern end, is problematic. It wasn't built as a passenger line and it shows. While there is an obvious advantage to giving a new use of an existing under utilised piece of infrastructure, that new use has to make sense and not be implemented simply because you can. While the cost of using an existing tunnel might appear low, the benefits may also be low compared to the more expensive alternative. The PPT might have a future use as part of a supplementary circle route - these have their place - but it is simply not positioned to form part of a main transit artery.

The proposed running of the M2 line south of the PPT is a convoluted engineering nightmare. From exiting the PPT it needs to separate from the rail line (which is curving westwards), cross the Liffey, enter a tunnel portal and join with the M3 line before a Heuston stop followed heading south toward a St James stop then heading east towards the south city centre. This maybe doable with a light-rail solution (its ridiculous that the entire proposal doesn't make it clear what type of system we are talking about) but with the Heuston stop located some distance from the Irish Rail and Luas platforms. I think in practice you would just cut out the St James nonsense I suspect the proposal only includes ST James as a slightly desperate afterthought to include another trip generator having dropped the Mater stop that Metro North would have (ironically, the one bit of Metro North that has been partially constructed is the Mater station box).

The scheme proposes a significant interchange station be built at Glasnevin which would need to incorporate separate platforms for lines M1, M2 (grade seperated from the rest), Luas BXD and the Maynooth/Sligo line while incorporating the split of the M2/PPT rail lines and presumably retaining the existing junctions for the PPT/Maynooth/Drumcondra and Canal rail lines ... not to mention the Royal Canal. There is probably just about enough land available to actually do this if the Metro platforms aren't too long but it wouldn't be cheap. Local access to this station and local population density is again a minor issue.

The diversion of services away from the Metro North alignment at Griffith Ave west to Glasnevin, south to Heuston and then east back to St Stephen's Green really is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Instead of continuing south for 3.5 km and serving both the north and south city centre, we get a 7-8km tour of the city centre outskirts before entering the south city centre via a sector that has relatively few employers and trip generators.

The proposal is deliberately misleading by comparing the areas it would serve with the stations solely on the Dart Underground/Metro North lines. It should be comparing it to the complete network that would/could emerge following the construction of the latter with through-city-centre DART services extended to Balbriggan, Maynooth and Hazelhatch. The only area covered this proposal that couldn't be covered by a future DART/MetroNorth network is the Blanchardstown spur (and that's assuming that it couldn't provided by heavy rail?). The Swords-Malahide line could be easily catered for by a Metro North extension if desired. Note An Bord Pleanála truncated the Metro North line at Swords as the initial full extent further north was considered premature.

The claimed costs and delivery timescales in this proposal are completely unsubstantiated. The figures have been plucked Anglo-Irish style for all we know. The fact that the lobbying, consultation, design and planning process for this proposal are in the future (and we all know how that goes in this country) while the DART/Metro North schemes are at railway order stage is completely and unrealistically dismissed.

And I really don't like or trust this attitude:
"Metro Dublin capital will be provided by consortium members. Importantly, at all times of its development and operation the Exchequer and the Local Authorities will accrue net income - it is affordable. Details will be provided to appropriate bodies"
Well, one of those appropriate bodies is the public. If a group of individuals and companies are going to lobby government about the provision of rail transport for the largest city in the country, then we need transparency as to who's involved and how funding is going to be provided.

cabrasnake

xper wrote: »

This proposal, as presented, is just advanced crayon drawing centred around the author's inexplicable fixation that the Phoenix Park Tunnel must be incorporated as a centrepiece into Dublin's future passenger rail network.

It's got serious practical and strategic issues...

It proposes that separate tracks (and therefore platforms) be built along the existing Heuston-Adamstown and Docklands-Coolmine alignments. There simply isn't any room for this work without massive and expensive CPO-ing of neighbouring property (and it simply doesn't acknowledge the expansion of the Kildare line to 3/4 tracks). You have to ask why this would be required. The scheme appears to be at pains to keep its operations separate from Irish Rail, leaving longer distance commuter services to the incumbent body. Are we to have separate platforms as well? This smacks of cherry-picking a more profitable short-distance commuter market by this consortium over integrated services for the actual commuters. This is not what we need. The existing lines, if the heavy rail gauge is used, should have sufficient capacity to run traffic from multiple services at a frequency that would meet demand.

The Phoenix Park Tunnel is not the panacea to Dublin's commuter rail problems. For an urban line, it serves relatively few homes or destinations along its length and is relatively inaccessible. It runs perpendicular to the primary commuting direction (in/out of the city centre). The location and configuration of the junctions with other rail lines at either end, especially the southern end, is problematic. It wasn't built as a passenger line and it shows. While there is an obvious advantage to giving a new use of an existing under utilised piece of infrastructure, that new use has to make sense and not be implemented simply because you can. While the cost of using an existing tunnel might appear low, the benefits may also be low compared to the more expensive alternative. The PPT might have a future use as part of a supplementary circle route - these have their place - but it is simply not positioned to form part of a main transit artery.

The proposed running of the M2 line south of the PPT is a convoluted engineering nightmare. From exiting the PPT it needs to separate from the rail line (which is curving westwards), cross the Liffey, enter a tunnel portal and join with the M3 line before a Heuston stop followed heading south toward a St James stop then heading east towards the south city centre. This maybe doable with a light-rail solution (its ridiculous that the entire proposal doesn't make it clear what type of system we are talking about) but with the Heuston stop located some distance from the Irish Rail and Luas platforms. I think in practice you would just cut out the St James nonsense I suspect the proposal only includes ST James as a slightly desperate afterthought to include another trip generator having dropped the Mater stop that Metro North would have (ironically, the one bit of Metro North that has been partially constructed is the Mater station box).

The scheme proposes a significant interchange station be built at Glasnevin which would need to incorporate separate platforms for lines M1, M2 (grade seperated from the rest), Luas BXD and the Maynooth/Sligo line while incorporating the split of the M2/PPT rail lines and presumably retaining the existing junctions for the PPT/Maynooth/Drumcondra and Canal rail lines ... not to mention the Royal Canal. There is probably just about enough land available to actually do this if the Metro platforms aren't too long but it wouldn't be cheap. Local access to this station and local population density is again a minor issue.

The diversion of services away from the Metro North alignment at Griffith Ave west to Glasnevin, south to Heuston and then east back to St Stephen's Green really is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Instead of continuing south for 3.5 km and serving both the north and south city centre, we get a 7-8km tour of the city centre outskirts before entering the south city centre via a sector that has relatively few employers and trip generators.

The proposal is deliberately misleading by comparing the areas it would serve with the stations solely on the Dart Underground/Metro North lines. It should be comparing it to the complete network that would/could emerge following the construction of the latter with through-city-centre DART services extended to Balbriggan, Maynooth and Hazelhatch. The only area covered this proposal that couldn't be covered by a future DART/MetroNorth network is the Blanchardstown spur (and that's assuming that it couldn't provided by heavy rail?). The Swords-Malahide line could be easily catered for by a Metro North extension if desired. Note An Bord Pleanála truncated the Metro North line at Swords as the initial full extent further north was considered premature.

The claimed costs and delivery timescales in this proposal are completely unsubstantiated. The figures have been plucked Anglo-Irish style for all we know. The fact that the lobbying, consultation, design and planning process for this proposal are in the future (and we all know how that goes in this country) while the DART/Metro North schemes are at railway order stage is completely and unrealistically dismissed.

And I really don't like or trust this attitude:
"Metro Dublin capital will be provided by consortium members. Importantly, at all times of its development and operation the Exchequer and the Local Authorities will accrue net income - it is affordable. Details will be provided to appropriate bodies"
Well, one of those appropriate bodies is the public. If a group of individuals and companies are going to lobby government about the provision of rail transport for the largest city in the country, then we need transparency as to who's involved and how funding is going to be provided.

Impressively sensible post which highlights the numerous fallacies in the Dublin Metro proposal. Absolutely impossible to construct as they allege.

However, as soon as the residents of the Central mental hosp get their internet turned on tonight await the barrage of "But but but whhhhhhy are IR ignoring the 8th wonder of the world the PPT - the true solution to all transport problems in Dublin and even Europe"

I give it 30 mins before the 1st PPT fetishist mouth foamer gets on to this demolition of their pipedreams...........

iDave

From looking at that map the Blue M2 line looks like it has the potential to be a complete orbital line. If it terminates in Malahide why not continue down the existing line to Docklands and then along the Red M3 line to St Stephens Green which is the other terminus for the Blue M2

Sam Russell

If it is all built to take Dart rolling stock, it will allow quite a lot of combinations or routes, providing the system is designed with appropriate turnbacks. Currently, I suspect, IR have too much rolling stock.

The old Southern Region of British Rail(ways) ran a system like that, but the London Underground did not. It allows that traffic can follow demand, three trains an hour to Ballykillmore* but only one an hour to the smaller Ballykillbeg*, routing the trains as required. Train sizes can also be based on demand.




*fictitious town names - Ballykillmore is large while Ballykillbeg is small.

Victor

xper wrote: »

The scheme proposes a significant interchange station be built at Glasnevin ... Local access to this station and local population density is again a minor issue.

Plenty of 'bodies' in the neighbourhood.

"Metro Dublin capital will be provided by consortium members. Importantly, at all times of its development and operation the Exchequer and the Local Authorities will accrue net income"

I wonder how much they will be charging the NTA and Irish Rail though.

In essence all this is deliver more people to Heuston / St. James's Hospital at the cost of missing the city centre / adding 10 minutes to everyone's journey.

Victor

cabrasnake wrote: »

However, as soon as the residents of the Central mental hosp get their internet turned on tonight await the barrage of "But but but whhhhhhy are IR ignoring the 8th wonder of the world the PPT - the true solution to all transport problems in Dublin and even Europe"

I give it 30 mins before the 1st PPT fetishist mouth foamer gets on to this demolition of their pipedreams...........

No need for comments like this

Moderator

murphaph

I don't see the advantage of the plan to be honest. It's simply not cheap or easy to build metro systems, but they are essential for modern cities to function in a way that grants some semblance of quality of life to its citizens.

The problem remains in Dublin that Dubliners don't shout loud enough for their interests, while other groups elsewhere do, so Dublin generated wealth is spent on projects outside Dublin (which I'm ok with to an extent, but not to the current extent which essentially starves Dublin of genuinely important and missing infrastructure). Dublin generates more than enough wealth to construct both the Interconnector and MN as planned. It is then a question of politics as to why these things remain unbuilt.

Dublin doesn't need any crazy alternatives to the pretty decent plans that already exist. As Victor correctly points out, this proposal essentially delays regular commuters by 20 mins every day for ever after. Add up all the lost productivity over the life time of the infrastructure and it rapidly makes sense to build the direct route as planned and which would bring people where they want to go as quickly as possible.

Sam Russell

Victor wrote: »

Plenty of 'bodies' in the neighbourhood.

I wonder how much they will be charging the NTA and Irish Rail though.

In essence all this is deliver more people to Heuston / St. James's Hospital at the cost of missing the city centre / adding 10 minutes to everyone's journey.

Looking at this map, there does not appear to be any particular advantage over Metro North. The interconnector is there, but the link from Malahide appears to provide nothing new that an extension of MN to Swords would not provide. A better link would be Howth Junction to the airport, which would be open countryside and close to high density areas. If all of this is done in Irish guage the a lot of integration would result. The links to Heuston could be done in addition to MN. Very little is being added as far as I can, with quite a lot missing from current plans.

FreudianSlippers

TheBandicoot wrote: »

What's the point? The government HAS. NO. MONEY. Unless this private group can show a plan that costs the state absolutely nothing, they're wasting their time.

Totally incorrect - the EIB has already earmarked considerable sums for this project. It just needs to be a PPP

Idbatterim

Its a bloody awful shame that the s**t didnt hit the fan, after these projects has been started!

cabrasnake

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Totally incorrect - the EIB has already earmarked considerable sums for this project. It just needs to be a PPP

Now you know why he's called Bandy Coot.

Grandeeod

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Totally incorrect - the EIB has already earmarked considerable sums for this project. It just needs to be a PPP

And you are not totally correct either. A PPP still requires the state to make substantial payments over a period of time and herein is where the money is tight.

cgcsb

My hope is that by the time the next election rolls around in 2015, Dublin has a directly elected mayor and construction of Metro and DARTu has begun. If that's the case I would say FG will win most Dublin constituencies quite soundly, I hope they think that too and see the political value of these projects.

TheBandicoot

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

Totally incorrect - the EIB has already earmarked considerable sums for this project. It just needs to be a PPP

I don't understand then- why isn't it(the RPA MN) being built right now then if there is money for it?

handlemaster

Defo vote winner alright.. not much to lose . Lots of construction jobs and full time jobs after

Grandeeod

cgcsb wrote: »

My hope is that by the time the next election rolls around in 2015, Dublin has a directly elected mayor and construction of Metro and DARTu has begun. If that's the case I would say FG will win most Dublin constituencies quite soundly, I hope they think that too and see the political value of these projects.

handlemaster wrote: »

Defo vote winner alright.. not much to lose . Lots of construction jobs and full time jobs after

I don't believe transport projects in Dublin are vote grabbers. Jobs yes. But while health and stealth taxes are a problem, there will still be considerable resistance.

murphaph

It's a potential vote loser outside the greater Dublin area. People there still often resent Dublin getting anything.

handlemaster

Grandeeod wrote: »

I don't believe transport projects in Dublin are vote grabbers. Jobs yes. But while health and stealth taxes are a problem, there will still be considerable resistance.

Not every voter is o co concerned immediately with health you may over rate that one also passengers pay fares

handlemaster

murphaph wrote: »

It's a potential vote loser outside the greater Dublin area. People there still often resent Dublin getting anything.

What is a vote winner is what concerns the voters area. Good transport links are a must. What of the people who live outside dublin need to travel up for chemo for example or other essential services every one benefits from good transport services . 1.5 million people live in Dublin its our capital city its about time to sort this out

Grandeeod

handlemaster wrote: »

Not every voter is o co concerned immediately with health you may over rate that one also passengers pay fares

MN, DART Underground or luas were never major parts of any election manifesto. While Dublin was overwhelmed by gridlock transport campaigns struggled to gain any significant political support beyond being used to beat the Government by the opposition. Governments have presided over transport fiascos and went unscathed. I believe you underestimate the interest the electorate place in things like public transport projects. IMO the only aspect of public transport in the GDA that is a potential banana skin for Government are the rising prices.

The is a malaise among people re MN, DU etc. Perhaps a dedicated Mayor with power, for Dublin would be a good thing.

SimonQuinlank

handlemaster wrote: »

What is a vote winner is what concerns the voters area. Good transport links are a must. What of the people who live outside dublin need to travel up for chemo for example or other essential services every one benefits from good transport services . 1.5 million people live in Dublin its our capital city its about time to sort this out

Some country relatives I have would be perfectly happy to be inconvenienced just to spite Dublin out of something useful like MN.

handlemaster

SimonQuinlank wrote: »

Some country relatives I have would be perfectly happy to be inconvenienced just to spite Dublin out of something useful like MN.

Its a false belief a strong efficiently run city with a goof quality life benefits all.

Grandeeod

handlemaster wrote: »

Its a false belief a strong efficiently run city with a goof quality life benefits all.

You are completely ignoring Irish political and social life and peddling a worthy but utterly irrelevant vision in an Irish context. I agree with your sentiments, but feel you are a bit naive.

Red Crow

Metro North is a load of nonsense. It would be a colossal waste of money. No government is going to touch such a huge waste of public expenditure.

It's pie in the sky stuff that wasn't feasible during the Celtic Tiger and isn't feasible now.

Grandeeod

Red Crow wrote: »

Metro North is a load of nonsense. It would be a colossal waste of money. No government is going to touch such a huge waste of public expenditure.

It's pie in the sky stuff that wasn't feasible during the Celtic Tiger and isn't feasible now.

I would have to strongly disagree with that. Leave the Celtic Tiger out of things and lets do something worthwhile in a normal environment, not driven by egos. However I completely understand your viewpoint and perhaps why you feel that way. There has been a complete failure to present Dublin with a radical transport plan based on improving the quality of lives as opposed to flinging money at stuff and parading it around the place as a "vote for us" load of crap.

Aard

Red Crow wrote: »

Metro North is a load of nonsense. It would be a colossal waste of money. No government is going to touch such a huge waste of public expenditure.

It's pie in the sky stuff that wasn't feasible during the Celtic Tiger and isn't feasible now.

It didn't have planning permission during the Celtic Tiger. The application for RO was only lodged in 2008.