LUAS Citywest Extension Open

LXFlyer

spacetweek wrote: »

I've used it:

Starting from Belgard, it runs alongside a new road under construction. Not much to see.
As we passed Cheeverstown, there was a bonfire burning on some waste ground. Land along here is dead land behind houses and needs to be tidied up: the ground levelled, grass planted, rubbish taken away, graffiti painted over.
Further on, at Citywest, they had done that. The land between the line and the backs of the houses had been treated just like I described above. Noted the wide space to the north between the Citywest buildings and the station. They may eventually build more buildings there.
Fortunestown Shopping Centre was unremarkable. Next the line winds alongside an apartment block, I'm surprised they put it in the tight space as they could have passed around the far side through open space.
Saggart Stop is very quiet. New apartments and Saggart village is distant.
Journey Belgard-Saggart-Belgard 11 minutes, I think.

At the end of the day, it's handy for the localities, but it's of marginal significance for the city as a whole. Citywest should never really have been built so far from the city. It's been repeated ad nauseum but the DART Interconnector and Metro North are of infinitely greater significance than stuff like this.

Photos.

The whole point of this line was that it was to be functional rather than offering tourist trips!

It provides a faster route to/from the Citywest Business Campus - that was the primary function.

spacetweek

lxflyer wrote: »

The whole point of this line was that it was to be functional rather than offering tourist trips!

It provides a faster route to/from the Citywest Business Campus - that was the primary function.

True, but many areas of that campus are easier to access by car or bus than Luas.
At the end of the day, Citywest is a car-oriented development that grew out of a grade-separated junction that a private developer built on the Naas road. When you build a car-oriented development, it will easier to get around by car than anything else. The solution is to stop building car-oriented areas.

LXFlyer

spacetweek wrote: »

True, but many areas of that campus are easier to access by car or bus than Luas.
At the end of the day, Citywest is a car-oriented development that grew out of a grade-separated junction that a private developer built on the Naas road. When you build a car-oriented development, it will easier to get around by car than anything else. The solution is to stop building car-oriented areas.

Unfortunately that can be said about most business parks anywhere.

AngryLips

spacetweek wrote: »

True, but many areas of that campus are easier to access by car or bus than Luas.
At the end of the day, Citywest is a car-oriented development that grew out of a grade-separated junction that a private developer built on the Naas road. When you build a car-oriented development, it will easier to get around by car than anything else. The solution is to stop building car-oriented areas.

Totally agree with your point though I hope you're not presenting it as an argument against any effort to make such existing developments more accessible to public transport?

dowlingm

In my opinion, the lad behind Citywest epitomised the hubris with the Celtic Tiger. He lands a massive development in the middle of nowhere while playing ducks and drakes with planning permission both there and at Weston Aerodrome.

I'd say his proposal for LUAS A1 would have been rejected out of hand were it not for the pols and the technocrats thinking "maybe there are other Mansfields out there who will co-pay the cost of building infrastructure" and that telling him to sling his hook would have put them off.

As it turns out of course the private sector's involvement in infrastructure was in the main limited to toll roads (with their minimum income contracts) and even where the private sector collaborated on projects the State was left looking like eejits as IE is at present at Hansfield and is perceived as having been played in Docklands.

spacetweek

AngryLips wrote: »

Totally agree with your point though I hope you're not presenting it as an argument against any effort to make such existing developments more accessible to public transport?

Certainly not! I said that the solution was to stop building car-accessible areas. Citywest is a fact now and will be hard to reorganise, but we can at least change things going forward in new areas.

What's crazy is that comparing Citywest with Parkwest, Parkwest is a far better location for large-scale office development. It's much closer to the city and has a train station at its centre which will one day be a DART. I'm told even with the current level of service that the journey time to Heuston is only 9 mins. And yet Citywest is so big now that it's practically a new suburb in its own right, while Parkwest languishes and has in fact gone into decline with many empty buildings.

Wild Bill

spacetweek wrote: »

while Parkwest languishes and has in fact gone into decline with many empty buildings.

Hmmmm. I wonder why that is?

Could it be that people actually prefer to work and/or invest in "parkland" settings? Maybe they actually prefer living and working in the suburbs? I know, as someone who spent a decade commuting to the City Centre I'd not do it ever again.

There are not many sites a vast as Parkwest close to the city centre. And (generally) the very same people who have serially objected to high-rise offices and apartments in the City are those who object to "green field" developments.

The Luas here in Sandyford is thriving as far as Carrickmines; and if they every manage to built a car park at Cherrywood it will draw even more commuters onto public transport.

I'm sure that Saggart will attract the crowds when it settles in.

markpb

Wild Bill wrote: »

Could it be that people actually prefer to work and/or invest in "parkland" settings? Maybe they actually prefer living and working in the suburbs? I know, as someone who spent a decade commuting to the City Centre I'd not do it ever again.

While I can't argue with your opinion, I can honestly say that I've never met _anyone_ who liked worked in industrial estates or business parks. Everyone I know prefers working in the city centre.

Wild Bill

markpb wrote: »

Everyone I know prefers working in the city centre.

You need to get around a bit more!

Most folk I know like to work where it is easy to drive to and park, for free. Thus living in the suburbs and working, contra rush-hour flow, a bit further out is very desirable.

Better still live within a couple of M50 junctions from the workplace.

Ask the IDA - the folk who have tried and failed to get a thousand foreign investors to locate in the locations favoured by "planners". Business parks have an almost universal requirement to locate beside a motorway; good public transport is great if available.

But strictly optional. Road access isn't.

New Luas lines must follow this reality or fail. You provide public transport to where people work and live - not to where you think they should work and live. :cool:

DWCommuter

Wild Bill wrote: »

You provide public transport to where people work and live - not to where you think they should work and live. :cool:

That's an Irish conundrum you have going on there. Providing PT to where people already work and live is handy enough if its sustainable. However, it did not pan out that way as Lil oul Eire developed. Providing PT to where you think people should work and live is actually a very good idea. But it didn't pan out that way either in Lil oul Eire.

Its a fact that in Dublin (as an example) people lived quite far from their jobs and had cross radial commutes that required a car. Thats why the M50 was such a pinch point. Add to that the dormitory town commuters and you can begin to see the mess created by the boom in the absence of sensible planning. It all became car dependent.

Of course now that we have hit the ****, we can start all over again.

Wild Bill

DWCommuter wrote: »

That's an Irish conundrum you have going on there.

Hardly just an Irish one.

DWCommuter wrote: »

Providing PT to where people already work and live is handy enough if its sustainable.

What, exactly, does "sustainable" mean? It is the most overused malaprop in the modern English language.

DWCommuter wrote: »

However, it did not pan out that way as Lil oul Eire developed. Providing PT to where you think people should work and live is actually a very good idea. But it didn't pan out that way either in Lil oul Eire.

Eh...no. Providing PT to where you think people should work and live is madness if they don't/won't work and live where you think they should.

Its a fact that in Dublin (as an example) people lived quite far from their jobs and had cross radial commutes that required a car. Thats why the M50 was such a pinch point. Add to that the dormitory town commuters and you can begin to see the mess created by the boom in the absence of sensible planning. It all became car dependent.

Car dependent = mess; that's the trendy opinion not shared by the actual choices real people actually make.
And the "boom" didn't "create" the suburbs or cross-radial commuting; it provided solutions that work extremely well; the M50 and the Luas lines. Pity is we spent too much time debating and listening to trendy "sustainable" planners and not enough building more rail lines when we had the money.

Of course now that we have hit the ****, we can start all over again.

I think to build on what we have achieved is a more rational way forward. :cool:

markpb

Wild Bill wrote: »

Most folk I know like to work where it is easy to drive to and park, for free. Thus living in the suburbs and working, contra rush-hour flow, a bit further out is very desirable.

Except that so many people in Dublin work in suburban industrial estates that getting to them isn't contra-flow anymore - they form traffic jams of their own. It's not so long ago that you couldn't get into or out of Sandyford at 9/5 without getting stuck in traffic. Even now there are traffic jams getting out in the evenings and it took people *hours* to get out during the snow in January (when, incidentally, the Luas ran almost flawlessly and people walking to it had no trouble at all.)

Ask the IDA - the folk who have tried and failed to get a thousand foreign investors to locate in the locations favoured by "planners".

Can you give a specific example rather than just mocking an entire profession?

New Luas lines must follow this reality or fail. You provide public transport to where people work and live - not to where you think they should work and live. :cool:

So you're saying new Luas lines must follow the same model which gives us low density industrial estates, traffic jams and public transport which cannot be efficient because of where the estates are and how they're laid out? Not to mention leaving people in areas which have few other facilities at all.

Wild Bill

markpb wrote: »

Except that so many people in Dublin work in suburban industrial estates that getting to them isn't contra-flow anymore - they form traffic jams of their own. It's not so long ago that you couldn't get into or out of Sandyford at 9/5 without getting stuck in traffic. Even now there are traffic jams getting out in the evenings and it took people *hours* to get out during the snow in January (when, incidentally, the Luas ran almost flawlessly and people walking to it had no trouble at all.)

Wrong actually. The Luas was out for two days from Sandyford to Cherrywood during the snow. The roads all remained open, all the time. I know. I live a mile from the main junction. Compared to the traffic jams in the City centre the occasional rush hour hiccups (now largely solved) hardly rate.

Can you give a specific example rather than just mocking an entire profession?

Example of what? It's not the planners I mock but the braindead trendy recitation of "suburbs bad, city centres good" and other fetishes like (often contradictory) like opposing everything including high rise and "sprawl".

This is largely based on the assumption that private cars will soon be history - and/or are in some way "bad" - a pseudo-religious belief not supported by and reasoning worthy of the name.

So you're saying new Luas lines must follow the same model which gives us low density industrial estates, traffic jams and public transport which cannot be efficient because of where the estates are and how they're laid out? Not to mention leaving people in areas which have few other facilities at all.

What I said is you build public transport to where the public lives and works.
low density estates are very pleasant places to live; I know - I left the crowded centre to live in one. :cool:

markpb

Wild Bill wrote: »

Wrong actually. The Luas was out for two days from Sandyford to Cherrywood during the snow. The roads all remained open, all the time. I know. I live a mile from the main junction. Compared to the traffic jams in the City centre the occasional rush hour hiccups (now largely solved) hardly rate.

The Luas was out for 2 evenings, not 2 days. I worked my full 8-10 hours a day both days and used the Luas to get to and from work. The roads were impassible - several people in my office couldn't get to work and one of them, having taken just shy of 2 hours to get from Sandyford to Bewleys Hotel, gave up and checked in for the night.

Also, the traffic jams have abated because of the reduction in numbers employed right now. When the economy picks back up, they ill return.

Example of what? It's not the planners I mock but the braindead trendy recitation of "suburbs bad, city centres good" and other fetishes like (often contradictory) like opposing everything including high rise and "sprawl".

You said that the IDA had trouble getting companies into industrial estates where the planners wanted them. Name one please.

Wild Bill

markpb wrote: »

The Luas was out for 2 evenings, not 2 days. I worked my full 8-10 hours a day both days and used the Luas to get to and from work. The roads were impassible - several people in my office couldn't get to work and one of them, having taken just shy of 2 hours to get from Sandyford to Bewleys Hotel, gave up and checked in for the night.

We'll need to differ on this: I live here; the roads were open at all times and the Luas down the Ballyogan Road was most certainly closed for two days. I drove up and down the road by the empty track a dozen times!

Also, the traffic jams have abated because of the reduction in numbers employed right now. When the economy picks back up, they ill return.

In relation to Sandyford that's a myth; there are no less people working there than there were; bar the construction activity. The exits and rail access have improved.

You said that the IDA had trouble getting companies into industrial estates where the planners wanted them. Name one please.

The estates are where the investors want them. Mainly on the edge of the city and in greenfield sites.

Wild Bill

The Lep Valley, Ballyogan Rd, 1.15pm on the afternoon of December 1st 2010.
Note the snow covered track-bed - note the cars moving freely on the road alongside the track.

(And the Luas sign reads "all services cancelled" or somesuch).

markpb

Wild Bill wrote: »

(And the Luas sign reads "all services cancelled" or somesuch).

I stand corrected, the core part of the line ran fine most of the time but the extension was closed for a while (for reasons that were never properly explained by RPA).

However, I stand by my point. Building industrial estates that cater for large number of people driving in and out at the same time is a bad idea. They're badly spread out to cater for the volume of road traffic which reduces their attractiveness to pedestrians and public transport users which in turn only serves to attract even more car users. This causes traffic jams and reduces the air quality in the very place that people are working.

Suburban industrial estates tend to be spread out around the city instead of encouraging businesses to cluster in one place. This means that public transport is hampered again and that facilities are poorer.

Wild Bill

markpb wrote: »

the extension was closed for a while (for reasons that were never properly explained by RPA).

Interestingly, in opposing the BX line through the city centre being powered by underground cables (to avoid unsightly overhead wires in College Green etc) the RPA have argued that in Bordeaux (underground power) the trams are sometimes stopped by snow in winter, whereas overhead lines are immune!

I think what happened is that the snow (which got to a foot deep) bunched up in front the trains; and instead of just clearing the line they closed it.

Interestingly, in the second heavy fall a fortnight later (also about a foot deep up here) the line never closed as they 'ploughed' the line to leave just a very thin covering of snow.

I imagine the Saggart extension is in a fairly snowy place if we get another outbreak.

Wild Bill

A week later at the same spot, all is well. This stop is just outside a local pub, so it's one I've used many a Friday and Saturday night.

And to think ye'd begrudge me this wee Luas extension? :eek:

DWCommuter

Wild Bill wrote: »

Hardly just an Irish one.




What, exactly, does "sustainable" mean? It is the most overused malaprop in the modern English language.



Eh...no. Providing PT to where you think people should work and live is madness if they don't/won't work and live where you think they should.



Car dependent = mess; that's the trendy opinion not shared by the actual choices real people actually make.
And the "boom" didn't "create" the suburbs or cross-radial commuting; it provided solutions that work extremely well; the M50 and the Luas lines. Pity is we spent too much time debating and listening to trendy "sustainable" planners and not enough building more rail lines when we had the money.



I think to build on what we have achieved is a more rational way forward. :cool:

I will enlighten you in due course.

Wild Bill

DWCommuter wrote: »

I will enlighten you in due course.

You may explain what you think in due course......enlighten me?!

To do that you'd have to have a brighter light

nullzero

spacetweek wrote: »

True, but many areas of that campus are easier to access by car or bus than Luas.
At the end of the day, Citywest is a car-oriented development that grew out of a grade-separated junction that a private developer built on the Naas road. When you build a car-oriented development, it will easier to get around by car than anything else. The solution is to stop building car-oriented areas.

There is a free shuttle bus service at peak times in the morning and evening weekdays from the Citywest campus stop that will drop any Luas users to any location in the Citywest business campus.

Having a Luas line running through the business campus is a very strong selling point when you're trying to attract the biggest clients to rent your properties, as is a good road network with little or no traffic delays even at peak times. The extension cost a lot of money but a lot of it was funded privately for the reasons I outlined above.

Wild Bill

nullzero wrote: »

There is a free shuttle bus service at peak times in the morning and evening weekdays from the Citywest campus stop that will drop any Luas users to any location in the Citywest business campus.

Having a Luas line running through the business campus is a very strong selling point when you're trying to attract the biggest clients to rent your properties, as is a good road network with little or no traffic delays even at peak times. The extension cost a lot of money but a lot of it was funded privately for the reasons I outlined above.

Indeed, and if you look at a map (or know the area) you can see that the reason the extension wasn't routed deeper into the estate was that it's location will be very central when the open land south of the line at Citywest stop is developed.

It also services existing housing to the south of the line.

It's called thinking and planning ahead; the sort of thing ye are always calling for here on boards

(Until someone actually does it of course, than the whining that "they didn't do it my way" takes over the conservation. :cool: