10 minute Dart frequency in context...

monument

Just to put the planned 10 minute Dart frequency into context... NS and Pro Rail in the Netherlands are to trial running trains from Amsterdam to Eindhoven every 10 minutes on weekdays. A Dutch friend says it's higher frequency than the Amsterdam Metro on weekends.

The full route is around 130km and, yes, the Dutch railway is (mostly) effectively a regional railway across the whole country. But we're not talking about really large cities on the route:

Amsterdam - 1,351,587
Utrecht - 489,734
's Hertogenbosch - 169,714
Eindhoven - 337,487

Those are all urban populations / continuous urban area listed -- and Amsterdam is the only one where the metropolitan populations notably exceeds the urban.

The point of this thread I suppose to ask is:

• Have we been too dismissive of a new city idea (I mean close to Dublin)?
• And are too many people too dismissive of a rail link between Cork, Limerick and Galway?
• Is our problem that we can't see past what town / cities are today?

I am opening this to debate, not saying I have all the answers or that I agree with the affirmative to the above questions.

And, yes, this is a thread for C&T as it's to do with transport and land use.

(By the way, the full distance is €19.20 one-way / €38.40 return, standard walk up fare on OV-chipkaart (their national version of Leap). But there's lots of discounts available on the network, including children traveling all day for €2.50.)

bk

monument wrote: »

Have we been too dismissive of a new city idea (I mean close to Dublin)?

The cities you list in Amsterdam aren't new cities, they have always been there. They are just close enough to one another to allow commuting between each other. Similar to the tri-city in Poland of Gdansk-Sopot-Gydnia.

This is very different to building whole new cities from scratch, that is a much more difficult challenge, it very rarely works when forced.

Our equivalent to the above would be to build Metro North to Swords so it can continue to grow as a commuter town of Dublin and DARTify the Northern line to Drogheda so it can be similar. You could over time have a similar Dublin - Drogheda - Dundalk - Belfast corridor, though obviously this depends on how Brexit works out.

To the south of Dublin you are hemmed in by the Wicklow mountains and the sea.

Of course you can go East of Dublin to Navan, Naas, etc. But I really don't think you want to be going further then that, not for commuting anyway.

monument wrote: »

And are too many people too dismissive of a rail link between Cork, Limerick and Galway?

Well we badly need a decent road, the M20 between them first. No point in putting the cart before the horse. Of course it would be nice if they built a rail alongside the M20 at the same time. But the M20 is already uncertain enough as it is without adding that cost and IMO the M20 is much more important then a train between them.

Non of these three is as big as Amsterdam to act as the tie in for these three.

monument wrote: »

Is our problem that we can't see past what town / cities are today?

Our towns and cities are where they are today because they make natural sense where they are. All our cities are along the coast at big ports. I really don't see much room for that to change.

Interesting questions though.

McAlban

bk wrote: »

Our equivalent to the above would be to build Metro North to Swords so it can continue to grow as a commuter town of Dublin and DARTify the Northern line to Drogheda so it can be similar. You could over time have a similar Dublin - Drogheda - Dundalk - Belfast corridor, though obviously this depends on how Brexit works out.

Interesting questions though.

Or: "Cavan" (P&R off the N3) - Kells - Navan - Dunshaughlin - Dunboyne - Clonsilla

Another project laid waste by the Financial Crisis.

wordofwarning

If you go to the likes of Munich or Berlin. They allow "new suburbs" to be built. So they basically add another stop on the U-Bahn or S-Bahn and built a mini-town around the stop. You have supermarkets, banks, cafes, bars, hotels etc basically at the stop. There is a ton of new high rise apartments built at the stop and housing gets less dense further away.

In Dublin, you are extremely restricted on height beside a DART. Developers are fighting with LAs about being able to build high density in a newer areas of Dublin with no heritage or skyline eg Sandyford or the Docklands. What good are new towns connected by decent rail services if LAs only want sprawling suburbs with no real high density?

We have made no real effort at a high density town outside of Dublin. Everything ends up as a half-baked suburbian mess. A new town past Maynooth built as a high density town from day one with proper planning makes a sense.

cgcsb

A new city? Honestly all this nonsense is just given too much air in the media. We are a nation of less than 5 million. There is no overcrowding issue. Ireland's entire population could comfortably fit inside in the M50 if it were planned. We have a problem with density not space and there is no point in building a new City if that new City is just going to be smattering of cul de sacs hat can't support a frequent rail service anyway.

That's before you even take into account that building a new city would take up tens(hundreds?) of billions of euros in infrastructural investment in a country where consecutive governments have steadfastly REFUSED to spend even fractional sums of money on CRITICAL infrastructure projects in our existing capital.

monument

bk wrote: »

The cities you list in Amsterdam aren't new cities, they have always been there. They are just close enough to one another to allow commuting between each other. Similar to the tri-city in Poland of Gdansk-Sopot-Gydnia.

The cities I mention are in the Netherlands, all in different provinces than Amsterdam. They are not in Amsterdam.

The Utrecht urban area is includes Nieuwegein (founded on 1 July 1971 and connected to Utrecht Central by tram) and older areas which have seen large planned population increases since the middle of the last century.

Houten is also a new town connected very well to Utrecht (but with green areas between both, so, I don't think it's part of the continuous urban area.

bk wrote: »

This is very different to building whole new cities from scratch, that is a much more difficult challenge, it very rarely works when forced.

Our equivalent to the above would be to build Metro North to Swords so it can continue to grow as a commuter town of Dublin and DARTify the Northern line to Drogheda so it can be similar. You could over time have a similar Dublin - Drogheda - Dundalk - Belfast corridor, though obviously this depends on how Brexit works out.

No, Swords would be like Amstelveen or somewhere else in the Amsterdam metro area, the cities I mentioned are not like Swords, they are more like...

bk wrote: »

To the south of Dublin you are hemmed in by the Wicklow mountains and the sea.

Of course you can go East of Dublin to Navan, Naas, etc. But I really don't think you want to be going further then that, not for commuting anyway

And what's wrong with Naas and Navan, and if we look at the Dutch example they are supporting 130km with a 10 minute frequency -- as with every route not everybody is going to be commuting the full way (as is already the same in Dublin).

The Dublin - Drogheda - Dundalk - Belfast would likely be the most natural one if it was not for the complications of the boarder.

bk wrote: »

Well we badly need a decent road, the M20 between them first. No point in putting the cart before the horse. Of course it would be nice if they built a rail alongside the M20 at the same time. But the M20 is already uncertain enough as it is without adding that cost and IMO the M20 is much more important then a train between them.

Non of these three is as big as Amsterdam to act as the tie in for these three.

The Dutch would not consider a rail line as putting the cart before the horse... why do we?

We already know the roads will fill up or congest around the cities. And then there's the question of replacing the M20 with a cheaper link using the existing motorways that are there.

plodder

cgcsb wrote: »

A new city? Honestly all this nonsense is just given too much air in the media. We are a nation of less than 5 million. There is no overcrowding issue. Ireland's entire population could comfortably fit inside in the M50 if it were planned. We have a problem with density not space and there is no point in building a new City if that new City is just going to be smattering of cul de sacs hat can't support a frequent rail service anyway.

That's before you even take into account that building a new city would take up tens(hundreds?) of billions of euros in infrastructural investment in a country where consecutive governments have steadfastly REFUSED to spend even fractional sums of money on CRITICAL infrastructure projects in our existing capital.

I agree. The problem that needs to be tackled is vested interests (mostly existing residents) in areas where they don't want higher density (I'd hesitate to call it actual high-density). There should be a national policy of high(er) density close to train stations/transport hubs in Dublin (4-5 storeys roughly).

We already are getting reasonably higher density in the new suburbs (eg Adamstown). It's ludicrous to be doing that while leaving vast amounts of open space inside the M50.

By the way. The 10 minute DART plan is too important to give up on, with IR management and unions left to stew, blaming each other. 10 minute frequency will lead to a big increase in passenger traffic. Imagine having to consult timetables on the London underground or Berlin U/S bahn. It's puts a transport system into a different league imo.

monument

wordofwarning wrote: »

If you go to the likes of Munich or Berlin. They allow "new suburbs" to be built. So they basically add another stop on the U-Bahn or S-Bahn and built a mini-town around the stop. You have supermarkets, banks, cafes, bars, hotels etc basically at the stop. There is a ton of new high rise apartments built at the stop and housing gets less dense further away.

In Dublin, you are extremely restricted on height beside a DART. Developers are fighting with LAs about being able to build high density in a newer areas of Dublin with no heritage or skyline eg Sandyford or the Docklands. What good are new towns connected by decent rail services if LAs only want sprawling suburbs with no real high density?

We have made no real effort at a high density town outside of Dublin. Everything ends up as a half-baked suburbian mess. A new town past Maynooth built as a high density town from day one with proper planning makes a sense.

I'd look at the Kildare line rather than the Maynooth line.., but no harm looking at both options.

And you don't even need that high density (in the international sense of high density) for rail.

The Luas lines, the Dart and half the rail-supported settlements in the Netherlands proves this theory -- you need good density and land use, access to and good clustering around rail stations etc.

cgcsb wrote: »

A new city? Honestly all this nonsense is just given too much air in the media. We are a nation of less than 5 million. There is no overcrowding issue. Ireland's entire population could comfortably fit inside in the M50 if it were planned.

What density would 5 million be inside the M50 and, if we have no space issue, why would we do it?

Dutch cities are very liveable places with Amsterdam, for example, at a density LOWER than Dublin's continuous urban area.

To be clear: I'm not against good infill in Dublin, but questions need to be asked about what scale we want -- I think there's a balance between the up as high as you can group and the don't change a thing group.

cgcsb wrote: »

We have a problem with density not space and there is no point in building a new City if that new City is just going to be smattering of cul de sacs hat can't support a frequent rail service anyway.

Dublin doesn't have a density issue really, other cities might but Dublin City and Suburbs doesn't and I'm not too sure that density is even close to the main issue with Dublin's commuter belt. Lack of scale and clustering might be the far larger issue.

cgcsb wrote: »

That's before you even take into account that building a new city would take up tens(hundreds?) of billions of euros in infrastructural investment in a country where consecutive governments have steadfastly REFUSED to spend even fractional sums of money on CRITICAL infrastructure projects in our existing capital.

Because there's ban funding choices we can't debate options of what might be good planning for the future. Is that it?

Maybe there's also a problem here with branding or the concept of city -- I'm not saying you or anybody on this thread but Irish people, including sometimes people on boards are dismissive of calling places with around 100,000 or a few 100k a city. We also have a real hang up about developing existing beyond what's there now.

bk

monument wrote: »

The cities I mention are in the Netherlands, all in different provinces than Amsterdam. They are not in Amsterdam.

I didn't say they were! But Utrecht is just 45km/25minutes from Amsterdam. You can bet it is acting as a commuter town of Amsterdam, which is probably why they are doing this.

Eindhoven, at 1h20min is probably a little bit far for daily commuting (though people in Ireland do madder commutes then that). But probably close enough for regular business being done between the two regions.

The point being, Amsterdam is acting as nexus here, as Dublin would in Ireland. Cork - Limerick - Galway don't really have a similar nexus.

monument wrote: »

The Utrecht urban area is includes Nieuwegein (founded on 1 July 1971 and connected to Utrecht Central by tram) and older areas which have seen large planned population increases since the middle of the last century.

Yeah, but Utrecht is more then 2,000 years old!

If your argument is that we should be doing planned, high density development around existing towns like Drogheda, Navan, Naas, etc. near the stations. Then sure, of course I agree with that 100%

When you said build a "new city", I though you meant like the daft idea in the press a few months back about a new city in the midlands. The two ideas are quiet different.

monument wrote: »

And what's wrong with Naas and Navan, and if we look at the Dutch example they are supporting 130km with a 10 minute frequency -- as with every route not everybody is going to be commuting the full way (as is already the same in Dublin).

Nothing, I just misunderstood what you meant by "new city", I totally agree that we should be improving the rail services to these towns and building high density in them.

monument wrote: »

The Dublin - Drogheda - Dundalk - Belfast would likely be the most natural one if it was not for the complications of the boarder.

Yup, big time, when you step back and look at Ireland as a whole island, it is clear that this axis is where the most development and growth is happening. But Brexit might mess this up, so probably wiser to wait and see.

monument wrote: »

The Dutch would not consider a rail line as putting the cart before the horse... why do we?

We already know the roads will fill up or congest around the cities. And then there's the question of replacing the M20 with a cheaper link using the existing motorways that are there.

Because people are dying on this road every year!

Our motorways are not congested and neither would the M20. The congestion only gets bad when you get into the city. Park and Rides on commuter rail routes is a good solution to this.

The "cheaper" route is a non runner, the main goal of the M20 isn't necessarily to directly link Cork and Limerick, that is the cherry on top. No the main goal is to bypass and serve the commuter towns of North of Cork and South of Limerick. This is where people are dying on the roads and this is where there is already serious congestion.

The "cheaper" routing wouldn't serve these towns and they would end up having to be done anyway.

And sure you can already take the train between Cork and Limerick. Sure not the most direct or convenient routing.

I think overall better to focus on expanding dart and commuter rail around the country, then more WRC type projects with little demand.

wordofwarning

monument wrote: »

The Luas lines, the Dart and half the rail-supported settlements in the Netherlands proves this theory -- you need good density and land use, access to and good clustering around rail stations etc.

A lot of people don't want to live outside of the M50. I personally would rather live in a micro-apartment in Dublin 7 than a massive house in somewhere like Maynooth. Outside of Dublin, there is very little to do in a lot of towns. Ask anyone who lives in Sweden or Norway wants even decent sized towns are like on the weekends. They are dead.

I would consider living outside of Dublin City in a new town beside Maynooth, if I could get into the lift of the high rise Im living in and go straight down in the station for the train to the City. Apartments in Citywest are highly desired as you literally go from your apartment lift to the train platform

The density within the M50 could be a lot higher. While private developer were building high density apartment blocks, DCC was busy constructing low density generic three storey houses. All these houses should be CPOed and rebuilt as apartments. We have 3 storey houses literally beside GCD due to DCC poor planning. There is only so much more than Dublin City can take in residents. We don't really have the services in the centre of the city to support more people ie a complete lack of GPs, schools etc

irelandrover

bk wrote: »

Eindhoven, at 1h20min is probably a little bit far for daily commuting (though people in Ireland do madder commutes then that). But probably close enough for regular business being done between the two regions.

Actually, just on this point.

I'm working in Eindhoven and there are quite a few people that commute every day from Amsterdam. THere are good jobs in Engineering in Eindhoven but people living in Amsterdam don't want to move. Hence they commute every day.

There are also quite a lot of people commuting the other direction.

plodder

wordofwarning wrote: »

There is only so much more than Dublin City can take in residents. We don't really have the services in the centre of the city to support more people ie a complete lack of GPs, schools etc

I wouldn't agree with that. Services will follow demand. Schools are being closed in Dublin city because the younger generation have moved out. That doesn't have to be the case. Traffic is the big problem that people rightly are concerned about. But that too will (sooner or later) result in improved public transport services.

MOH

irelandrover wrote: »

Actually, just on this point.

I'm working in Eindhoven and there are quite a few people that commute every day from Amsterdam. THere are good jobs in Engineering in Eindhoven but people living in Amsterdam don't want to move. Hence they commute every day.

There are also quite a lot of people commuting the other direction.

It's been a few years, but when I worked in Amsterdam a lot of Dutch colleague had commutes from about the same distance away.

Alun

MOH wrote: »

It's been a few years, but when I worked in Amsterdam a lot of Dutch colleague had commutes from about the same distance away.

I lived there for a good number of years too, and that's very true. The Dutch are homebirds and rarely move away from where they were brought up and where their friends are. I lived near Eindhoven, and there were a good number of people I knew who commuted to Amsterdam, or other cities equally far away.

Banjoxed

bk wrote: »

[SNIP]

If your argument is that we should be doing planned, high density development around existing towns like Drogheda, Navan, Naas, etc. near the stations. Then sure, of course I agree with that 100%

When you said build a "new city", I though you meant like the daft idea in the press a few months back about a new city in the midlands. The two ideas are quiet different.


Nothing, I just misunderstood what you meant by "new city", I totally agree that we should be improving the rail services to these towns and building high density in them.[/SNIP]

There is an infamous thread here about an infamous rail connection - where the issue of planning density has been roundly ignored. In reality where the Republic has a rail station, there MUST be far greater planning densities.

However that probably won't suit those trying to flog land for low density development and consequent greater car dependency. Hence the manufactured demand for greenways on railways.

However, if we could properly develop our towns then there would no need for any 'new' city. Ireland could support a lot more people if we as a nation could move away from the concept of managed rural decline and instead sweat the infrastructural resources we already have as the basis for a properly sustainable national regeneration.