Dublin Metrolink - future routes for next Metrolink

LeinsterDub

strassenwo!f wrote: »

No. You originally asked where I was getting the figures from, and I provided you with the figures from metrolink. I didn't include the middle bit because it didn't include any figures.

At no stage did I lie, and it is appalling that I have been accused of doing so.

No the middle bit just included the actual fact provided by the NTA. Leaving it out completely changes the context of the quote and you left it out because with it in your argument doesn't have any legs.

strassenwo!f

Where did I lie?

You have accused me of posting an untruth.

An apology is needed.

antoinolachtnai

Adding more trams per hour does not necessarily increase the number of passengers carried.

Sam Russell

Mod: Cut the squabbles.

CatInABox

EDIT: Taking this to a different means, sorry.

Sam Russell

Mod:

@ Strassenwolf:

You keep talking about the Green Line and its capacity wrt European tram systems.

1. The GL has the longest trams in the world, and although the GL has segregated sections, it runs on street with regular traffic and does not have priority.

2. It cannot run more frequently than it does because the trams are so long.

3. Even if they could run more frequently, the traffic in Dublin cc would be gridlocked.

You have had this pointed out to you several times by many posters, and by myself. The NTA have published figures on this and they are to be taken as experts.

I suggest you give this a rest, or some action will be taken. This is getting beyond tiresome.

lucernarian

marno21 wrote: »

I am giving up here to be honest. It's over 800 posts of round and round in circles and bizarre alternative facts with no end to the discussion.

Thankfully Metrolink will sort out the Green Line for the forseeable future and we can concentrate on sorting out other issues rather than having the Green Line being kicked down the road.

This is very premature. I don't see any planning-approved and funded plan on the table. The current vague plan hasn't been properly costed and some realities are going to bite hard when it it goes to the tendering phase. The level of disruption caused by works in and around Charlemont are quite significant and this has to add to the cost, things like underground metro stations in the immediate vicinity of a canal while merging with an elevated track not far away.

That's before we forget about the sewer buried below the Grand Canal. The documents the NTA have provided so far, only address these things poorly and in isolation - not with e.g. the gradient requirements of different types of rolling stock, if the Commission for Railway Regulation have (or will have) any oversight on Metro's functions... So many factors that have been assumed and glossed over in every bit of public documentation so far.

Dats me

lucernarian wrote: »

This is very premature. I don't see any planning-approved and funded plan on the table. The current vague plan hasn't been properly costed and some realities are going to bite hard when it it goes to the tendering phase. The level of disruption caused by works in and around Charlemont are quite significant and this has to add to the cost, things like underground metro stations in the immediate vicinity of a canal while merging with an elevated track not far away.

That's before we forget about the sewer buried below the Grand Canal. The documents the NTA have provided so far, only address these things poorly and in isolation - not with e.g. the gradient requirements of different types of rolling stock, if the Commission for Railway Regulation have (or will have) any oversight on Metro's functions... So many factors that have been assumed and glossed over in every bit of public documentation so far.

They haven't been glossed over, there's probably just not much point doing all that work before a route is sorted

lucernarian

strassenwo!f wrote: »

I can well understand why the poster Marno21 is getting frustrated. For perhaps the fifth time on this thread, I quote the official figures:



Thus, based on the above, a 55m tram is able to carry about 400 passengers, based on the current throughput of 20 trams per hour.

A throughput 50% greater than the current one, which is what several other European cities are doing, would equate to 12,000 passengers per hour.

Based on the above figures, it should be around 2047 when the Green line might need an upgrade.

It doesn't seem likely that the Green line will be upgraded to a metro all the way to Cherrywood, because much of it is on-street south of Sandyford. Removal of the height restrictions, and thus potentially colossal development of Cherrywood, would sound to me like it will eventually need its own metro line, and the N11 might be just such a route.

I'm not gonna say you're lying as I don't see any evidence to show deliberate falsehoods here. It's also against the charter of this forum besides.

But you say the capacity of Luas is 8000 ppdph. The RPA or whatever they're now called, have flagged ridership of over 7000 ppdph since Luas Cross City was opened. I can't believe it's 2047 when an upgrade would be needed, based on present facts alone.

antoinolachtnai

Increasing the number of trains per hour in the way that Strassenwolf describes would not result in an increase in passenger capacity.

To maximize capacity, trams need to be evenly spaced. If high-frequency trams have to wait for road junctions to clear or for trams to come in the opposite direction the spacing will not be even. The trams will bunch.

lucernarian

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Increasing the number of trains per hour in the way that Strassenwolf describes would not result in an increase in passenger capacity.

To maximize capacity, trams need to be evenly spaced. If high-frequency trams have to wait for road junctions to clear or for trams to come in the opposite direction the spacing will not be even. The trams will bunch.

It's worth noting that the RPA has given a crude figure of a 25% increase in ridership since Luas BXD opened. Were the Luas to have remained terminated at SSG for instance, the Luas ridership values would not be as high as they are today - the RPA figures prove at least that much. The original Metro North plan was conceived as the link between the two lines and to serve the north inner city with the high capacity and grade separation this corridor demands.

My idea is there are measures that can be taken to reduce ridership as well as increase capacity. In the case of the existing green line -the "metroification" or whatever capacity increases are required, can:
1) be applied to the whole stretch from Charlemont to Cherrywood, with the line terminating at Charlemont

2) avoid what seems like a fantastical engineering approach to tie the metro to the green line here

3) more easily continue the metrolink route to e.g. St. Mary's school grounds in Rathmines and then Kenilworth square etc.

The original green line, also being shorter, will be able to operate like a high capacity corridor with the grade separation and platform lengthening it needs. A caveat would be that the peak ridership the RTA talked about wasn't clarified for 2018 yet as far as I know - what stretches of Luas etc. Another big issue would be where exactly the high capacity Charlemont-Cherrywood part would manage turnarounds alongside the conventional Luas that would continue from Cherrywood to Broombridge/Finglas.

A vaguely similar arragement exists with Line 2 in Shanghai, it's discontinuous and a change to smaller gauge and shorter trainset happens en route to the outer end of the line. cross-platform transfers.

antoinolachtnai

There is one key measure that can be taken to manage growth in demand on the Green Line. It’s simple and cheap.

Don’t build a metro line.

What you seem to be proposing would require a very big interchange at Charlemont. This is a much more fantastical sounding project thanlinking two lines together and building a few platforms.

How does metrolink make it more difficult to build a link to Terenure or wherever? If anything it would make it easier.

LeinsterDub

lucernarian wrote: »

I'm not gonna say you're lying as I don't see any evidence to show deliberate falsehoods here. It's also against the charter of this forum besides.

But you say the capacity of Luas is 8000 ppdph. The RPA or whatever they're now called, have flagged ridership of over 7000 ppdph since Luas Cross City was opened. I can't believe it's 2047 when an upgrade would be needed, based on present facts alone.

No it's needed in 2027 per the NTA own numbers

antoinolachtnai

LeinsterDub wrote: »

No it's needed in 2027 per the NTA own numbers

Those numbers assume that an extra rail line is not built. If a separate rail line were built (say from South-west Dublin to the Airport via the city centre or from the City Centre to Swords) then demand on the Luas Green Line would increase at a far greater rate.

LeinsterDub

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Those numbers assume that an extra rail line is not built. If a separate rail line were built (say from South-west Dublin to the Airport via the city centre or from the City Centre to Swords) then demand on the Luas Green Line would increase at a far greater rate.

That isn't going to happen before 2027.

antoinolachtnai

Well, it's not. But what I mean is, that if one of the alternative plans is carried out (splitting the Metrolink project or modifying it to run to a different southside destination) the Green Line would as a result need a major upgrade.

lucernarian

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

There is one key measure that can be taken to manage growth in demand on the Green Line. It’s simple and cheap.

Don’t build a metro line.

What you seem to be proposing would require a very big interchange at Charlemont. This is a much more fantastical sounding project thanlinking two lines together and building a few platforms.

How does metrolink make it more difficult to build a link to Terenure or wherever? If anything it would make it easier.

The grade and space issues at Charlemont make the proposed Metrolink pretty tricky to pull off, but indeed an underground interchange station would also be very difficult. Though if large scale demolitions are required at Charlemont for tunnel surfacing etc anyway, the work involved is comparable to station construction.

An entire apartment block is slated for demolition for a station at Tara St, something that got a lot less attention than a GAA club's temporary relocation...

Edit: don't know who said anything about Metrolink "making it more difficult" to build one to Terenure etc. There'll be an opportunity cost for sure, I fear for the Rail Interconnector because of this. I think with construction inflation running closer to 12% now, the numbers talked about in the shoddy cost-benefit-analysis are going to be in tatters by the end of this year. Cue more handwringing and looking to build a glorified luas. We're pretty terrible at learning our lessons in this country.

antoinolachtnai

There is nothing wrong with the numbers in the CBA. There is no way to say what construction costs will be in 2025.

As far as I know from what is in the papers, the current thinking is now to surface south of Dunville Avenue. So no messing with that sewer and no need to knock a load of buildings around there.

No matter what route you come up with there are going to be hard choices.

lucernarian

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

There is nothing wrong with the numbers in the CBA. There is no way to say what construction costs will be in 2025.

As far as I know from what is in the papers, the current thinking is now to surface south of Dunville Avenue. So no messing with that sewer and no need to knock a load of buildings around there.

No matter what route you come up with there are going to be hard choices.

I posted a lot about this in the past, mainly how two of the CBAs were carried out but not published, and alleged by an academic to show that the metrolink idea as it stood was not cost effective.

The other part is the CBA that is available to view is neither robust or well founded, with fundamental values like the pricing of low-platform and high-platform upgrades of the green line luas to Metro, to be basically guesses at a per-km rate. To any critical reader, the absence of real sources or pertinent examples of costings is kinda alarming, and serious engineering decisions with ramifications on other choices are not dealt with fully, or with guesswork of the kind best left to boards

This plan is to be tendered at the end of this year apparently. It's not about 2025 prices in fairness. Metro North demonstrated adequately how a project can be sunk by high projected costs earlier in the process, despite the fact it could have been tendered for within 2.5 billion euro by 2012. It seems the NTA learned this lesson and have a plan that will squeeze in with unrealistically low estimates, in the hopes it's "too big to fail" later down the line. And it's an attempt to pull the wool over the public's, civil service and politicians eyes if I were to be really cynical about it.

Construction inflation has hit near 12% in the past year... No accountant needed to see what impact that has on big-ticket project budgets

marno21

lucernarian wrote: »

I posted a lot about this in the past, mainly how two of the CBAs were carried out but not published, and alleged by an academic to show that the metrolink idea as it stood was not cost effective.

The other part is the CBA that is available to view is neither robust or well founded, with fundamental values like the pricing of low-platform and high-platform upgrades of the green line luas to Metro, to be basically guesses at a per-km rate. To any critical reader, the absence of real sources or pertinent examples of costings is kinda alarming, and serious engineering decisions with ramifications on other choices are not dealt with fully, or with guesswork of the kind best left to boards

This plan is to be tendered at the end of this year apparently. It's not about 2025 prices in fairness. Metro North demonstrated adequately how a project can be sunk by high projected costs earlier in the process, despite the fact it could have been tendered for within 2.5 billion euro by 2012. It seems the NTA learned this lesson and have a plan that will squeeze in with unrealistically low estimates, in the hopes it's "too big to fail" later down the line. And it's an attempt to pull the wool over the public's, civil service and politicians eyes if I were to be really cynical about it.

Construction inflation has hit near 12% in the past year... No accountant needed to see what impact that has on big-ticket project budgets

The CBA that was published was a basic one to show that some basic cost benefit analysis took place. A full proper business case will be published for the scheme in due course when the final route option is published and the scheme will require Government approval.

Why do you want them to publish a detailed cost benefit analysis before the final route and options are decided?

CatInABox

marno21 wrote: »

Why do you want them to publish a detailed cost benefit analysis before the final route and options are decided?

They'd still be doing it if they had to consider all possible route and locations.

marno21

CatInABox wrote: »

They'd still be doing it if they had to consider all possible route and locations.

That's what I'm saying. There was little point in doing extensive cost benefit analysis on all options when there were considerations other than cost that had to be made. Also, the cost benefit analysis will likely be made when more of the operational details are finalised.

I'd imagine a full business case/cost benefit analysis will be published on submission of the business case for Government approval prior to the submission of the EIS + railway order to An Bord Pleanala. Looking like early 2020 for this at this stage.

Kfagan10

Eamon Ryan raised his alternative route in a topical issue in the Dáil today.

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2019-02-13/24/#s28

marno21

Kfagan10 wrote: »

Eamon Ryan raised his alternative route in a topical issue in the Dáil today.

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2019-02-13/24/#s28

Fair play to Shane Ross here, properly put Ryan in his box with this absolute horse**** he's carrying on. Of all parties in the Dail he should be pushing the Metrolink scheme the most and instead he's pursuing populist NIMBYism and fairytale routes which have no appreciation of cost.

Some points raised by Shane Ross that all thread readers should read:

We now have a statutory transport strategy in the greater Dublin area which covers the period 2016 to 2035 and which must be reviewed every six years. That strategy is the basis for the development of an integrated transport system for the GDA. Development of the strategy was subject to a full public consultation period and any and all interested parties were able to make their views known. Following that public consultation, the approved strategy set out an ambitious range of improvements across the area of metro and light rail. These improvements include: the development of a metro from the city centre to north County Dublin; the development of a metro from the city centre to south County Dublin along the Luas green line; the need to improve the capacity of the green line in advance of its upgrade to metro standard; and a number of Luas extensions to Lucan, Finglas, Bray and Poolbeg. What we are now trying to do is to implement that strategy. That is why I secured the funding allocations under Project Ireland 2040 to allow for its implementation over the next ten years. The need for the development of a north-south metro has been recognised for 20 years or more.

The Deputy will recall how A Platform for Change, published in 2000 by the then Dublin Transport Office, called it the spine of any future metro system. The need to upgrade the Luas green line to metro over the medium to long term was recognised then as it is today. We are providing longer trams and purchasing more trams under the green line capacity enhancement project but, ultimately, that only buys us time; it does not solve the problem. In the long term, the upgrade to metro standard is necessary to ensure growth along that corridor can be accommodated.

Share
The Deputy mentioned he is hoping to take the metro through Rathfarnham and Terenure. A very detailed analysis was conducted in the transport strategy. It concluded that the actual and forecasted demand along the Rathfarnham-Terenure corridor does not meet the threshold of a metro-style service. That is the only scientific evidence which has been produced. Whatever the cost, and the Deputy does not seem to worry about the cost, it does not even meet the threshold of numbers.

Case closed.

Dats me

Brilliant!

In fairness I would love to see the metro go out to Tallaght but the Green Line needs to be upgraded too, opposing that is being done in very poor faith.

Well done for doing the research on the Platform for Change which Eamon Ryan was actually on the committee for and regularly talks about! It specifically marks from Sandyford as Metro "upgraded from Luas".

And on mentioning the GDA 2035 strategy, Eamon Ryan actually made a submission on this it's in the public consultation report, and there was no mention of a SW metro!

And in the Green Party's published transport policy, there's no mention of a SW metro and they only support Metro North "if a sufficient business case can be provided": so very prudent. But suddenly now money is no object, the policy was published only two years ago!

Sorry for not posting links, I don't have time to find them right now, but everything there can be found very easily via Google that's how I found them.

Rulmeq

marno21 wrote: »

Some points raised by Shane Ross that all thread readers should read:

It concluded that the actual and forecasted demand along the Rathfarnham-Terenure corridor does not meet the threshold of a metro-style service.

That's kind of disappointing in terms of future metro lines.

lucernarian

marno21 wrote: »

The CBA that was published was a basic one to show that some basic cost benefit analysis took place. A full proper business case will be published for the scheme in due course when the final route option is published and the scheme will require Government approval.

Why do you want them to publish a detailed cost benefit analysis before the final route and options are decided?

This is choosing what facts suit you here. Why were two other CBAs allegedly suppressed - ones that concluded the metrolink scheme was not viable?

It wasn't "basic", it's simply flawed. There's a big distinction between the two. If the green line is a core component of the scheme then there are only a limited number of options concerning the costs of the line upgrades. Sure, where the portal tunnel surfaces is a big variable, but the numbers they provided for things like tunnelling costs per KM, the cost of upgrading a given km of the existing green line with low or high platforms - these things are basically guesses in the CBA, by the authors' own admission! and those values are critical to the cost no matter where the tunnel surfaces. That doesn't "depend on route selection".

How can so many stand by these falsehoods? There's a touch of ostrichism to it. I'm not asking for a "detailed" CBA, I'm looking for one that's based in reality and has fundamentally sound basic numbers. I'm not a fan of the AECOM North Dublin Transport Study but they offered a hell of a lot more in terms of backed up numbers and costings for basically crayon drawings, compared to this pathetic attempt.

Has no one here even heard of the National Children Hospital debacle? "the procurement experts know best" yeah? The whole thing stinks.

CatInABox

Rulmeq wrote: »

That's kind of disappointing in terms of future metro lines.

Indeed, it does put the kibosh on a fair few crayola plans, but there are still possibilities there I think. A Luas line along the Dodder, out past the M50, with a few Strategic Development Zones thrown in, could link up with a south west metro. That might change the equation enough.

Same on the north east, assuming that's were a hypothetical Metro 2 would go. You could surface run a Luas down the R107, going underground before you hit Marino. The Dublin port tunnel would complicate things along that direction though.

Either way, looks like the current plans are set in stone:

Metrolink
BusConnects
Dart Expansion
Various Luas runs (Finglas, Lucan, etc)
Dart Underground (I'm including this, as once the Dart Expansion goes through, the business case for this is a no brainer)

Get those done, and then worry about the next Metro. Not even sure that Metro West will get done, NTA seem to think that there's even scope for a BusConnects style corridor upgrade along that route.

Keyzer

You guys know a hell of a lot more about this topic than me but I do have an interest in public transport infrastructure.

Can someone explain to me how shutting down the Luas green line from Charlemont to Sandyford for two years is a good idea (if indeed this is still the case)?

What are the people who use the Luas supposed to do in the meantime?

CatInABox

Keyzer wrote: »

You guys know a hell of a lot more about this topic than me but I do have an interest in public transport infrastructure.

Can someone explain to me how shutting down the Luas green line from Charlemont to Sandyford for two years is a good idea (if indeed this is still the case)?

What are the people who use the Luas supposed to do in the meantime?

The two years thing is totally up in the air, and until the plans are finalised, there's no real way of knowing. Other than that, we can be sure that they'll take every measure available, including building temporary tracks, etc. Some of these measures have been shown in the plans already, I'd assume more will be available in the final report.

The context of this upgrade is important as well. Even with the upgrades that they're currently doing, which involves lengthening every tram, the green line is projected to be at capacity by 2027. I, and others here, think that's hopelessly optimistic, and that's even before the recent change to the building heights regulations.

This will mean that in the morning, from Cowper onwards into town, the Luas will effectively be shut down. At the moment, people are already getting the Luas out of town, just to get it back into town. Lengthening the trams will get us a few more years, but once that's done, there's no further possible mitigation other than an upgrade to Metro standard.