Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

MICKEYG

Our friend was on Newstak this morning spouting his nonsense. So frustrating he gets this much air time. I was hoping Newstak would get a challenger, such as the Dublin Commuter Coalition, but unfortunately not.

yer man!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120084529#Comment_120084529

Yup, heard him there this morning. Irresponsible of the interviewer's to not challenge him. He's all for DART underground despite that have arguably more impact on the city especially st Stephens green which he is saying shouldn't be touched at all.

Murph85

The cost for this could be fifteen times what those idiots could have built metro North for in 2012! Two billion back then, would run the country for a few days now... absolute morons...

The figures are too insane in my opinion, for them to let the project go ahead. How much are other European cities building similar schemes for ?

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120084823#Comment_120084823

He probably knows DU would take another 2decades to plan and get approval for. He's probably just trying to delay any impact to his life until he clocks out.

Was it clear that he was rambling nonsense on Newstalk, despite not being challenged. Maybe the presenter felt it wasn't necessary to challenge 😂

LXFlyer

Judge for yourself:

https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-newstalk-breakfast/are-the-metrolink-plans-being-made-up-as-they-go-along

yer man!

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120084858#Comment_120084858

It's was a bit yeah, just kept banging on about how we could have 30 luas lines for the cost of Metrolink. He clearly is just ranting for the sake of it. He seems like the type of person that shakes his fist at the sky.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120084842#Comment_120084842

The 2 Billion figure for Mero North was ridiculously vague, and honestly would have made the National Children's Hospital project look like a beacon of good governance. It would have gone over budget by several billion, and would have stopped the construction of any further rail projects in Ireland for decades. The O'Connell Bridge station was a nightmare for constructability, with the station being mined out, underneath a river, with multiple, separate concourses. To put it in perspective, with Metrolink, they'd rather CPO and knock an apartment block with around a hundred apartments, in the middle of the worst housing crisis ever, than mine out a much smaller, simpler station at Tara Street.

There is zero chance that MetroNorth could have been built anywhere near that price. Zero.

brianc89

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120085029#Comment_120085029

He goes on about the impact of Metro on SSG and yet pushes for DU which would have a much larger impact on the park. If I remember correctly, they planned to close the park entirely and drain the lake. Seriously Frank?...

The only valid point he makes is continuing onto Cathal Da Brugha barracks but the plans to redevelop that only happened after plans were made for Metrolink. As for the Carlton, it's been closed for 30years, get a grip.

AdamD

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120084842#Comment_120084842

You don't see the irony here? You'll be posting in 10 years time about how much cheaper we could have done it for in 2023!

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120085453#Comment_120085453

Considering that that redevelopment is a government run project, I wouldn't be holding my breath about it getting going in the next decade or so. It could join the long list of government or local council projects that should have got going, but didn't, like the glass bottle site, etc.

And if 1000 homes potentially going into an area is a reason for an upgraded transport link, the 10000 homes going into Cherrywood must also require comment, right Frank? A project that only got approval because of the planned Metro upgrade? Jesus wept. That's not the only major project along the Luas line either.

cgcsb

I think posters are reading too much into it. People can see that he's a crank, he sounds like Helen lovejoy. It's a shame we don't have a competent media that challenges the opinions of commentators but there ya go.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120085667#Comment_120085667

Completely agree.

One of the main deficiencies of Irish media is the lack of any specialist transport journalists.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120085033#Comment_120085033

An electric car costs about €50 k, a basic bicycle costs about €200, so for one EV, he could get 250 bicycles - even if you double the cost of the bike, it is still 125 bikes. Now what that has to do with PT infrastructure, I have no idea.

What-do-you-Colm McCarthy suggested existing buses instead of Metrolink - just as daft because the road infrastructure is too congested and not good enough to carry that many buses.

He should constrain his comments to the retention and refurbishment of Georgian Dublin - what is left of it.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120086000#Comment_120086000

Or journalists of any calibre.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120086456#Comment_120086456

That’s a bit unfair Sam. There are some very good journalists out there. Just none specialising in transport.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120086668#Comment_120086668

Maybe.

But journalism is not just the reporter writing in shorthand, but includes the subeditor who constructs the headline (which is often misleading) but also the editors and publishers.

Now some of the correction would be after the fact, but publishing misleading articles with misleading headlines is not restricted to transport issues. Some publications are significantly better measured by their journalism standards, but others are woeful.

PopePalpatine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120083406#Comment_120083406

"What the hell actually possessed him to write that nonsense for the IT"

Probably a word in his (or the boardroom's) ear(s) from SIMI.

Murph85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120085584#Comment_120085584

I want it to go ahead. But at what cost do you draw the line ? It could absolutely have been built for the relative pittance it would cost ten years ago plus...

spacetweek

Indeed the damage people like him do is probably considerable as few Irish people over the age of 50 read Twitter and they aren't informed enough about public transport to understand that his article was factually incorrect and sensationalist.

Cue meals with your parents where your dad starts rabbiting on about how the government is wasting money on "underground thrains costing twenty billion".

cgcsb

I notice the article has gone 'sponsored' on insta and Facebook. Meaning the IT is paying for it to appear repeatedly on people's news feeds because they're not getting enough clicks. They did the same with the recent anti United Ireland poll. If people don't buy it they push for the hard sell.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120088034#Comment_120088034

Give fifty-somethings a bit more credit, eh.

Hotblack Desiato

Unfortunately the first letter today takes Frank's nonsense as gospel, the second is just crayoning which would delay the project by yet more years.

Somebody needs to challenge his crap head-on: lettersed@irishtimes.com (I've got a fair few letters printed over the years but I'm not knowledgeable enough on this issue)

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/2023/01/10/metrolink-and-city-transportation/

Sir, – Frank McDonald’s article on the proposed Metro route makes depressing reading as it underlines the limitations of stand-alone planning of costly critical infrastructure (“MetroLink will lay waste to chunks of the city centre but won’t integrate city transportation”, Opinion & Analysis, January 7th).

Rather like the National Children’s Hospital, squeezed into a restricted site without much regard to its transport context, we now find another huge project being proposed, in this instance a vital transport development which appears to have been visualised with only limited regard to other transport linkages or to its impact on land use.

How can this piecemeal approach be justified? Why is the Metro route not being forensically linked to the development of a wider Dart underground? And why have earlier initiatives, such as the Mater hospital underground facility, now been discarded? What is the rationale to making a terminus at Charlemont? What is the point of a possible Metro station at the east end of Stephen’s Green and a possible Dart station at the west end? And, at the Swords end, why not continue the Metro line to link with mainline rail and so facilitate access to the airport from Belfast and the northeast generally?

Fifty years ago, the need for a comprehensive, co-ordinated approach to planning Dublin city resulted in a Dublin land use and transportation strategy published by the later-dumped An Foras Forbartha. That strategy offered an integrated, cross-sectoral vision that embraced the idea that transport and land use/housing are two sides of the same coin, to be planned and developed in tandem. Whatever chances such rationality may have had then, it has had none in an era of neoliberalism. Yet the issue raised in 1971 does not go away. It is only being continually postponed.

The various sectoral interests now posing as stakeholders in Dublin frequently appear to operate at variance in relation to both good planning and a co-ordinated strategic vision for the city and its region. A more joined-up approach to planning the city region is needed urgently. Is it too much to hope that the restructured planning board can insist on a more integrated approach to major infrastructure projects and to long-term planning in general? – Yours, etc,

ARNOLD HORNER,

Glenageary,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – When the tunnel boring machine, which is to be assembled at significant cost for the central portion of the proposed MetroLink, has arrived at St Stephen’s Green, it should direct itself towards Leeson Street, continue under the Grand Canal, under Upper Leeson Street and Morehampton Road, under Donnybrook, under the Dodder and emerge beyond Donnybrook garage, where the line can be elevated over the dual-carriageway median and continue to connect with the existing Green line at Leopardstown.

This route can both address capacity concerns on the existing Green line and provide useful tram connectivity to a portion of the city and institutions not served at present: Donnybrook stadium, RTÉ, St Vincent’s Hospital, UCD, and Stillorgan village.

When considering the rail network as a network, it also seems difficult to understand the logic in not connecting MetroLink to the mainline rail service near Donabate or Malahide: the termination of rail services at park-and-ride facilities can only continue our over-reliance on cars. – Is mise,

PAUL ARNOLD,

Ranelagh,

Dublin 6.

prunudo

Love it, an elevated metro above the Stillorgan dual carriageway. And I was told on here the other day that the IT readers would see through opinions pieces from the likes of Frank McDonnell, Fintan O'Toole or Colm McCarthy.

The sooner the thing is given the go ahead and built the better, let the crayons users work on future lines.

salmocab

the TBM could hang a left at Stephen’s green head off down lesson street up onto stilts along the stillorgan dualler and meet up with the green line, that’s the man that should be running transport.

strassenwo!f

I've read Frank McDonald's piece about metrolink, and some of the related posts on Twitter, and I am curious about his comments on Croke Park.

It is an important conference centre, and it holds big matches on several days in the year, but it is not a major centre of everyday employment in Dublin. This seems to be the same kind of weakness that has many others seeing travel on a metro to the airport as a thing one does with luggage - and questioning whether it is really necessary to have a metro to the airport - rather than seeing the airport as a place of huge employment, and thus worthy of investment in helping workers to get easily to and from there, somehow. The occasional travel needs of any one person are peripheral, and it depresses me that every discussion here generally descends into the potential difficulties of taking luggage on the proposed metrolink.

Is Dublin Airport possibly the highest employer in the County?

(If I ever get to go to Croke Park, particularly for a big match, I would probably welcome a trip on the metro to the proposed station at Glasnevin, and then a long walk along the Royal Canal, watching the great stadium hove into view and feeling the excitement gradually mounting).

The change in the potential distance from the metro to Croke Park was obviously something that Frank McDonald thought odd.

For me, the most surprising aspects of the metronorth to metrolink change were, firstly, that the new route would be built through an area with a much lower population than that in the original, metrolink, plan. (Drumcondra has a population density which is around 40% (forty per cent) higher than the area around the proposed Glasnevin station, and, by any measure, more potential metro users, whether they are people living in the area or working in the area). The second surprise was that the new route would be built so close to the Northside's quite new bit of the Green line, and thus will inevitably cannibalise that line's catchment area.

To me, the current plan for Dublin's metro, in the Glasnevin-Drumcondra part of the city, broadly near to the Royal Canal, appears to be a significant long-term error.

FrankLeeSpeaking

"(Drumcondra has a population density which is around 40% (forty per cent) higher than the area around the proposed Glasnevin station, and, by any measure, more potential metro users"

Glasnevin is really about Phisborough. You are confusing names with geography. Also it provides a fantastic interchange with DART/Irish Rail. It is a no brainer to put the station at that location in Glasnevin. Then how many potential passengers will be fed into Metro there compared to Glasnevin? I would wager many multiples of a stand alone station on Drumcondra.

FrankLeeSpeaking

I agree with the posters who say ignore McDonald's wibblings in the Times. He is a crank and this hitpiece should be considered nothing more than dying screams of an increasingly irrelevant eccentric soon to vanish into oblivion.

strassenwo!f

Well, I don't have much more to say tonight, but I think we should extend, to FrankLeeSpeaking, a very warm welcome to the board!

dublinman1990

This rebuke article about Metrolink from IrishCycle.com has given a really good detailed response to Frank McDonald's article in the IT over the weekend. The good thing about it it has dismissed his article as complete rubbish.

https://irishcycle.com/2023/01/09/its-incoherent-to-say-metrolink-wont-integrate-will-lay-waste-to-chunks-of-city/

Murph85

I suggest the next incarnation of this metro, be called metro swords, it would stop it being called the " airport metro" by ignorant idiots...