Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299297#Comment_122299297

It's absolutely a problem, though the govt greenlit something like 100 new roles there and they just can't fill them.

spacetweek

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122298644#Comment_122298644

I was struck by the same thing when I heard about this new planning reform legislation that is going to set maximum timelines for the granting of permissions. If you had six months maximum and the application still hadn’t been fully processed and got an automatic grant, couldn’t someone just lodge a JR and say that the government hadn’t properly considered the application? They’d surely win, because that’s exactly what happened.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299316#Comment_122299316

Curious but what exactly is the job description for these 100 roles?
Id heard the local councils had been emptied with people going to ABP.

oliver_murray

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299316#Comment_122299316

Not enough planners to fill the roles, only two undergrad and four post-grad courses on the island

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299497#Comment_122299497

Yes, also a problem as when the roles opened up the best people moved up to ABP (as makes sense). It's a top to bottom issue that there just aren't enough people to fill all the roles. How you fix that I don't know, though I would imagine pay and benefits just aren't good enough is part of the issue.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299528#Comment_122299528

Yeah maybe, I have no real insight into the numbers. But it is mostly I think a case of under-resourcing the area for years and realising you can't click your fingers and magic qualified planners out of thin air.

pigtown

You're mostly right there Podge but it's not correct to say the best planners moved to ABP. There are plenty of extremely talented and dedicated planners in councils around the country who are happy not to move to ABP. Partly because it'd mean a move to Dublin as its a very centralised organisation still.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299539#Comment_122299539

Are there people in the private sector this could be outsourced to In parallel?

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299640#Comment_122299640

I've realized that the issue with ABP is not solely down to resourcing. You only have to look at the planning approval report for the Swords CBC to see the bigger issue.

A 329 page report of hard text responding (in the most minute detail) to every comment and submission made on the project. The entire report is crammed with references to various planning laws, guidelines, local area plans, other guidelines, new laws, best practice...... What an absolute nightmare.

All that work needed to avoid NIMBYs taking Judicial Reviews, and yet the NIMBYs still find ways to take JRs. No amount of resourcing can tackle that without changing the underlying NIMBY culture.

r317121.pdf

pigtown

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299640#Comment_122299640

Nope, private sector is also at capacity. That's across architects, ecologists, engineers etc. on top of planners. Everyone points to a lack of builders as a problem but it's much more than that

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299793#Comment_122299793

well I think your never gonna change the NIMBY culture tbh.
They just have to be taken out of the equation.

Geuze

Metrolink will be 18.8km with 16 stations.

An extension to metro line 14 opened this month in Paris.

• 15.7 km / 9.8 miles
• 8 new stations
• 1 million pax per day
• Similar to our plam: fully driverless trains with frequencies up to 85 seconds
• 6 years of construction

Cost: €2.8 billion (€178M per km) (no cost overrun)

Given that stations are expensive, we should be able to do it for 5bn - 6bn?

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122300335#Comment_122300335

Construction started in 2014, was delayed by COVID and water table issues, and opened this year.

If you add inflation of 3% to 6% per year, you get to the same cost estimate of Dublin's MetroLink (7 to 12B).

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122300335#Comment_122300335

How long was it in planning?

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299611#Comment_122299611

Of course. Should have said a glut of senior planners moved.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, it makes sense for jobs to open in councils and that to be a career route for people. The problem is that when it all happens at once instead of in a consistent, controlled way. It's a huge problem when you have long hiring freezes, I think they are almost always a terrible idea. But politics aside, it takes a long time to "recover" from them - it is just not something you can do overnight and that is the position we find ourselves in at the moment.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299793#Comment_122299793

Ultimately the entire planning system is clearly not fit for purpose and well-intentioned laws and regulations are merely abused by nimbys to over-litigate every single tiny development. It is not sustainable.

cgcsb

agreed, the whole planning system needs to be torn down and replaced with a simplified continental approach. We now have judges with no education in planning and a lot of ego basically making planning decisions in contravention of policy and in contravention of the planning boards decision.

KrisW1001

We don't.

We have judges making decisions about whether the actions of ABP, or any other government body, complied with Irish law. That's what a judicial review is, it's very limited in scope, and it can only be the job of the judiciary - I'd rather not have the government deciding on whether or not the government is acting lawfully.

More resources for ABP to prevent mistakes, and the proposed small changes to the planning laws are all that's needed. Like all process improvements, it will take time to see things getting better: you can't magically step up capacity in any organisation overnight.

We cannot adopt a "continental approach". First, because there is no such thing : each European country had its own procedures; and second, even if there were one model, those countries operate under a different, and incompatible, legal system to ours.

The planning process worked fine in the 2000s when we had money to properly fund ABP, our delays now are a result of the cubacks in the 2010s.

Sierra Oscar

Great to see some positive news such as this.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/chief-executive-of-new-zealands-largest-transport-project-resigns-to-lead-dublins-metrolink/a1871446186.html

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122300956#Comment_122300956

Unfortunately I don't think it's as simple as "hire some more people to prevent mistakes". We have a growing culture of NIMBYism, supported by a legal system who make a tonne of money objecting to anything and everything. It wasn't like this in the 2000s.

It's not so simple as ABP preventing mistakes - not when others are spending huge resources to find "mistakes" or oversights, or decisions that failed to consider section 435, clause 205, subsection 17.22c, or some obscure reference to an endangered moth no one has ever heard of.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122301688#Comment_122301688

A lot of that stems from the governments decisions to put strict time limits on SHD applications, placing no limits on the number of SHD applications that could be made and not giving extra funding to grow AbP to handle all the extra work. It was inevitable that mistakes would be made and a cottage industry would spring up to find and exploit those mistakes in judicial reviews. It was almost a no brainier to commit money to a JR because you were almost guaranteed to get it back when you win.

Hopefully now that things have changed and calmed down a little, AbP will make fewer procedural mistakes that can be exploited so NIMBYs will be less likely to take on JRs because the chance of losing their money will be higher.

Zebra3

Go away money becoming a big issue too and no doubt plenty of objectors (rightly or wrongly) smell it.

IT had a story the other day about locals who objected and got go away money and other locals who didn’t. The headline kinda implied that one lot were smarter than the other.

Moral of the story: object to everything.

ArcadiaJunction

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122283197#Comment_122283197

That's also the FF, FG, Lab, SD, Greens, PBP way too.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122303136#Comment_122303136

No. It's none of their "way". Every party you list has either proposed Metrolink or publicly supports it (Labour, PBP and SD have all berated the government about the delays). SF too.

The only ones against it are a small number of professional contrarians in rural constituencies, and they change their mind every time they listen to the local radio phone-in.

Any chance we can leave the political doomsaying off this thread and talk about the actual project..?

Rodonmac

fwiw I think what's required is a Planning Appeals Tribunal (PAT). Each appeals case would be decided by a panel comprising three individuals - a planner, a lawyer and a developer. All appeals on a single planning application would be held together, need not have an oral hearing, and could make summary decisions. It would have two advantages:

1.a bad-faith objector would have to do more than lodge an objection seeking 'go away' money. They would also need to be prepared to follow that through to making an appeal and presenting their case. (Even then they could have summary judgment against them)

2. as quasi-judicial proceedings, PAT's decisions would not be susceptible to judicial review, and could only be appealed to the High Court on a point of law (i.e. on the grounds that the Tribunal had misunderstood the law or applied it incorrectly).

Then (rump) ABP's role could be confined to recommending changes to strategic infrastructure projects but its decisions would be non-binding and subject to appeal to the PAT.

KrisW1001

Bad-faith objectors looking for go-away money are a problem with private planning, not large infrastructure projects. In large infrastructure projects, the bad-faith objectors turn up at every meeting anyway, and then mount a legal challenge once the planning is granted.

In your part 2, you seem to misunderstand what a Judicial Review is. In the current situation, JRs can only be brought on points of law - they are not appeals. Putting another body in the way between planning grant and JR would just lengthen that process: a NIMBY group would drag out the procedures of your PAT, and then launch a JR.

Basically, the problem with vexatious respondents is that they are just as happy to delay a project as long as possible, in the hope that funding dries up. Giving them another place to call in just helps them.

The proposals already put forward for the next Planning Act are better, in that they limit the scope of people who can appeal against planning to those who would be directly affected, or members of existing civil-society groups whose remit would cover the project. That won’t stop FIE and company, but it will stop the phoney “Nxx Alternative Campaign” or “XYZ Action group” objections that are secretly bankrolled by property owners whose potential future profits will be negatively affected by the new infrastructure.

Pete_Cavan

There is already a Planning delays to infrastructure thread, most of the last odzen posts should be there.

That thread should probably be sticky-ed at this stage as unfortunately tapping a sign doesn't work on the Internet.

CatInABox

https://www.fm104.ie/news/fm104-news/light-rail-boss-gives-update-on-metrolink/

Looks like TII are expecting approval early next year now, all going well. It's annoying that they don't tell you where he gave the update, but it is just fm104, I guess I shouldn't expect much.

spacetweek

Christ. Early next year. 2.5 years for a decision.

This doesn’t sound very certain: “Assuming that the railway order, which is not in our control, is granted early next year…”

It’s clear the spokesman didn’t hear anything back from ABP and is just speculating.

The photo accompanying the article must be from Metro North. In the background you can see Opening December 200X. The final digit is missing but you can see it’s the 2000s. Typical form for transport reporting.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122335995#Comment_122335995

How long will procurement and tendering process take? More than a year?

So construction might start in 2026.

So 2033 might be earliest opening.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122307478#Comment_122307478

If we didn’t talk about planning delays there’d be Fcuk all updates on metrolink to fill this thread- bar delays that is.

spacetweek

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122336181#Comment_122336181

If they’ve any sense, they’ll have the tender ready to rock the moment permission is granted. So you could see preconstruction within the same year.

ArcadiaJunction

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122303663#Comment_122303663

Sadly there is no 'actual project' - right now it is all imagination land and the only rail line being built is between Limerick and Foynes for no customers of any kind. I'd love to be more positive about this project but the likes of the Civil Service has a vested interest in killing it as it cuts into their 'entitlements' and 'gravy' and they tell the Gombeen politicans you mention above what to and not support. There is no getting around this.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122340370#Comment_122340370

Ah now. "The Civil Service" isn't one thing, and even if it was, there's more work for them in planning and managing a multi billion spend like Metrolink than there would be if it's cancelled.

With respect, by blaming "the Civil Service", you're veering into the exact kind of guff engaged in by those populist politicians we both despise.

This project is proceeding. People have been hired to run it, and bar some idiots, the whole of Irish politics is pushing for it. Some cynicism around political promises is normal and healthy, but at this point, for this project, it's misplaced.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122340370#Comment_122340370

This is a wild statement. What vested interest does the civil service have in killing it?

Also the civil service is a vast, diverse and loose group of organisations with different and some times opposing vested interests.

MJohnston

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122336361#Comment_122336361

Which would be fine (for the thread I mean) — then at least you'd know something is happening when there's a new post. Right now it's purely off topic discussion.

Brightlights66

We've all seen the effects of COVID. There is no noticeable crush on the southern Green Line any time I'm on it, which is usually at 'rush hour'. I can't see that it needs to be replaced.

Thus, why the metro terminus at Charlemont, with a view to eventually replacing a line which is now working very well?

Why not build to other areas, like south-west Dublin, which in several areas seem to have a poorer connection with the city than the areas served by the southern Green Line?

That, to my mind, should be the focus.

markpb

Infrastructure Is built for the future, not for the present. There are thousands of apartments being built in Sandyford, Clay Farm and Cherrywood right now. The LDA has its eyes on land at Central Bank Sandyford and Leopardstown Racecourse. There is a huge amount of underdeveloped land around the ghost Luas stops near Cherrywood. Large parts of Sandyford business park are still extremely low density warehouses that will almost inevitably be rezoned or redeveloped in the future.

The population along the Luas line will explode over the coming years.

That’s not to say that other parts of the city don’t need better public transport too but an upgrade of the Luas line would have been relatively cheap and served a fast growing area. Cutting the metro at Charlemont will be seen as extremely short sighted in the future.

Skyte

How hard will it be to convert that line to Metro in the future, I understand they have to leave the tunnel boring machine in the ground and would be infinitely more cost efficient to just keep it going with the same TBM but let's say in 10 years they decide they need to extend the metro to sandyford.

Is it accomated in the plans to do that?

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122345852#Comment_122345852

Markpb's post above pretty much hits the nail on the head, but I'd like to provide a bit more context around it. There's no noticeable crush on the southern Green line because the NTA have spent millions on a capacity improvement program, which involved lengthening all of the platforms, and extending the trams to the longest in the world. A few years back, overcrowding on the Green line was a huge scandal, with each delivery of a new tram being front page news on the national papers.

https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/dublin-news/fury-amongst-passengers-overcrowding-more-14317068

The overcrowding problem has been solved….. for now. The NTA currently projects that another capacity upgrade will be needed in the next ten years, with another upgrade needed soon after again. This is the green line doing exactly what it was designed for. It was designed to unlock development potential along the route, and that's exactly what happened. Cherrywood along is going to bring tens of thousands of people onto the line, bumping it right back into the overcrowding zone, and that's just one development. There's dozens of other developments, not of the same size, but it's going to get bad soon enough.

The other thing that the Green line was designed for, was an upgrade to Metro standard. They don't have to do any work on the tracks at all, just need to sort out some junctions and raise the height of the platforms.

The Charlemont station was chosen as a terminus so that there's an interchange station, as it can't happen at St Stephens Green.

Ultimately, any southside route chosen will have to go through a route selection and cost benefit analysis. Realistically, this process will show that the green line upgrade to Metro standard will be far and away the most cost efficient use of public funds, serving more people than any other route, faster, and with more positive benefits for Dublin.

MICKEYG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122345897#Comment_122345897

Great post. There is a huge amount of housing coming on stream on the green line. Even excluding cherrywood and Leopardstown race course there are two big developments beside the Carrickmines stop, one under construction and one in planning.

We need to think big and future proof.

KrisW1001

If you search online, you can find the 2018 report on converting Green line to Metro. The recommendations in that report are being followed. First step is Green line frequency and capacity improvements, and some of that is done; they're is still more capacity available for future growth.

The big, big problem with conversion is that the upgrading works will sever the Green line corridor for three years, forcing a change of mode south of Charlemont. I think that nothing will be started until there's a second alignment for Green Luas here, because there's no way that the bus infrastructure could absorb replacement passengers on a closed Green line.

Brightlights66

So, no interest, at present, for developing a southwest corridor.

I was just curious. I visited a number of German cities last week, Cologne, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich and Dresden, and they seem to have created integrated tram/metro networks which encompass pretty much all of their cities.

Dublin seems intent on 'upgrading' parts of the city's transport, while neglecting the colossal gaps - 7-8 kilometres or so between lines into the city - which would simply not be seen in the aforementioned German cities. It's 15 km between DL and Tallaght, and there's just one line into the city in between.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122346943#Comment_122346943

Well the options now are build what is planned or delay everything another decade. So, no, there is no interest to switching to a southwest corridor alignment.

spacetweek

My guess is that planning on a Metro southwest will start soon after construction kicks off on ML, and Green Line Conversion will be moved forward to be completed in the early 2030s.

Kermit.de.frog

Interesting how one could read the thread from 2010 and pass it off word for word today.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2055849587/dublin-metrolink-just-metrolink-posts-here-see-post-1

Sam Russell

Mod: Can we stick to the topic.

I think the reason for stopping at Charlemont was to move the Nymby crowd off the track.

spacetweek

That’s it, and extending from SG to Charlemont was to bypass the slow on-street part of Luas Green Line.

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122345852#Comment_122345852

A temporary reprieve.

gjim

The modern approach to metro design dictates through-running in the core. A terminus in/near the centre is a frequency and capacity killer as effectively incoming trains and outgoing trains have to cross each other at-grade limiting headway at a point in the system where demand is highest. Metrolink ticks nearly all the boxes as far as a checklist of modern metro design is concerned: driverless, platform screen doors, frequency over length, no-interlining/dedicated tracks for a single service, barrier-less, shallow/accessible underground stations, multiple trip-generating destinations along the route, etc.

It ticks all the boxes except the fact that it terminates so close to the centre of the city.

KrisW1001

Density drops dramatically south of the canal, as you hit the swathes of semi-detached and detached housing of South Dunlin city, and the case for a Metro any further south just didn't add up, especially when it would be so disruptive to Luas Green line service during construction... another plus of the current plan is that the whole thing can be built without interfering with existing public transport.

On a raw cost/benefit analysis, ML would have terminated at Stephens Green, or only goes as far as it does because going as far as Charlemont makes future extension much easier than trying to pick up from Stephen's Green.