Metrolink south of Charlemont

strassenwo!f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117992079#Comment_117992079

Berlin and Helsinki are two that I know of. Both with several road crossings in the areas where there is a throughput of 30+ tph. The Berlin bit I'm thinking of is around Alexanderplatz, though the last time I was there they were running fewer than 30 tph because on of the lines feeding into this section was being renovated. The bit in Helsinki that I'm thinking of is close-ish to the main railway station, and at least one of the stops has a throughput of 32 tph.

Rulmeq

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117994648#Comment_117994648

If I recall, Berlin's S-bhan is elevated, where are the level crossings on that?

Actually looking at the wiki, there are some level crossings in berlin, but they certainly aren't on the busy lines: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Level_crossings_in_Berlin (most are either trams or un-guarded crossings, which I doubt are on a commuter line with 30tph)

Sam Russell

It is not relevant to talk of Berlin compared to Dublin. Driver behaviour is very different here.

cgcsb

Utter nonsense. This is the size of a helsinki tram and they only operate at high frequency in the central section through a mostly pedestrian area with no major road junctions, just side streets.

strassenwo!f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117996683#Comment_117996683

Yes, the S-bahn is a different thing, but there are plenty of level crossings on at least one of the combined tram routes into Alexanderplatz and, as I said, they were running 30 tph through one of the Alexanderplatz stops - though the last time I was there it was a reduced figure because of renovation out in the suburbs. I can't prove that right now, but I hope to soon.

strassenwo!f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117996875#Comment_117996875

Overall, driver behaviour isn't very different. The rules of the road are effectively the same in both cities, the only major difference being that the Berliners are hopefully driving on the right and the Dubliners are hopefully driving on the left.

It might indeed take a couple of crashes at Dunville Avenue to drive home the message that a tram is much bigger than a car - I'd guess that some Berliners had to learn that lesson too, but it should be a lesson which is soon learned.

It should help that there are traffic lights at Dunville Avenue, which many of the road/tram crossings in the area of Berlin I'm talking about do not have.

strassenwo!f

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117996907#Comment_117996907

I was thinking particularly of the Lasipalatsi stop, at this location on Google Maps: 60°10'13.5"N 24°56'15.6"E

That stop is currently handling 29 tph (in each direction) in the 07:30 to 08:30 period - a bit lower than I remembered - but still comfortably above what was going across Dunville Avenue in pre-corona times. (6 trams on line no. 1, 7 trams on line no. 2, 8 trams on line no. 4, and 8 trams on line no. 10).

As you should be able to see, it's a very central area which is not pedestrianised. There are also buses and cars going along that stretch, and pedestrians crossing, and trams in that neighbourhood going left, right and straight on from in or around that stop in what must be quite a complicated public transport environment. Dunville Avenue is a much simpler arrangement.

It's certainly true that the trams in Helsinki are much shorter (up to around 30 m) than the monsters that Dublin operates on the Green Line. But this actually doesn't the time to cross Dunville Avenue all that much. Basic physics calculations (assuming a Citadis tram can accelerate at 1.0 m/s2 and there's a 20m gap across the crossing for the front of the tram) tell us that it should take a 55m tram 13 seconds to cross that junction entirely from a standing start at Beechwood. That is in line with the circa 14 seconds which I have seen. A 30m tram would take around 10 seconds to do the same thing.

So, effectively, no difference.

Obviously, the tram driver would have to make sure that there are no messers trying to break the lights, and that would add a couple of seconds for the first year or two until people learn, and you'd need to arrange that trams going in the 'off-peak' direction wait before crossing the junction. But, all in all, there should be a comfortable 90 seconds for vehicles to cross.

Plenty, you'd think, for a very minor road in a suburb.

Sam Russell

Mod: Can we leave Dunville Ave to its fate. It is dragging this thread down a rabbit hole.

Grassy Knoll

Seems to me surfacing on the city centre side of the canal will save a fortune in construction costs - underground’s stations in charlemont, ranelagh and beechwood, possibly better works access at the exit point, plus portal ‘off line’ should help lessen disruption to the green line. Clearly there would be CPO costs around Peter place, many of the properties there may be local authority, but surely the outlay here would more that save on costs, engineering risks, huge disruption to the existing line etc if there are no engineering show stoppers I can’t see why this approach wouldn’t get serious consideration. Seems from some of the comments it is a possibility?

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011803#Comment_118011803

That was ruled out in the options assessment for Metrolink. Read the first page of this thread for references.

Paddico

Wasnt there a map of the route shared by the government floating around a few years ago. 3-4 years ago that is?

CatInABox

There was some questioning of the NTA the other day, regarding future projects in the NDP, and one of the topics was Metrolink South. From one of the answers, it seems like this has been thoroughly kicked into the long grass, with green line capacity improvements able to handle passenger growth for "the next decade, two decades". Not new information, but I guess another confirmation of what they think.

They were also questioned about new housing growth on the line, to which they say that they've taken that into account in their assessment. I'd like to know what percentage of passengers do they think will be getting off at Sandyford, and how many will be continuing into the city centre. I have a feeling that this may be what makes or breaks their estimates on the green line.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/transport-officials-defend-exclusion-of-south-dublin-metro-from-ndp-1.4718478

Bsharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118117160#Comment_118117160

They'll have underestimated housing growth along the line by limiting estimates to zoned development lands; in the background consolidated development, that consist of a few one off houses turning into 50-100 apartments, is not being captured in the figures. The volume of this is huge when you look at SHD applications.

The medium-long term view is predicated on WFH taking the pressure off public transport capacity. Could go either way. Will partly depend on the quality of homes and associated amenity being built.

Murph85

It's so convenient to just lie about the housing figures. Basically they just cant be bothered with the effort of it... its blatantly an outright lie...

dublinman1990

It's not just the number of proposed housing units built along the line that will influence the overall success & usability of Metrolink. If Climate Change is the big issue in how to address it in future; it's how people will use it to their advantage to allow it become a successful piece of infrastructure as they increase the amount of interchanges that are done between different modes. We do already have the capacity & capability to do this job already in switching over from bus to bus, bus to dart, Luas to commuter/intercity rail and so on. That would suggest that a lot of people that do take part in that form of interconnectivity already & do it very well.

I don't really understand in how not building new housing to support building Metrolink down to Sandyford is a barrier to not building it at all. It all helps to fit in as one part of a massive interconnectivity puzzle being offered in our own capital.

Let's say if Metrolink was extended to Cherrywood with it being realigned to go underneath Leopardstown Racecourse, a big hub for lots of commercial, sports & healthcare activity that takes place there throughout the whole calendar year. You have big employers located like Bank of America, Vodafone, Microsoft, The Clayton Hotel & Leopardstown Park Hospital all located within that huge part of South County Dublin. Then you would connect the Metrolink further to go down to other places like Foxrock & Cornelscourt Shopping Centre with stops dotted all the way down to Cherrywood. Would that not count as huge as a benefit to extend frequent usage of Metrolink in the long term?

CatInABox

NTA study shoots down UCD proposal.

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Metro-UCD-to-Sandyford-Feasibility-Report.pdf

The Benefit Cost Ratio is very very low, so it's a nonstarter.

Grassy Knoll

That is the end of any southern leg of the metro so … it seems the technical piece of where / how to integrate with the green Luas line was unworkable and the disruption would be perceived as too much. It seems to me the likelihood of planning and legal issues was a factor - Ranelagh residents would be the rock this would perish on. The mooted southern portal around Beechwood always sounded unworkable to me - the disruption to the existing Luas, residents issues, the sheer scale of what would need to go in /out via that portal in terms of construction material etc.

anyways a shame, a relatively short stand-alone metro line loses the impact a bigger piece could have provided.

Murph85

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/we-are-going-nowhere-nta-plan-rules-out-metrolink-for-southside-suburbs-1.4725097

the south west of the city transport is absolutely appalling, huge amounts of housing going in, gridlock getting worse. The only feasible solution, metrolink, will cost a serious amount though...

if it joined the proposed metrolink line around portobello, then served, rathmines, terenure, rathfarnham, knocklyon, could it be linked to the luas at tallaght?

Then have a future phase going to link that, all the way to the dart line around booterstown?

CatInABox

Right, bringing this back from the dead, as there's some news about Metrolink South of Charlemont now. The updated Dublin transport strategy has been published, and it basically states that they're going to look into all options for routes going south. So, basically no change there then.

In more interesting news, Eamon Ryan has written a piece in the Irish Times today, and while it's basically a broad overview of the plan, it also has a little more info on his/the government's thinking on this.

One of the projects that has been in planning for 25 years is the Metro, running from Lissenhall, outside Swords, to Charlemont Street, with all the evidence supporting a later extension to Terenure, Rathfarnham, Firhouse and Tallaght.

Interesting, but not likely to mean anything for twenty or thirty years, or even longer, to be honest. Just build the Metrolink, and then we can worry about where it goes then.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2023/01/24/there-is-no-reason-dublin-cannot-be-like-copenhagen-or-amsterdam-for-cycling/

cgcsb

If metrolink is ever built, the cries for another line will be deafening on its opening day as we seen the day the luas opened and as we will see the day the maynooth dart opens. In fact even more so because the service will seem like the invention of sliced bread, people going from the airport to the south city centre in a little over and quarter of an hour any time of the day will seem like living in a Sci fi movie. Complete night and day compared to getting the 16 and sitting on it for an hour.

Consonata

> Interesting, but not likely to mean anything for twenty or thirty years, or even longer, to be honest. Just build the Metrolink, and then we can worry about where it goes then.

If its not eventually connected with the Southern green line (as it was designed to) christ almighty. It was 300mill to upgrade it to metro spec, easily the best value for money investment we could make, and we squandered it. Leaving it disjointed whilst Cherrywood gets built is madness

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154194#Comment_120154194

Yeah, I'd agree with this. I'd assume that any route selection process will run a cost benefit analysis on all the possible routes, and upgrading the green line is going to have a significant head start on every other route. I'd love to look at Eamon Ryan's "evidence", as I have a feeling that it's based on the assumption that the vast majority of commuters in all the new developments South of Sandyford will all be getting off the Luas at Sandyford, meaning that a major capacity upgrade on the Green Line isn't needed. I think that assumption is hopelessly optimistic.

Personally, I still think that the NTA are hoping that this question goes away until after Metrolink is built, at which point the capacity problems on the Green Line will be back in the news. They can announce that they're looking at all possible solutions, and when the analysis shows that the Green Line upgrade is the best value for money, well Hey-Presto! It makes undeniable sense, and the Crayola merchants won't be able to compete with that analysis.

prunudo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154194#Comment_120154194

Even if it rose to a billion, it would be worth it. If and when greenline is extended to Bray, the line will be too long and pass through too many high population areas to make it worthwhile using. The Luas is great as a city tramline, not as a 40km plus mass transit system.

Also, I suspect thats Eamons opinion that it is best to head south west. As I've said in the past, there should be a line to the sw, but it should be a stand alone line and not at the expense of the southern route. Whether that is a greenline upgrade or a new underground route towards Clonskeagh, Ucd and back to Sandyford.

Equally, any sw route should continue on past the city centre, whether onto the Coolock/Sutton part of the city or arc back towards Blanchardstown, but it definitely needs to be a stand alone line

cgcsb

Looking at the drawings today, I wonder if Ranelagh luas stop was relocated further south at the triangle could the tunnel connect to the elevated track where the station currently is using the green space at Manders Terrace. Maybe its too small to get the elevation change needed. There's also crappy old apartments in Oakley Road long overdue a wrecking ball, that could be used for the tie in. Leaving them separate is another 2 non connecting luas lines fudge.

In any case some connection has to be made. In the Ranelagh area

A separate metro line should connect Tallaght to Coolock with a major interchange at O'Connell St station

murphaph

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117996875#Comment_117996875

It's really not that different. There are crashes in Berlin every day. Just in the last couple of years there have been 3 fatal accidents involving trams that I can recall. There are some clowns in Berlin behind the wheel.

https://www.tag24.de/berlin/unfall-berlin

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120212606#Comment_120212606

You are quoting me from 16 months ago.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120211990#Comment_120211990

You could potentially close it entirely and make Beechwood the "Ranelagh" stop, though its not in an amazing location for the area.

Sam Russell

I am wondering if they were to go straight through the Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church* and join the Charlemont stop above ground, while sending the Green Line down Adelaide Road at least as far as Leeson St, but better to take it as far as Grand Canal Dock eventually.

An alternative, would be to turn the Green Line west along the South Circular to Rialto, connecting with the Red Line. [At last - the two lines connect!] But doing both would be useful, as it would become a network of lines with many routing choices.

*Obviously, moving the Church to somewhere else, brick by brick, would be possible and preferable.

prunudo

Not uncommon to see landmarks such as churches or windmills moved in the Netherlands to accommodate infrastructure improvements.

brianc89

Yeah I've been saying this for a while now. A Luas (overground) or Metro (underground) along the full length of the Grand Canal from Heuston West to Irishtown.

You'd cross every single Bus Connects Spine (except H, but you could extend H-spine to Heuston West), both Luas lines, Dart+ SW, Metro and Dart Coastal.

A radial route like this would benefit everyone in the city and would be a far better investment than DU for example.