DART underground - options

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077829#Comment_122077829

No, that is all pretty bad, you aren't balancing Dublin, you are just turning Dublin into metropolis that spreads very low density all over the entire GDA. It is a terrible vision and just continues the mistakes we have already made.

Balanced development means developing Cork/Galway/Limerick/etc. Basically places that are far enough away from Dublin, that people can't commute to Dublin from them and they develop their own industries and employment instead.

Balanced development doesn't mean turning to whole of Leinster into a sea of **** semi-d's where everyone drives!

Dublin isn't overcrowded, far from it! It is pretty average density for a small European city and could easily be densified.

BTW I live in a ground floor apartment, it gets plenty of light, no different then a ground floor of a house.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077829#Comment_122077829

Can't have a 4 bed for every family in Ireland and catering to that would be quite challenging. Even if that were the goal, Dublin city outside the canals isn't all that dense, and can and should be denser. Certainly we shouldn't be entertaining it being normal to commute from Naas.

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079559#Comment_122079559

There has to be a balance to all of that. Ireland has no culture of apartment living, with 89% of people still living in houses, the highest level in the EU, 10% ahead of The Netherlands (79%) and comparing to 52% across the entire EU. It is so ingrained in the national psyche, we can't hope to stop it. There will always be a huge demand for housing and good luck banning new houses!! Simply not going to happen.

Without question, Dublin City, its suburbs and commuter towns are becoming denser. You can really appreciate this if you fly into Dublin Airport and get a view south towards the city, or drive into the city from the M4, M7 or traverse the M50. There will always be huge demand for housing, but thankfully this is being supplemented by increased apartment construction.

Notably, The Netherlands has a population of 18m in an area smaller than Leinster+Munster and still manages to produce an enormous amount of food and produce, and maintain 20% natural land (forest, rivers etc).

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/housing-2023

Ronald Binge Redux

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079763#Comment_122079763

Apartments aren't a panacea as long as management charges remain a rip-off

Beta Ray Bill

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079814#Comment_122079814

EXACTLY!

The biggest problem and turn off for people living in apartments is the following:
It's nearly the same price for a 2 bed apartment as it is a 3 bed Semi-D, plus you have management fees on top.
You've less space outside and inside, and you're on top of your neighbors. Storage is a problem too. (No attic). Not to mention you electricity bills are higher (gas bill is lower mind you). You've only one parking spot, and generally speaking it's not secure. People leaving their bulky items like buggys and bicycles and also rubbish in the common areas (landings). And if you have asshole neighbors you're in real trouble.

Like for that trade off, I'd be wanting a similar sized apartment at half the price of what a 3 bed semi-D would be, then maybe I'd consider it.

Until apartment living changes, the expectation is that there will be some sort of public transport to and from the city. It was like that in the 90's when people moved out to Enfield, Naas, and Balbriggan etc, and its still like that now 30 years later.

As I said I've done apartment living, (I used to live in Spencer Dock, and that's a good setup). Its ok for someone living on their own, but that's about it. Indeed many of the non Irish people I work with grew up in apartments, but bought houses after living in apartments here because apartment living here is not even remotely what it's like in the EU.

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079870#Comment_122079870

This is veering well off topic now, but just to add... I also lived in Spencer Dock, post crash, and part of the issue there was a lack of proper shops, supermarkets, cafes etc. It's come a long way since then.

That comes back to the general issue with apartment living in Ireland - the same diverse choice of amenities are not currently available in Dublin as compared to European cities. That will take time to properly develop as Dublin becomes denser.

There are certainly issues regarding apartment living, but there are also many positives, which I won't start listing. I own a house, and let me tell you it's a constant upkeep and investment!!! In the long run, a lot more expensive than maintaining an apartment.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079870#Comment_122079870

The solution to all this is to fix apartment living and densify the city. It isn't to spend billions on public transport and spew hundreds of thousands of rubbish semi-d's spread out over all of Leinster!

That would just make a bad situation worse.

BTW you have a funny view on apartment living. I love it, I've never lived in a place that was some, warm, quiet and comfortable. No, I'm not a single person living in Spencer Dock, I have a family which I raise in this apartment.

One difference, is that I live outside the canals, but inside the M50. Much more suited to family and kids, bigger apartment, lots of space and fantastic massive open green space, garden all around the building.

I'll give you one guess where all the kids from the local area who live in houses come to play? Yep, the big gardens around the building, much more space for them then a tiny garden front and back of a semi-d.

It is a real eye opener to what European style apartment living should be.

Apartments in the core city center should be focused on young professionals, etc. but further out, say between the canals and M50 it should be more mid sized apartment buildings, 4 to 6 storeys, surrounded by big gardens and playgrounds and with more family sized apartments. This is how it is done in mainland Europe.

It's nearly the same price for a 2 bed apartment as it is a 3 bed Semi-D

Yes, so what?

My apartment costs as much as a 3-bed semi way out or hell a 4 bed detached in Cork (outside the city).

But I wanted to actually live in the city, I enjoy it, I wanted to be close to my work and close to the city center with a minimum commute. It is a trade off of course, but one I'm very happy with.

Irish people (which I am) who want to live in or near cities are going to have to get over their obsession with the 3 bed semi-d. It just isn't realistic as our population and cities grow.

And cover the whole of Leinster in 3-bed semi-d's isn't the answer. It is poor planning and will just make the situation much worse!

spillit67

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077829#Comment_122077829

People constantly say Ireland isn’t planned or is too Dublin centric in its thinking are hilarious. In many ways this is exactly how we planned it, with rural ideals pushing against the tides of urbanism for several decades. This leaves Dublin as the only option, although this is exaggerated. Cork is a wealthy city with lots of excellent jobs, it just so happens that as a county it endured a famine more than most and also had Belfast on the same island. There are neat formulas often attributed to city sizes within countries but in Ireland in particular, they don’t really apply.

Anyway, we have more than enough semi detached houses in the city for the people who want them. It is the lack of apartments that is the issue and it lack of high quality public transit which is the topic at hand.

I am not sure what you are talking about in terms of CBD. College Green is the effective centre of Dublin and that is 2.5km. The business areas are split fairly evenly from around College Green to the Docklands.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in the canals right now who are being provided with sub optimal transit within the city.

There is absolutely no reason why Heuston cannot be the edge of the core of the city, indeed Christchurch once was the centre of the city. If we give people the ability to transit from a Pearse Street to a Heuston, watch what happens with infill development and densification (if we allow it). Already there is an awful lot happening, and for the most part what we are offering in a bus service, bikes and walking to get around.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122080263#Comment_122080263

The solution to all this is to fix apartment living and densify the city. It isn't to spend billions on public transport and spew hundreds of thousands of rubbish semi-d's spread out over all of Leinster!

There is no proposal to spend billions on public transport and spew hundreds of thousands of rubbish semi-d's spread out over all of Leinster. The proposal is to spend billions on public transport to bring it in line with what is required in a large European city.

There are several well populated towns around Leinster and beyond and these are increasing in population through densification and planned expansion. While Dublin needs to densify further, that is only part of the solution. Populations will continue to grow away from the city and we need adequate public transport to service that.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122084035#Comment_122084035

Just to be clear, there is no plan at the moment!

There is Dart+ of course, but that isn’t what folks are talking about here, they are talking about quad tracking or similar. They are talking about high speed long distance commuter and intercity services that can bypass DART. Drogheda to Dublin in 30 minutes, etc.

Such ideas are mentioned in the AIRR, but that is more of an overall strategy than a real plan. The upcoming northern line quad tracking study will be needed to give us insight of a possibility of a real plan.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily against this idea. But I believe planning reform needs to happen first. One off houses need to be banned and even low density semi d estates, instead planning needs to require high density apartment buildings near rail stations.

If that isn’t done it will just lead to a disaster of urban sprawl of low density houses across the whole of Leinster.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122077829#Comment_122077829

Dublin isn't overcrowded.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122079763#Comment_122079763

We absolutely have to change the culture, otherwise we will continue to destroy the planet.

All one-off housing should be banned.

SeanW

There's no question IMHO that the remoteness of Heuston is a major problem. Yes, the Luas helps, but it's not fast and is little help if your destination is on the southside. Likewise the post-2016 services to Pearse/Connolly via the PPT are good, but again if you're going to the Southside you have to spend ~half an hour or more going around city, including crossing the Liffey twice. The same is true of airport travel: with the Metro, extending the DART to St. Stephens Green would give everyone out at least as far as Hazelhatch the option of a 1-transfer journey to the Airport.

Building some kind of Dart Underground as proposed IMHO is a no-brainer, though as two posters above me demonstrate, the question would be how best to use the newly improved Kildare line.

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122116159#Comment_122116159

We weren't talking about one off housing, the conversation was referring to computer towns and semi d estate. We can't ban everything except apartment!!!

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122117519#Comment_122117519

semi-d estates is almost as bad, a very American style suburban sprawl. European style commuter towns typically have dense apartment buildings within walking distance of the station.

If you have to drive to get to the station, whether one off or an estate, you are doing it wrong.

gjim

DU is a no-brainer.

Every single city in Europe with decent heavy-rail metro has built tunnels in the last 50 years in order to connect up legacy heavy rail alignments.

Dublin has the same problem ALL European cities have had with trying to run metro-like (high frequency) services on 19th heavy rail alignments. The 19th century lines never traversed the core of the city and mostly terminated at the edge of the city. This wasn't an issue back in the day as the lines were not designed for high frequency services. But it is a problem for trying to run DART/metro-heavy-rail type services.

The easiest way to provide metro-like frequencies in the core is to ensure all stops are through-running. Railway engineers realized this the world over nearly 100 years ago and since then literally hundreds of cities around Europe and the world have turned their legacy heavy rail infrastructure - designed and built in the age of slow infrequent steam trains - into a vital public transport asset by linking up the old lines with tunnels.

I think even here on this forum, consisting of genuinely interested people, it is common to see the DU misunderstood. It is NOT about providing a "link between Heuston to Connolly" (which it never did anyway) as this can be done with buses, trams, metro, river ferries, taxis, bikes, cable cars, etc. It is not, and never was (back to the 1970s DRRTS plan) to carry intercity trains.

The DU is about exploiting/extracting value from the existence of hundreds of km of legacy/19th century heavy rail alignments by adding a few missing sections (in this case 8km of tunnels) and instead of getting 8km of metro line for your 8km tunnel, you get 100 or 200km of metro line.

Even an East-West metro with a stop in Hueston doesn't achieve this.

One theory I have is that the nearby example of London seems to dominate thinking when considering how PT should work. Because the tube arrived so early in London, it did not follow the path of other European and global cities in developing central heavy-rail metro (until crossrail) - the London Overground was always about skirting around the edges of the city with relatively low-frequency services. If this is your view of how heavy rail services are supposed to work, then of course the PPT will look like a fine solution and DU will seem questionable. But if you've used S-Bahn, RER, the Elizabeth line, etc., etc. then what DU brings to the table is obvious. It transforms 19th century infrastructure into a mechanism to provide modern high-frequency/capacity metro-rail services.

D.L.R.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122128832#Comment_122128832

Dublin is not big enough to warrant a "Crossrail" sized rail tunnel.

Why build 200m full-sized mainline stations under the city at massive cost and disruption when 90m metro-sized stations would do the job just as well for a fraction of the cost. All you need is to make it Irish gauge to connect to the mainlines.

Only downside there is no interoperability with Metrolink 1 but that's the trade off. That is actually plausible, DU isn't (and it never was).

bk

Every single city in Europe with decent heavy-rail metro has built tunnels in the last 50 years in order to connect up legacy heavy rail alignments.

Sure but most of these cities tended to have multiple Metro/u-Bahn lines before they started doing heavy rail cross city lines.

London built 11 underground lines over 100 years before they even thought about the excellent Elizabeth line. And the Elizabeth line is really just the same as a DART+ service, note the tunnel only has one type of train a very DART+ type, with no intercity, long distance commuter or Diesel using the tunnel, like some people here imagine a cross Dublin tunnel having!

I don’t think anyone is saying we should never build any sort of East to West tunnel, just that with DART+ in place, it isn’t at all obvious that it should be a priority. That there aren’t perhaps more beneficial projects to work on first.

MICKEYG

I would like to think the TII, privately*, have a list of 'next' projects that they can move on once the current ones are in progress.

Having a pipeline that a skilled workforce can move onto in sequence would be ideal. We have years of infrastructure to catch up and can't afford to see those skills move abroad as they have nothing to work on.

• I say privately as they have been clever with DART+, breaking it small projects so one issue doesn't bog the whole thing down. Doing the same with DART underground or another Metro line would keep the 'not here' brigade in the dark until the benefits these projects bring are self evident.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122130460#Comment_122130460

It's absolutely no way to run a country though. Any sensible government would say, look we have a housing crisis and we're operating a modern economy on 19th century infrastructure so the normal planning process, when it comes to infra and high density housing is suspended for 10 years so we can catch up to the developed world, close all nimby legal avenues and just build. Metrolink was announced 6 years ago and not a spade in the ground, farce.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122140473#Comment_122140473

That wouldn't pass the courts.

There are certainly things they can do to improve the process, give more resources/people to the planning bodies, create new dedicated planning bodies for certain important areas like MARA, etc.

But all of the above has to be done within the context of the constitution and courts.

riddlinrussell

There have likely been case studies already on the Irish planning system vs other localities, but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual requirements/steps were similarly onerous, or only slightly more so, than many other European countries, but process time itself was an order of magnitude higher. That mostly comes down to under-resourced planning bodies, though we also often seem to hit bizarre delays in submission etc for projects with little explanation, so maybe also a shortage of project design resourcing, compared to other states.