Transport Infrastructure projects planning status - see post #2 for latest info.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123599657#Comment_123599657

Updated the table, thanks.

blanch152

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/dart-expansion-plan-gets-boost-after-high-court-hears-objections-withdrawn/a174035516.html

The Dart+ W judicial review has been withdrawn. Not updated in table.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123601679#Comment_123601679

Thanks for the reminder, I've updated it, a very positive update to make.

cgcsb

Just a few updates:

Metrolink - There are now very public rumblings of a decision in the coming weeks, perhaps in August, fingers crossed for the JRs

Luas Finglas - Decision expected be end of September, JRs unlikely so lets hope for a swift tendering and straight into enabling works.

DART+ - Enablng works are going to tender nowish with the contract for surveys already out for tender. Other enabling tender packs will include site clearance, utility diversions and installing new signalling cables along the route. It's hoped that the enabling works will start in Q4 of this year.

Bus Connects - Finglas/Ballymun and Liffey Valley schemes were to start soon as of June but that seems to have quiet. I'm not sure what's happening with all the BC JRs I thought some of them ought to be done by now, perhaps some legal eagle can offer an update?

All-in-all 2026 is shaping up to be quite the year for spades in ground. I'm hoping it's the start of a boom in modernising our infrastructure like we had when the motorways were built. There's a substantial pipeline of projects and hopefully the new projects will keep coming, we have a long way to go catch up to other developed countries.

Bsharp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123634264#Comment_123634264

BC Liffey Valley contract has been awarded to GMC Utilities. https://gmcirl.com/gmc-named-preferred-tenderer-for-busconnects-liffey-valley-to-city-centre-corridor

Ballymun Finglas to follow in a few months.

gjim

Tip o’ the hat to all the contributors to this thread. This information is not to be found elsewhere consolidated like this and presented in such a clear way. A rare example of the potential of social media to create something valuable.

A1ACo

It’ll be interesting to see the actual monetary figures breakdowns of the current NDP review announcement tomorrow, between the different infrastructure categories and the ‘extra’ €20-30 billion to be spent to 2030.

This is as while Water, Electricity, Sewage and Housing (the later highlighted as currently needing a lot of investment facilitated the formers) are repeatedly headlined as critical - but it seems Roads in various (‘non Dublin’) locations are being thrown in too.

But if previous/existing/ proposed notable road schemes such as the M17/M18, M28 and A5 (NI) are anything to go by, they could quietly absorb a lot of that funding and may better get the jump on other projects that might not be as ‘Spade Ready’?

I’ll abbreviate the currently stated critical (and other infra’ etc) projects to the acronym!:

WESHTTR

(Water/ Electricity/ Sewage/ Housing/ Tracks/ Trees/ Roads)

(sounds like previous’ years expression - the west of Ireland is awake and open for business etc.).

Trees…I’ve indulged myself to throw in Trees too - perhaps €s for additional urban and rural hardwoods trees would likely be a nice climate change investment, while the climate is most favourable, and national emergency wise could be future building material etc.

I’ve also purposely distilled media mentions of Public Transport investment (apropos this PT thread!) into ‘Tracks’ above – to differentiate from road-based bus or bike schemes – and to mean ANY tram or train project nationwide.

It doesn’t seem that capital spending for Education has featured much, and to be honest the first four of the above infrastructure and housing categories could likely absorb whatever is thrown at them for the next few years, without including the others.

All things being equal, and they are definitely not, the monetary figures (comparing apples and oranges) for example, for the new M28 mostly replacement road, are about the same as the upper combined 2021 guestimate figure in the Strategic Rail Review (Figure 18, PP96) for the Letterkenny (-Derry/Londonderry) Rail ‘Spur’ and ‘Shannon Airport Link’ Rail distant projects combined.

So pun intended, the priorities may ‘boil down’ to some national infra’ choices, or some compromises between: -

…being able to drink water straight out of the tap everywhere (see Uisce Eireanns long list of boil water notices), turning on lights, flushing the loo and swimming in the sea, roofs over heads, urban/work place building (facilitated with tram/ rail Tracks) and road traffic etc. alleviation projects.

In other words; choices between what do we need More Of (e.g. water/treatment, electricity, residential), and what we need but Do Not Have (e.g. railroads (and motorways or close to) around circumference of country and to airports, and electric trains/ trams/buses in all the cities (and tunnels for Metro and DART in Dublin).

Or maybe some of the extra funds should be banked now, for better projects later but that are yet to be detailed, instead of using it on expensive infra’ projects that happen to be detailed at this point, but are less good overall?

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123655569#Comment_123655569

From your acronym, only “WESH” is critically important to this country. The first three are impeding the production of the fourth, and the lack of Housing is slowly choking the country as well as driving prices up across all sectors of the economy.

I expect the bulk of spending under this plan to be in areas that facilitate housing. While I believe 100% that rail transportation is the only sustainable way to develop housing around large urban centres, I think there is already a large untapped potential around the existing rail infrastructure in Dublin and even Cork that can be unlocked if the government pumps cash into utilities provision.

That’s the carrot for housing. There will also need to be a very large stick to remove the temptation of land-owners to profiteer from the housing shortage, but that’s off topic for here.

GusherING

If this website folds in coming months, where do posters think this conversation would continue online?

LXFlyer

Planning applications with Fingal CC for new bus depots to be added to the list:

NTA - Ballycoolin :

https://planning.agileapplications.ie/fingal/application-details/101830

GAI - Northwest Business Park:

https://planning.agileapplications.ie/fingal/application-details/100709

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123664925#Comment_123664925

Added, thanks. I've added them in their own section, I know they are part of BusConnects, but adding new rows to an existing table doesn't work on boards.

LXFlyer

The decision in the Clongriffin CBC JR is now pushed back to 25 November.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123665702#Comment_123665702

And just a reminder to everyone, that's an autogenerated date that could, and probably will change. It's also got no relation to when the judgement could come out, it be released tomorrow with no mention of it changing on that website until it's all done and dusted.

Aside from that, I have a feeling that some of these BC decisions are going to all come at the same time, which is frustrating as it's a delay on some of them.

Thunder87

Have many of the other hearings taken place yet? I haven't heard much talk about them recently.

Also would anyone have an insight into how these timelines actually work? It seems absolutely crazy that what on the surface looks like a straight forward case should need two years to come to a decision on. Is the case just thrown in the corner until someone eventually decides to schedule it or is there actually ongoing deliberation that takes 18 months?

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123677422#Comment_123677422

Welcome to our legal system where there aren’t enough judges, and decisions are dependent upon when judges can sit down and write their judgments.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123677422#Comment_123677422

A couple of them only, which isn't great. The rest are slowly grinding their way forwards. So far we've got no real idea of what arguments they're putting forward, as what they've released in the media is almost never what hets argued once the lawyers start looking at it.

cgcsb

Liffey Valley CBC to go to construction in September. Ballymun/Finglas to follow (no dates, this one involves a new bridge and serious earthworks at NCR so is a good bit more complex than Liffey Valley).

I'm hearing it's Ringsend and Rathfarnham/Templeogue are then next.

Metrolink was a go to get it's RO this weekend but haven't heard anything. There's a new law coming into force tomorrow on restricting JRs (or something, I'm not a legal person), but apparently this will help expedite metrolink.

Luas Finglas to get it's RO by last weekend in September apparently

in smaller projects:

The royal canal cycle route in the city centre is to be complete soon, last weekend of August and the new war memorial bridge is finally going ahead.

EDIT: The next bus corridors will be Tallaght/Clondalkin and Ringsend, not Templeogue/Rathfarnham and Ringsend.

spacetweek

As for next CBC, this article says it will be Tallaght/Clondalkin. This was previously indicated too.

https://busconnects.ie/nta-awards-contract-to-gmc-for-the-delivery-of-the-first-busconnects-core-bus-corridor-scheme/

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123687099#Comment_123687099

I stand corrected, surprised at this

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123686606#Comment_123686606

Given that Templeogue/Rathfarnham is subject to a judicial review, it won't be happening anytime soon. As above Tallaght/Clondalkin is next and Ringsend would be the logical fourth scheme given that they won't clash with the first two.

spacetweek

With a three year construction time for Liffey Valley, the numbers aren’t adding up for me. If they only do them in tranches of four, each takes three years and they indicated that they will only have four under construction at a time, it will be nine years before they are all complete. I guess their 2030 target was entirely notional, right?

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123687227#Comment_123687227

Liffey Valley is one of the simpler corridors from an engineering point of view in that there is no engineering at all, it's lines and signs, some kerbing and resurfacing works, some additional set of traffic lights also. The 3 year time line smacks of farse for what it actually is. I would expect they've went with minimising disruption and factored in a lot of piss taking. The contractor on the clontarf scheme engaged in copious piss taking leaving large sections as a construction site although practically complete.

By comparison Ringsend requires a substantial bridge element, I shudder to think what that construction time frame will be.

VonLuck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123687275#Comment_123687275

Given that it's a public procurement project, I'm sure the contractors would have bid on the basis of the best programme they could achieve and GMC won in the end. It does sound crazy, but I'm not a contractor so maybe the numbers add up.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688348#Comment_123688348

All contractors engage in piss taking on government contracts and contracts for massive companies. Basically for an organisation they know will pay up, they can take the piss.

VonLuck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688457#Comment_123688457

But when bidding for a project it's (almost) always the lowest bidder that wins. I'm not sure how much piss taking there is in the bidding stage because if a contractor tries to put in a large bid, another contractor will swoop in and win it with a more realistic figure.

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123688832#Comment_123688832

They wait till they win the contract, the legal teams our over the contract to find avenues to get more money through unknowns, undefined aspects and unexpected conditions. In this case we have a preliminary design for Ballyfermot and the NTA now saying it wants something totally different in Ballyfermot. Any contractor worth their salt will be straight in there for claims for 'design changes'. The NTA know this but don't care, it's not their money and they don't care about the commuting public either.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123689128#Comment_123689128

If the NTA are going ahead with the alternative design at Ballyfermot, it is possible that the tender was based on that.

LXFlyer

The June NTA board meeting minutes indicate that settlements are being reached for the Swords CBC judicial review proceedings.

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Minutes-of-June-2025-Board-Meeting.pdf

spacetweek

That’s great so long as the “settlements” are not caving into selfish business interests.

PlatformNine

I was just having a look at the bus depot application, and it looks like GAI Northwest business park was approved? I haven't seen any news about it so I am not sure when construction will start.

It also is hopefully a good sign for the Ballycoolin depot getting approved quickly.