Run the Luas through Trinity College?

Flukey

I would not be a great advocate of the need to link the 2 Luas lines. There are only 2 lines and the vast majority of people travelling on one would have no interest in travelling on the other. We don't have every bus route linked to every other one. Over time, when we get more Luas lines, then yes, sure, some should be directly linked, but anyway that is not the main point of my post.

In Tuesday's Irish Independent John Doyle suggested linking them up. One of the reasons given for not doing so, was the traffic chaos it would cause going down Dawson Street, around Nassau Street and around the corner and in front of Trinity College and on over to O'Connell Street. His suggestion was to run it down Dawson Street and then keeping running it straight, through the wall and into Trinity College and straight across and out the other side onto Pearse Street.

As he said it would involve some demolition of buildings or major structural changes to them, and even the Campanile, but I think it certainly has merits. It would result in far less traffic chaos than going around the front of the College and a stop inside the College grounds would be a good idea. As he put it, if we can have buses through Belfield, why not trams through Trinity? Any thoughts?

MarkoP11

Lets see the bulk of the TCD campus is listed

Art Building is possibly listed
Berkeley Library is listed
1937 reading room listed
Long Room Library listed
Dining Hall listed
Campanile listed
Museum Building listed
All buildings in Front Square and New Square listed
Printing House (oldest building on the site)
Pearse Street listed
Westland Row listed
Botany Bay houses 19-14,13-10 listed
GMB listed

This article was a joke, if you are crazy enough to route the Luas through TCD you would have to come down Kildare Street but if you run through TCD you miss the bottom of Grafton Street where people want to go. Remember TCD is not open campus like UCD and given its city centre location it is locked up each and every night so you couldn't realistically have a stop on the grounds

This is all before you consider TCD (where I'm sitting right now) will fight any attempt to run Luas accross the College site there is little enough space they can't afford to lose anymore. UCD is on a simply huge mostly empty site

BuffyBot

There are only 2 lines and the vast majority of people travelling on one would have no interest in travelling on the other.

How do you know for certain?

enterprise

The best way to connect the two tramlines is the along the alignment CIE first identified in the early 1990's.

My propsal:

St. Stephens Green (stop) - Dawson Street (stop) - Nassua Street - College Green - Westmorland Street (Stop) - O'Connell Street (stop - Green) where there would be a triangular junction connecting with the red line.

This is bascially what was propsed first by CIE before Mary got her way.

Traffic alts:
Dawson Street: One car traffic lane turn right onto Nassua Street, Tram / Bus lane.

Nassua Street - Grafton Street: Tram / Buses only.

The above two areas are the pinch points of the proposal - there is enough room in Westmorland street - O'Connell Bridge / Street to fit the tracks.

Service to be operated:

Green Line:

Alternate trams operate Sandyford - Connolly and Sandyford - Heuston and vice-versa.

Red Line: Tallaght - Connolly.
The Connolly - Heuston "shorts" would be withdrawn (if they ever start) - the paths for these services would be used by the green line trams to / from Sandyford / Connolly - Heuston.

This has the benefit of keeping the two tram fleets apart (if the 30mtrs aren't extended to 40 mtrs) while connecting the two lines.

Suggestions?

enterprise

Flukey wrote:

vast majority of people travelling on one would have no interest in travelling on the other.

I have a need to get from Milltown to Heuston every few weeks. The 92 has lessened the inconvenience somewhat but the the two lines should have been connected from day one.

Typical Irish planning - er what planning?

murphaph

Linking the 2 LINES to form a basic NETWORK makes eminent sense. We've discussed the pros and cons of various routes ad-nauseum over on P11. I favour running straight across O'Connell Bridge and here's why;

• It's the fastest route (with a view to continuing the green line to the northside, this is important)
• DCC wish to remove private motor vehicles* from the central axis of Parnell Square to Stephen's Green to make way for mass pedestrianisation/pulic transport only streets
• Running Luas down Dawson Street means the street can be dedicated bus/Luas only. It forms part of the inner orbital which must be accomodated, this can be moved eastwards on to a newly restored 2-way Kildare street which would no longer carry buses.
• Perhaps most importantly from an engineering point of view, O'Connell Street, O'Connell Bridge and Westmoreland Street are all very wide, easily able to accomodate Luas and vehicles until such time as private vehicles are banned from these places.

*Source: Parnell Square

antoinolachtnai

There is a big engineering problem with putting the Luas across Trinity. The levels are all wrong. There is a drop between Nassau St and the Cricket Ground. As a result, there would be massive, expensive and unsightly ramps running all over the place.

You would still have to get the train across Pearse St and over to the Quays somehow, and this would be just as disruptive as going across College Green.

You would also inevitably end up having to shorten the rugby pitch. It is very short as it is, and making it any smaller would make it pretty much unplayable.

However, I do think it's viable for the RPA to CPO a few hundred square metres of property in front of the provost's house to make the footpath and the road a bit wider to facilitate the tram. It's only being used as a car park at the moment.

In addition to the traffic alterations suggested above, you would probably need to ban taxis from turning left at the bottom of Nassau St, and you would need to change the direction of Suffolk St/Trinity Street.

Metrobest

I agree with the last post. I think the best route would be via Merrion Square/Westland Row and with a stop under the rail bridge at Pearse Station. The College Green area needs an underground station to take footfall off those extremely busy pavements; an on-street tram stop would only clog the area up even more, and where would all the displaced North/South bus routes go? Up Dame Street? Hardly.

antoinolachtnai

Well, you would (or at least I would) allow buses to share the tracks between St. Stephen's Green and College Green. The buses and the tram alike would turn right at Grafton St. and go past the Provost's House, rather than going up Suffolk St.

This would have the additional benefit of speeding up bus journeys, because they wouldn't have to go around Suffolk St.

Southern-bound traffic (other than buses) would go via Suffolk St. and share with the tram for the short uncongested stretch of road between Suffolk St and the Nassau St. TCD entrance.

You would widen the footpaths in front of the Provost's House. Allowing buses and trams only would also calm the area down and make it a bit more hospitable for pedestrians.

If you were to bring the Tram up Westland Row, you would still need to divert all the buses which depend on the Westland Row bus lanes.

There is another routing which is sometimes considered, which is to go via Merrion Square, Macken St and across at the Macken St. Bridge to the IFSC, then onwards to Connolly. The benefit of this is to open up the newly developing docklands area without disturbing any existing bus routes and without causing widespread disruption while it was being built.

It's all swings and roundabouts obviously.

I doubt if an underground station would do anything to reduce footfall on College Green. More likely it would do the opposite. It would probably add around 100 people/minute to the footfall there at peak times (all those environmentally friendly commuters have to go somewhere when they get off the train).

Metrobest

I think the benefits of Merrion Square is that a lot of bus routes - 7,45, etc - could terminate here and passengers change onto tram. Merrion Square is much underutilised as a bus terminus; this could change that.

John R

antoinolachtnai wrote:

Well, you would (or at least I would) allow buses to share the tracks between St. Stephen's Green and College Green.

Unfortunately it is not down to you, or anyone else with the slightest bit of intelligence. The RPA have been unwilling to allow any shared use with other public transport so far and I don't imagine that attitude changing easily.

Flukey

If they are going to link the lines they should actually link them at the other end too. They should have some sort of M50-styled rail line that would run from the Bray line, right around the city, linking all the major industrial estate and suburbs in those areas. So someone living in Wicklow or Wexford, for example, and working in Tallaght or Clondalkin etc., could get a train from Bray to work, without having to go into the city. It could also form part of the airport link as it would go right around the city, through the airport, and join up with the Belfast line. Other radial rail lines could go into the city from the different points along the line. As a start, the proposed Sandyford - Cherrywood extension should go the whole way out to the Bray line as the old Harcourt Street line did.

Drummer

I agree link them at both ends.

As for City Centre, there are 2 main options;

Run Green line straight down Grafton St, around TCD to Westmoreland St and across O'Connell Bridge to meet the Red line.

Alternatively, run the green line along down Grafton St, onto Nassau St, around the back of TCD and across to Connolly.

In addition, all the major streets, such as O'Connell, Henry & Grafton should be open to traffic - it is the likes of Suffolk Street and other pokey lil back streets that should be pedestrianised. Why have motor vehicles of any kind winding through back streets when we had a 4 lane highway past the GPO ?

BrianD

I'd go with the Dawson St>College Green>O'Connell st route but continue onwards to Parnell Square (loop around the square maybe). There would be a junction at Abbey St. to allow transfer of trams from one line to the other for maintenance and rolling stock management. However, I see no need to run Green line trams either to Heuston or Connolly. Green line passengers would have to change trams and continue on their journey. A new interchange stop could be built to facilitate this.

The advantage of terminating at Parnell St. is that the route could be extended northwards without have to revisit roadworks on the central shopping area.

jank

Link them up with the metro....while the southern tip of the metro could extend from St stephen's green in a south west direction for a stop or 2.

Link the metro up to abby street where it continues north to serve drumcondra, whitehall, santry/ballymun to the aerport.

May not be ideal as it would require an extra tram to catch for those going toward heuston.. but its something and it wont waste valuable city centre land.

BrianD

jank wrote:

Link them up with the metro....while the southern tip of the metro could extend from St stephen's green in a south west direction for a stop or 2.

Link the metro up to abby street where it continues north to serve drumcondra, whitehall, santry/ballymun to the aerport.

May not be ideal as it would require an extra tram to catch for those going toward heuston.. but its something and it wont waste valuable city centre land.

The tram won't waste valuable city centre land!

scribs

Flukey wrote:

I would not be a great advocate of the need to link the 2 Luas lines. There are only 2 lines and the vast majority of people travelling on one would have no interest in travelling on the other.

I know loads of people who would love to see the two lines linked - I am one of them - as it stands I use both right now everyday

Flukey

There are of course people that would like to see them linked like you Scribs, but the majority of commuters would have use for only one or the other. What is really needed is to build more lines, to facilitate those who don't use either of them. When there are more routes planned, then they'll naturally have some links. As I said, evey bus route doesn't link up to every other one, but we manage. If we had 10 or 15 Luas lines and none of them linked to any others, then yes that would be ridiculous. At the moment we just have two. I think they should be linked, but with only two lines, it isn't essential. The priority should be to get more of them in place and then we'll have something to integrate. At least the Red line links to the DART. The Green line should do the same, at its south end out to Bray and in time too at its north end to Connolly.

Drummer

Firstly all these trams and trains should be put underground to save traffic hassle.

Secondly, they should do it spider web fashion - say have 5 or 6 lines running out from city centre to the suburbs and then a 1 or 2 orbital lines say at the likes of the NCR an SCR that link the lines running outwards.

Think about it !

Victor

Drummer wrote:

Firstly all these trams and trains should be put underground to save traffic hassle.

Maybe, just maybe, you should get rid of the traffic instead?

murphaph

Victor wrote:

Maybe, just maybe, you should get rid of the traffic instead?

Nah Victor, that would be plain stupid! I want to be able to drive my car down O'Connell St. to work, they should get rid of those stupid bus lanes too. :rolleyes:

DadaKopf

Flukey, no offence meant but your opinion on joining up the two lines is mush. (1) How do you know people don't want to travel North-South?; (2) perhaps less people travel North-South because the city isn't adequately set up this way; (3) joining up the lines would make it easier for people to travel East-West and everywhich way.

I'm with BrianD on the interchange idea. One good central interchange serving two and potentially more tram lines at the centre of the city is a great idea, although perhaps this should have been planned much earlier and an alternate site could have been found. But one simple multi-line stop in the centre of O'Connell St. would probably work fine. There's a very simple version of one in Helsinki and it works great.

It might be a good idea one day for trams to (nearly) completely replace buses in the city-centre region, in combination with conventional rail and a metro.

Flukey

As it stands the two Luas lines are coming from the south side of the city, or to be more precise, the south and southwest. Join them up, in time, but first get more lines in place to serve other parts of the city and suburbs.