After BXD: The next big public transport project for Dublin?3

MJohnston · 15-12-2017 1:34pm

markpb wrote: »

I've long been a fan of the bus lanes in Paris. They've done something similar on the N1 inbound at Whitehall but with ugly flappy wands instead.

Believe it or not, the flappy wands are actually a better, if uglier, solution, as they allow access to emergency vehicles which can drive over the wands easily.

MJohnston · 15-12-2017 1:37pm

Idbatterim wrote: »

THIs hits the nail on the head. I drive from ranelagh to rathcoole every day. I'm flexible with the hours I work. Here is my option, drive it in twenty minutes ish in light traffic or bus into town and take the 69 out which does a mini tour of west Dublin! Real toughie! I'd say it would ad an extra hour to my commute if not slightly more, that would be over two extra hours per day!

Yours is probably a car commute that actually makes sense and isn't that badly impactful on public transport though, as you're traveling suburb to suburb, and presumably you don't have to go anywhere near the city centre to do so. Ultimately the city centre is the big problem area for cars.

plodder · 15-12-2017 1:41pm

MJohnston wrote: »

Believe it or not, the flappy wands are actually a better, if uglier, solution, as they allow access to emergency vehicles which can drive over the wands easily.

and you can see them better in the dark.

jd · 15-12-2017 2:14pm

It needs to be enforced again at Whitehall

Van.Bosch · 16-12-2017 12:37am

jd wrote: »

It needs to be enforced again at Whitehall

Are people now driving fully inside the lane now despite the flappy things?

At Alfie Byrne road, it’s quicker to stay in the correct lane and merge to turn left at the correct point in many cases as the bus lane fills so far back.

Dr Crayfish · 20-12-2017 10:23pm

There are women in my job who drive to work from places like Artane and Blanchardstown and Swords. I work by Grafton st ffs! I don't know how they do it. I rarely drive but I went to go shopping in Santry the other day at 3pm and there was a tailback around 1km long off the Malahide road. On a Friday. I had to just turn around and go back home. I do not have the brains for sitting in infuriating traffic.
I use the Dart sometimes but mostly cycle. The Dart is a pretty poor service in that it's always late, and it goes at a snail's pace, but by Dublin standards I'm very lucky to live near a station. If I couldn't cycle to work I'd lose my mind. It really does seem to be all single occupancy drivers in the mornings, and these aren't tradesmen either by the looks of things.

Metro North, high rise high density housing, and Dart Underground are Walter Mitty stuff. It's a joke of a country. I used to live in London and was reading about Crossrail, the biggest engineering project in Europe right now. It's just fascinating, what a wonderful city. We are a capital and should have good public transport. If you live in cycling distance get yourself a bike, the roads aren't great for cycling but it's by far and away the quickest and cheapest and least frustrating mode of transport. I'm 37 now and I'd be very lucky to see Metro North by the time I'm retired.

orangerhyme · 21-12-2017 1:07am

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

There are women in my job who drive to work from places like Artane and Blanchardstown and Swords. I work by Grafton st ffs! I don't know how they do it. I rarely drive but I went to go shopping in Santry the other day at 3pm and there was a tailback around 1km long off the Malahide road. On a Friday. I had to just turn around and go back home. I do not have the brains for sitting in infuriating traffic.
I use the Dart sometimes but mostly cycle. The Dart is a pretty poor service in that it's always late, and it goes at a snail's pace, but by Dublin standards I'm very lucky to live near a station. If I couldn't cycle to work I'd lose my mind. It really does seem to be all single occupancy drivers in the mornings, and these aren't tradesmen either by the looks of things.

Metro North, high rise high density housing, and Dart Underground are Walter Mitty stuff. It's a joke of a country. I used to live in London and was reading about Crossrail, the biggest engineering project in Europe right now. It's just fascinating, what a wonderful city. We are a capital and should have good public transport. If you live in cycling distance get yourself a bike, the roads aren't great for cycling but it's by far and away the quickest and cheapest and least frustrating mode of transport. I'm 37 now and I'd be very lucky to see Metro North by the time I'm retired.

I agree about dart underground and metro North being pie in the sky projects.

The future is BRT, cycling and high density housing.
These are all relatively cheap, quick and flexible solutions.
I live near a DART station but prefer to cycle as it's cheaper, reliable, less stressful.
I find cycling in Dublin fine except the city center and the quays in particular.

I know also that cycling and public transport isn't for everyone, so we can't forget about cars either.
I think the imminent changes in the car industry will suit Dublin. Self driving cars, car shares, Uber/Hailo etc will take a lot of cars off the streets which will open things up i.e. less on street parking, less multistorey car parks in city center etc.
I think in future we'll see dart, Luas and BRT bringing the majority of commuters in and out.

wakka12 · 21-12-2017 1:11am

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

There are women in my job who drive to work from places like Artane and Blanchardstown and Swords. I work by Grafton st ffs! I don't know how they do it. I rarely drive but I went to go shopping in Santry the other day at 3pm and there was a tailback around 1km long off the Malahide road. On a Friday. I had to just turn around and go back home. I do not have the brains for sitting in infuriating traffic.
I use the Dart sometimes but mostly cycle. The Dart is a pretty poor service in that it's always late, and it goes at a snail's pace, but by Dublin standards I'm very lucky to live near a station. If I couldn't cycle to work I'd lose my mind. It really does seem to be all single occupancy drivers in the mornings, and these aren't tradesmen either by the looks of things.

Metro North, high rise high density housing, and Dart Underground are Walter Mitty stuff. It's a joke of a country. I used to live in London and was reading about Crossrail, the biggest engineering project in Europe right now. It's just fascinating, what a wonderful city. We are a capital and should have good public transport. If you live in cycling distance get yourself a bike, the roads aren't great for cycling but it's by far and away the quickest and cheapest and least frustrating mode of transport. I'm 37 now and I'd be very lucky to see Metro North by the time I'm retired.

I don't know how people do it either. In my college in UCD theres students who commute from blanch,bray and parts of kildare daily. 2 hours or even more in total travelling per day..to go to some miserable place to do work.
I dunno, they have something in their brain that I don't. I couldn't take over 30 mins one way commute daily
I just thank my lucky stars that my father decided to buy a house when he was young that was actually in dublin and not in some far off sprawling mess a million miles from the city

Id honestly much prefer live in a 'pod' apartment like those tiny ones in hong kong somewhere in the city than a bigger place in kildare or meath, if I worked in Dublin that is.

cgcsb · 21-12-2017 11:40am

wakka12 wrote: »

Id honestly much prefer live in a 'pod' apartment like those tiny ones in hong kong somewhere in the city than a bigger place in kildare or meath, if I worked in Dublin that is.

I think that's what everyone would prefer in your situation. Dublin's suburbs are awash with family homes that are occupied by groups of 20 something professionals all sharing and commuting, they'd much rather have a tiny space for themselves in a central location. For some reason we're not allowed have that, we all have to live in a semi-d even if it's with people we don't know.

plodder · 21-12-2017 1:43pm

wakka12 wrote: »

Id honestly much prefer live in a 'pod' apartment like those tiny ones in hong kong somewhere in the city than a bigger place in kildare or meath, if I worked in Dublin that is.

For students and other people living alone, on a short or medium term basis, they make a lot of sense. But, you can't build them due to minimum unit sizes. There was talk of changing that recently but there were a lot of protests about "shoe boxes" and all that stuff unfortunately. So, I don't know if it was changed. You're not even talking about "pods" as such, more like 20-30 sq metre studios.

Sam Russell · 21-12-2017 2:30pm

plodder wrote: »

For students and other people living alone, on a short or medium term basis, they make a lot of sense. But, you can't build them due to minimum unit sizes. There was talk of changing that recently but there were a lot of protests about "shoe boxes" and all that stuff unfortunately. So, I don't know if it was changed. You're not even talking about "pods" as such, more like 20-30 sq metre studios.

The Ballymun flats could have been turned into student accommodation for DCU, but they were demolished.

Do these people who require such paltry accommodation (20-30 sqm) actually exist in any numbers?

Building height is an obvious solution if near PT.

But building anything at all would be better than planning to build and not doing it.

DCC should be out there getting social housing built, probably using building contractors working from tenders to build a relatively small number of houses as part of a bigger development. Currently major developers are getting the job and that then allows them to cream off 20% profit off the top.

Get building - we need 25,000 homes for the next few years, and that is just Dublin.

Idbatterim · 21-12-2017 2:46pm

to the best of my knowledge, Berlin and definitely the uk , don't have minimum sizes or if they do, they are very small. You can be damn sure they know a little more about planning and better practice than the farce that calls itself DCC ...

The Ballymun flats could have been turned into student accommodation for DCU, but they were demolished.

Do these people who require such paltry accommodation (20-30 sqm) actually exist in any numbers?

are you serious? do you know how many people would prefer to live on their own, but couldn't afford the minimum E1500 a month rent that a current 1 bed apartment, built to current reg's would cost?!

Building height is an obvious solution if near PT.

also everywhere in central Dublin it could be argued is close to our crap public transport... If they allowed far higher density in the docklands thousands more could live there and walk to work, freeing up other stock and getting off the overcrowded shambolic public transport...

DCC should be out there getting social housing built, probably using building contractors working from tenders to build a relatively small number of houses as part of a bigger development. Currently major developers are getting the job and that then allows them to cream off 20% profit off the top.

say they allow a few more floors and smaller units, all of a sudden, you could possibly nearly double the amount of social housing units being delivered, at no extra cost!

All this waffle and talking, the solutions are simple, you would wonder just who the vested interests and snakes holding back on change or fighting it, are...

blanch152 · 30-12-2017 1:29am

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

There are women in my job who drive to work from places like Artane and Blanchardstown and Swords. I work by Grafton st ffs! I don't know how they do it. I rarely drive but I went to go shopping in Santry the other day at 3pm and there was a tailback around 1km long off the Malahide road. On a Friday. I had to just turn around and go back home. I do not have the brains for sitting in infuriating traffic.
I use the Dart sometimes but mostly cycle. The Dart is a pretty poor service in that it's always late, and it goes at a snail's pace, but by Dublin standards I'm very lucky to live near a station. If I couldn't cycle to work I'd lose my mind. It really does seem to be all single occupancy drivers in the mornings, and these aren't tradesmen either by the looks of things.

Metro North, high rise high density housing, and Dart Underground are Walter Mitty stuff. It's a joke of a country. I used to live in London and was reading about Crossrail, the biggest engineering project in Europe right now. It's just fascinating, what a wonderful city. We are a capital and should have good public transport. If you live in cycling distance get yourself a bike, the roads aren't great for cycling but it's by far and away the quickest and cheapest and least frustrating mode of transport. I'm 37 now and I'd be very lucky to see Metro North by the time I'm retired.

You will find that those women tend to be the ones dropping/collecting from creches/schools and looking after older relatives.

Peregrine · 30-12-2017 1:40pm

The next major public transport project to be delivered will probably be Busconnects. Followed by DART expansion. I hope it'll be Maynooth but it'll probably be Balbriggan. No Interconnector. Then Metro North.

karma_coma · 30-12-2017 3:23pm

It's depressing really, should be a large infrastructure project like Dart Underground or MN next but our government has decided to do the spindly cheap projects first..kicking the can down the road.

London's Crossrail to be open by late next year. Wasn't planning on its final form started at around the time Dart Underground / MN were too?

LeinsterDub · 30-12-2017 3:37pm

karma_coma wrote: »

It's depressing really, should be a large infrastructure project like Dart Underground or MN next but our government has decided to do the spindly cheap projects first..kicking the can down the road.

London's Crossrail to be open by late next year. Wasn't planning on its final form started at around the time Dart Underground / MN were too?

A billion euro on buses is hardly cheap. It's 3 times the cost of LCC. And cross rail has been talked about for at least 100 years

1huge1 · 01-01-2018 7:42pm

Peregrine wrote: »

The next major public transport project to be delivered will probably be Busconnects. Followed by DART expansion. I hope it'll be Maynooth but it'll probably be Balbriggan. No Interconnector. Then Metro North.

I really don't understand the advantage of extending the Dart to Balbriggan without adding more tracks to the Northern Line similar to what they did to the Kildare line in the last decade.

thomasj · 01-01-2018 11:17pm

My guess as to what will happen:

- DU won't go ahead

- Kildare line services will continue to use PPT and due to limitations won't become DART service

- As far as Balbriggan will be electrified but basically will be extension of Malahide DART. Rebalancing of Northern commuter and Howth DART

- Maynooth will be electrified and will go as far as Dun Laoghaire but I can't see any major change other than the planned 30 minute frequency off peak planned for May. Probably see a 15 minute frequency peak hours (alongside docklands) with the main change being speed and capacity

-longford commuter will become completely a limited stop service

- I think the proposed 10 minute frequency to DART off peak will cover the city-southside area with a 30 minute frequency off peak for Balbriggan (along with 1 Drogheda commuter) , Maynooth and Howth.

The required capacity increase for Kildare will come off the Maynooth line and maybe northern line.

Praetorian · 02-01-2018 6:01pm

I've voted for Metro North as it would be amazing for the city, airport, Swords.

Personally, living in Balbriggan, I'll be happy to see the Dart extension come out my way.

I hope it will mean a more frequent reliable service.

I assume they will buy new rolling stock because the existing 100 / 110kph stock will not take advantage of the track which can do 90mph (145kph approx).

In a dream world, 4 track from Connolly to at least Howth Junction would happen at the same... I know this won't happen. But could an additional track be done for significantly lower cost? I was eyeballing it recently on a journey into town and it looked doable for long stretches. After all, peak traffic is generally only busy in one way. To Dublin in the morning from Dublin in the evening?

trellheim · 03-01-2018 4:11pm

Although strictly more part of the Dublin Metro region would two-tracking Bray-Greystones help with strategic transport, south of Bray remains fairly hamstrung with public rail transport growth

loyatemu · 03-01-2018 4:21pm

trellheim wrote: »

Although strictly more part of the Dublin Metro region would two-tracking Bray-Greystones help with strategic transport, south of Bray remains fairly hamstrung with public rail transport growth

it would be ridiculously expensive to do.

trellheim · 03-01-2018 6:50pm

it would be ridiculously expensive to do.

Not denying it in the slightest. My question is though would the benefit match up ?

The N11 is not going to get any quieter unless you stick 20€ tolls on it and make one lane a buslane only ( yes its silly ).

Sam Russell · 03-01-2018 8:26pm

trellheim wrote: »

Not denying it in the slightest. My question is though would the benefit match up ?

The N11 is not going to get any quieter unless you stick 20€ tolls on it and make one lane a buslane only ( yes its silly ).

I think you might get a better result bringing the Metro out from Brides Glen (if it ever gets that far).

Grandeeod · 03-01-2018 8:46pm

karma_coma wrote: »

Wasn't planning on its final form started at around the time Dart Underground / MN were too?

Yes it was.

LeinsterDub wrote: »

And cross rail has been talked about for at least 100 years

Various similar projects have been talked about since the 1940s. Crossrail itself was born a lot lot more recent than "at least" 100 years ago. It had its problems, but considering what they build in the UK railway wise, it hasn't suffered from the Irish Politicians phobia about putting railways underground. Once Paddy politician had the money he had no problem putting roads underground, but he still lacks the will to try a railway underground. Talks a good fight though.:rolleyes:

trellheim · 03-01-2018 9:21pm

I think you might get a better result bringing the Metro out from Brides Glen (if it ever gets that far).

to Greystones ?

Kind of missing where I'm coming from which is trying to drive more Greystones/Arklow/Wicklow options and the last two will have to use Heavy Rail

Stephen15 · 03-01-2018 9:52pm

trellheim wrote: »

Although strictly more part of the Dublin Metro region would two-tracking Bray-Greystones help with strategic transport, south of Bray remains fairly hamstrung with public rail transport growth

The thing if you were gonna do that you'd have to divert the line away from Bray Head inland meaning the line would have to inland South of Bray Station which would require a lot of CPOs.

loyatemu · 04-01-2018 1:46am

Stephen15 wrote: »

The thing if you were gonna do that you'd have to divert the line away from Bray Head inland meaning the line would have to inland South of Bray Station which would require a lot of CPOs.

I don't think that's even possible - how do you get from the existing line to west of Bray Head and how do you then get back through Greystones. It's still a pretty hilly route that would require a lot of cuttings etc.

There are cheaper ways to improve capacity from Wicklow and Greystones - e.g. put in sidings so more trains can be stabled there in order to increase frequencies in the morning. Further south than Wicklow - TBH I don't think we should be encouraging more commuter developments that far out.

Stephen15 · 04-01-2018 2:04am

loyatemu wrote: »

I don't think that's even possible - how do you get from the existing line to west of Bray Head and how do you then get back through Greystones. It's still a pretty hilly route that would require a lot of cuttings etc.

There are cheaper ways to improve capacity from Wicklow and Greystones - e.g. put in sidings so more trains can be stabled there in order to increase frequencies in the morning. Further south than Wicklow - TBH I don't think we should be encouraging more commuter developments that far out.

Exactly it is more less impossible to double track the line unless you built an entirely new line.

The thing is with house prices the way they are in Dublin people are gonna want to buy cheaper in the likes of South Wicklow which going to mean people are going to have to commute from these places bringing in the debate do we build public transport infrasture to satisfy people's current needs or satisfy they're future needs and plan properly. Should people suffer from poor transport because of poor planning or should we link places well however poorly planned they are.

Dr Crayfish · 04-01-2018 3:48pm

What's stopping putting in bus routes, with high frequency, that stop at similar stops to Luas stops? On routes that have similar priority in traffic to the Luas? Like surely we could have something like that running from the airport to centre within a couple of years? Comfortable electric buses could be used with more than one entrance, like a Luas on rubber wheels type thing but wider. Surely there must be similar systems elsewhere?

Sam Russell · 04-01-2018 3:54pm

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

What's stopping putting in bus routes, with high frequency, that stop at similar stops to Luas stops? On routes that have similar priority in traffic to the Luas? Like surely we could have something like that running from the airport to centre within a couple of years? Comfortable electric buses could be used with more than one entrance, like a Luas on rubber wheels type thing but wider. Surely there must be similar systems elsewhere?

What is there to making traffic lights wait for oncoming buses and trams?

Why not have buses fitted with dash cams to take pictures of cars in bus lanes? These would of course have to be accepted as robust evidence in FPN or subsequent court case.

Why not have some bus lanes designated as bus only (no taxis)?

Lots of small steps to make buses go faster. If a bus goes 10% faster, it is equivalent to having 10% more buses and more revenue.

After BXD: The next big public transport project for Dublin?3

Comments