tom1ie wrote: » That's ridiculous. If you can build a dedicated lane for a tram at 100 million a km you can build a dedicated lane for a bus at 50 million (figures used for illustrative points). How are you going to build a tram from greenhills to the city centre? Is there some sort of hidden land route everyone else bar yourself is unaware of? Are you talking about banning cars off the road to make way for the trams? How do you think that will go down with the motoring lobby? Are you talking about building dedicated tram lanes that require cpoing at at least twice the price of bus connects?
Dats me wrote: » In London the underground carries 1.3 billion journeys per year, just over half of the London bus' 2.2 billion. Source: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/annual-report
Last Stop wrote: » Typical tram costs €40m per km and Busconnects is around €20m per km. I am suggesting that instead of building 115km of bus lanes (230 is based on per direction) we could build 60km of tram lines for the same price. That could be: Lucan Luas Knocklyon Luas UCD Luas Clongriffin Luas This would replace the CBCs in these areas. My point again as I have mentioned several times on this thread is that it would be a far better use of resources to build an extensive tram network than develop an extensive CBC network. Trams are far more efficient at transporting large volumes of people.
Last Stop wrote: » Compare it to km operated though. Obviously if you have more buses than trains it’s bound to carry more passengers. My point is trains (and in Dublin’s case trams) are far more efficient at moving people. According to the next line in the table, London buses operated 480 million km vs just 85 million km for London Underground. That means despite operating over 5.5 times the number of Kms it is carrying less than 2 times the passengers. To get a real comparison you need an idea of passengers per km operated. Bus 2200/480 = 4.625 Underground 1384/85 = 16.282 If you want to bring it back to Dublin and more importantly trams comparing bus and tram passengers vs km operated in 2017 according to the CSO Bus 138/57= 2.42 Luas 37.6/3.9= 9.64 So Luas is more efficient (almost 4x) than buses... as I said.
tom1ie wrote: » ok lets look at those routes: lucan: a qbc is pretty much in place from lucan to the quays already via the n4. This route requires some bus prioritisation (traffic transponders to favour busses, bus gates etc) and some bus dedication at the n4/m50 junction. lucan luas requires a brand new luas line that wont be any quicker than a dedicated qbc. winner: bus. knocklyon luas: what route are you planning on taking to build the tram? ucd luas: ucd is sandwiched in between the green line luas (13min cycle from milltown stop), the dart, (9min cycle from booterstown. there is a readily accessible qbc at the gate of ucd, this will be upgraded quite easily under bc. again bus is the winner. clongriffin admittedly i know nothing about this route so you can have that one. look i agree rail is the best answer especially in the greenhills terenure templeogue areas, but there is just no room for a tram, it has to be put underground. However on the above mentioned routes, the n4 (lucan) and the n11 (ucd) are best placed to take full advantage of bus connects.
tom1ie wrote: » thats all very well when you have the space and money to build a tram...............
Last Stop wrote: » Again my point of Lucan and UCD is that it would be far more efficient to build a tram than Busconnects.
sharper wrote: » There was a plan to build the LUAS out to Lucan. It was dropped at some point. If LUAS cross city is any indicator than shared space tramlines are basically a waste of time and you might as well build a covered tunnel that people can walk along without getting wet.
Last Stop wrote: » We’re spending €3bn to create space for buses?!?
Dats me wrote: » €2bn for all of next gen ticketing, transition to hybrid buses, network redesign, new bus stops etc If you actually look at the estimated costs in the background reports for the routes a lot of them are €30m/€40m of I remember correctly. Another obvious point is that your trams do nothing for the Northside. If the demand on any of your corridors justifies a luas they should get one though, for example Lucan is to get a Luas by 2035 - Swords is getting a Metro by 2027 and still gets a bus corridor because you need both. Also, what do your team's do for cycling? It's 230km of bus lanes and segregated cycle paths. Like I'm sure everyone here would love more luas lines but you still need bus systems and cycle tracks.
Last Stop wrote: » Has Clongriffin moved from the Northside? Ive also assumed that dart expansion and Metrolink will go ahead. If they don’t then the whole of Dublin and in particular the north side is in trouble. I don’t agree with you statement that certain corridors need both a Luas/ metro and a bus corridor. A Luas has sufficient capacity to serve the majority of corridors in Dublin with the exception of Swords- Sandyford which requires metro. Yes buses will still be required to serve the gaps between the tram/rail lines but this is not on the same scale as proposed under Busconnects. I also think it’s safe to assume that the Busconnects plan for a Liffey valley cbc effective kills the plans for a Lucan Luas before 2035 despite the fact this completely contradicts the GDA strategy. The reason I say this is because if we look at the time lines, Busconnects goes for planning some time in 2020 (presumably Q4) ABP take a year to decide. Assuming it is in the first batch to go to construction, the earliest it will start is 2022. 2 years construction means it will open early 2024 at best. Now if we were to have a Luas in place by 2035, assuming 4 years construction, 1 year with ABP and 2 years design then the CBC would be open for a maximum of 4 years before plans are being developed to replace it. Could you imagine the public outcry about why we spent €Xm on a cbc only to replace it a few years later. Cycling has a modal share of around 10%. On some of the corridors, private cars have a modal share of up to 70% and public transport around 10%. If we are to get serious about reducing congestion then we need to convert private cars into public transport and therefore priority needs to be given to public transport investment. As I have shown, trams are far more efficient than buses and therefore we should be investing in developing a tram network rather than Busconnects.
Dats me wrote: » Good post on fairness. One thing I'd say is that cycling really is the only scalable alternative to private cars we have. Cycling from outside the canals to inside the canals carries the same number of people as the Luas currently. In Copenhagen and Utrecht they're getting 50% cycling commuting modal share. Does anyone think we'll get 50% public transport modal share all over Dublin with the GDA plan? Will 4 Luas lines make a massive difference? If we had safe cycling everywhere and less cars so people would feel safe cycling would absolutely explode - look at the grand canal cycle route. Also where do these lines go in the city centre? We hardly have enough road space to segregate them do we? Can we just have no buses anymore on city-centre streets to preserve luas that only serves your 4 corridors? Or else it's unsegregated and now your frequency is down to 15 trains per hour. Tbh as I said above, we're supposedly one of the richest countries in the world, if you can propose places for these trams to effectively go in the centre then they should be built as long as there is the demand, I suspect the modelling doesn't work out for these or we would have heard more about them. Say UCD, I think the car modal share is only about 20% right now.
Last Stop wrote: » I don’t agree with you regarding cycling. There are a significant number of people who will not cycle for a variety of reasons including not feeling safe and/or no shower facilities at work. It’s these people we need to get onto trams/buses. While I know you could see an increase in cycling with improved facilities, the reality is we are never going to develop a network on every street or achieve the same success as the Dutch with the investment we are currently making in public transport. 4 Luas lines would make a massive difference especially when you look at the success of the current Luas lines and therefore in my opinion be a far better investment. That’s not to say we shouldn’t invest in cycling at all. Personally I think we need far more investment in particular projects such as extending the grand canal cycle way to suir road and ideally an N/S line from Portobello - Heytesbury St - Parliament st - Capel St - Blessington St basin - Royal canal. However, and here is the crucial point, this should not be at the expense of mass transport. This is the problem we have; the car lobby want more roads - simple. The public transport lobby want more Luas, more buses more trains, more cycling lanes etc etc and when it comes to funding the money is split between all of the above. The most sensible investment for Dublin now is the one which gives the greatest return in terms of reducing congestion. This is of course tram lines. This should be made a priority and once we have developed a network, we can focus on other areas such as cyling etc. I’m the city centre, I would envisage the following Lucan: tie in with LCC at college green Knocklyon: tie in with Lucan at Christchurch UCD: supersedes green line (upgraded to metro) from Harcourt Clongriffin: ties in with LCC at Parnell This would naturally put a lot of pressure on LCC but not all trams would have to use it. Christchurch, college green and SSG could become terminus stops for some services for example. With regards to UCD (commuting survey here - https://ucdestates.ie/commuting/survey/2015-16-results/), car modal share amongst students is 20% but amongst staff it’s 46%. Its almost the exact opposite when it comes to buses so you get to around 60% modal share for both. So that’s 18,000 trips. 55% are via N11 entrance and 49% of them are during AM peak so around 4,500. Even assuming a modal shift from cars of half if Luas was built, you’d still be looking at around 4,000 passengers during the AM peak. That’s either 40 buses (1 every 90 seconds - impossible for buses) or 14 trams (1 every 4 minutes - Luas green line is up around 20 per hour). I know my analysis above is quite simplistic and yes assumed everyone is coming from the city centre to UCD which is obviously not true but it is also assuming that it is just UCD on the line. If the green line was extended from Harcourt to UCD, I have no doubt it would be viable. In relation to the other lines, well the NTA have already done that work for me on the Knocklyon and Lucan corridors where the GDA strategy is clear that buses will not meet demand. Now they suggest BRT which the NTA have since dropped as they (unsurprisingly) discovered would cost around the same as Luas for an inferior service. So that is why both of these corridors warrant tram lines. Clongriffin was on the BRT network too and makes sense to serve a significant portion of the north eastern area not within reach of DART.
Last Stop wrote: » I don’t agree with you regarding cycling. There are a significant number of people who will not cycle for a variety of reasons including not feeling safe and/or no shower facilities at work. It’s these people we need to get onto trams/buses. While I know you could see an increase in cycling with improved facilities, the reality is we are never going to develop a network on every street or achieve the same success as the Dutch with the investment we are currently making in public transport. .
tom1ie wrote: » I would like to focus on your hypothetical Knocklyon line. I really don’t see where you are going to put the tram tracks, and/or ban cars? Can you give a street by street breakdown please. I’m not knocking the idea, I just don’t see the space.
Dats me wrote: » I think you could, Copenhagen's often low quality infrastructure and still very high modal share show that we could have huge cycling numbers taking cars off the roads. Cycling is actually a more preferable replacement for car journeys for a lot of people compared to public transport. Cycling is often much, much handier as it's door to door which public transport isn't, it's almost free, which public transport isn't, it's good for your health and it's very reliable whereas even the Luas gets caught in traffic some of the time. Given you're talking about return on investment and either ors, saying €2bn on luas > €2bn ón cycling or even €200m ón cycling is wrong given evidence do far in Ireland - not that I would oppose either going ahead. Also, of course, you can't put any more trams on LCC it's chaos already. Putting turnbacks to allow terminated trams on LCC would be even worse
Last Stop wrote: » I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the cycling one. I genuinely think if you were to invest the €2bn from Busconnects on either cycling or trams, trams would offer a far greater reduction in motor traffic but you obviously don’t. I have suggested increasing the number of trams on LCC but of course that assumes a reduction in the number of buses as a number of “spines” as proposed under Busconnects would be replaced. To avoid congestion a number of trams could terminate a stops before they enter LCC e.g. college green, SSG or Christchurch. Even this would be a significant improvement on the current system. Long term I would envisage capacity enhancements to LCC to allow a greater throughout such as double length stops or additional turnbacks at the likes of Parnell or Westmoreland.
gjim wrote: » Investment in BusConnects does not prelude later upgrading to tram or BRT. The opposite in fact - it paves the way by establishing PT-only corridoors of sufficient width to accommodate buses and or trams along paths where we know there is demand for PT. You're going to have to knock trees, CPO gardens, divert traffic, change junctions, etc. for a tramway anyway - so it's not like the investment is wasted if you later add trams or BRTs to the mix. Multi-modal segregated-from-cars on-street PT corridoors are common enough in continental European cities: there is one a block away from where I live at the moment - it carries diesel busses (from outer suburbia), electric buses/trollybuses and also trams - sharing roadspace and stops/platforms. I view BusConnects as the first step in establishing these types of corridoors in Dublin. Even if a new route is already at capacity using battery/hybrid buses from the start, there is a much simpler upgrade path for trams or BRT.
riddlinrussell wrote: » Strongly disagreeing with you here simply because you may be underestimating just how far €2bn would stretch for cycling. When the NI minister for transport announced a network of greenways criss-crossing the entirety of Northern Ireland the total outlay was 600 million for the whole thing (Obviously city costs are greater but given the minuscule land take comparatively for good cycling provision...). Spending 2 billion on a Dublin cycle network would utterly transform how people get around the city, if done following a Dutch model. You'd be talking about being able to fully segregate every core corridor, many feeder corridors, high quality greenways through most parks. Cost to benefit cycling is WAY out in front of the others, I'm not suggesting it would suit all people and obviously a strong public transport network is a must to compliment cycling, but if we ever had €2 billion to play with for cycling the city would be radically different.
tom1ie wrote: » This sounds good, but I presume heavier foundations would be needed for a tramway as opposed to a qbc? I presume this will be taken into account for bus connects.........
gjim wrote: » I don't know tbh but I'd imagine that they do just enough groundwork to support buses/trollybuses until there's a definite plan to lay rails. Otherwise you front-load significant cost - for example for utility diversion - which would badly damage the cost/benefit justification for any QBC or trollybus route.
tom1ie wrote: » Yes but imagine building a load of radial qbc’s, 3 years later 4 or 5 of them have to be dug up to improve the foundations for trams, as the extra expense wasn’t frontloaded to allow for this. Now that would be scandalous.
gjim wrote: » I don't see why it would cost so much more to dig up the road and divert utilities later when you've decided that you want to upgrade to a tram line? The road surface for a QBC or a trollybus route is pretty much just normal road surface which would have to be maintained anyway even if the QBC wasn't there.
alentejo wrote: » I despair!!https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/bus-connects-its-going-to-take-heart-and-soul-out-of-the-village-and-make-it-a-thoroughfare-say-local-shop-owners-38487415.html
