General infrastructure spending priorities thread (split from Metro thread)

Thelonious Monk wrote: »

Tallaght and Blanch can be less than a 30 min cycle to city centre. Put in proper bike lanes and loads of people would adopt bike commute.

The other poster didn’t mention the city.

They were talking about travelling from Tallaght to Blanchardstown.

I suppose if we had real ambition, we could fairly easily build a great cycle path parallel to the M50.

MJohnston wrote: »

I suppose if we had real ambition, we could fairly easily build a great cycle path parallel to the M50.

Don't even get me started about the abysmal cycling infrastructure in this city compared to where I'm from (the Netherlands). It's a joke. Much much much much more than that would need to be done.

I believe they had a fairly good starting plan a while ago, but of course that was binned too.

LeinsterDub wrote: »

It's not irrelevant as we don't have a magic money tree.

It seems we do have a magic money tree. The cost of the Newlands X 'upgrade' and the M50 'upgrade' - about 2€billion maybe? I've no idea how much the Red Cow 'upgrade' cost but probably about a billion like the other 'upgrades'.
Total: about 3b give or take a few hundred million. That's an awful lot of money to make the traffic situation even worse around the capital but remember folks the money just isn't there for an efficient public transport system in Dublin.

Last Stop wrote: »

You jump from €1bn to €2bn to €3bn with absolutely no sources.
FYI Newlands cross AND M11 together cost €282m and given roads typically cost 10m per km, that means Newlands Cross cost 1/10 of a billion!
http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/07/17/m11-rathnew-arklow-motorway-16km-project-opens-seven-weeks-ahead-schedule/

So add them together and you get €1.1bn not the €3bn you suggest. These projects did not make traffic in Dublin worse either, if anything they improved it. Imagine what the red cow or the toll bridge would be like now if they weren’t upgraded. Yes we need to invest in public transport but it’s not a this or that situation. We are looking at spending €8bn on public transport in Dublin in the 8 years, that’s the equivalent of upgrading the M50 every year!

The M50 so called 'upgrade' cost 1B alone so if you are correct then the Red Cow and Newlands X 'upgrades' cost a mere 100m!
I didn't just pull these figures out of my head. Did these projects improve the traffic situation in Dublin?
http://paschaldonohoe.ie/2010/09/m50-upgrade-welcome-but-comes-at-massive-cost-to-the-taxpayer/

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

The M50 so called 'upgrade' cost 1B alone so if you are correct then the Red Cow and Newlands X 'upgrades' cost a mere 100m!
I didn't just pull these figures out of my head. Did these projects improve the traffic situation in Dublin?
http://paschaldonohoe.ie/2010/09/m50-upgrade-welcome-but-comes-at-massive-cost-to-the-taxpayer/

Yes it did cost 100m which is 1/10 of a billion as I said in my post.

I've no idea how much the Red Cow 'upgrade' cost but probably about a billion like the other 'upgrades'.

You certainly seemed to pull the €1bn for Newlands cross out of your head.

They did improve the traffic situation in Dublin! The m50 upgrade is almost 10 years old now and is now handling 40k more than when the barriers were removed in 2008. As bad as things are now, I don’t think anyone could comprehend what the M50 would be like without the upgrade.

Last Stop wrote: »

As I have already stated twice now €1.1bn.
You suggestion that it is STILL jam packed and slow completely ignores the growth rates that have occurred in the meantime. The old M50 simply could not handle the traffic currently on it.



Metrolink, Dart expansion and Busconnects are due for completion by 2027. Total cost €8bn. They are all currently being progressed through the design process with planning on at least 2 due in 2020.



This doesn’t even warrant a reply to be perfectly honest. Metrolink has not been downsized, it has be divided into phases as is common with almost every large scale project the world over. I don’t agree with that decision but it significantly increases the changes of it going ahead.

As for “Irish politicians don’t do underground rail” I think the less said the better

You're new to all this. Hang around here a while so I can see you educated in how it all works.

Elmer Blooker wrote: »

It seems we do have a magic money tree. The cost of the Newlands X 'upgrade' and the M50 'upgrade' - about 2€billion maybe? I've no idea how much the Red Cow 'upgrade' cost but probably about a billion like the other 'upgrades'.
Total: about 3b give or take a few hundred million. That's an awful lot of money to make the traffic situation even worse around the capital but remember folks the money just isn't there for an efficient public transport system in Dublin.

Those projects had to be done. It’s the deserted rural motorways that are the farce in terms of importance. More important than funding dm and du! Truly pathetic. One would take masses of cars off the road and support more housing developments, the other?

Last Stop wrote: »

There’s life outside the cave you know

Some great treasures can be found in a cave.:D

Anyway, you take all plans/spending at face value and on a will happen basis. Cannot take you seriously at all.

Idbatterim wrote: »

Those projects had to be done. It’s the deserted rural motorways that are the farce in terms of importance. More important than funding dm and du! Truly pathetic. One would take masses of cars off the road and support more housing developments, the other?

What deserted rural motorways are you referring to?

The M17 has an AADT of 11,000 which is the limit for a single carriageway road. The road is only open 2 years. Looking at the growth rates, it’ll definitely exceed that in 2020 meaning the old road would have been unusable. Anyone who travelled though Tuam or Claregalway on a Friday afternoon would tell you that.

Of all the inter-urbans built during the boom, the M9 was the most questionable and yet is now carrying 20,000 vehicles - more than stretch of the M7 or M8.

The 3 new road schemes recently in the news all have very high AADTs on the existing roads of over 10,000

While it is extremely frustrating that Metro and Dart U haven’t been built, there is life outside of Dublin you know and these schemes need to be built, it just so happens that they are cheaper and easier to get through the various processes that a metro or rail line.

Idbatterim wrote: »

They may be needed now. They are still expensive schemes. That are luxuries compared to Dublin based projects , that would be more sustainable and could carry that number of people per hour , never mind per day.

These schemes for Dublin massively increase competitiveness, how much can be built etc. there is no comparison between them and connecting or bypassing villages. Seriously putting the art before the horse

Bear in mind though, that by focusing on infrastructure expenditure on Dublin, you get a situation where just one part of the country has good infrastructure, with a serious dearth of transport infrastructure elsewhere. Some people might say "where were you when they were building all the motorways to and from Dublin". This is what the UK have done with London, and it has some negative consequences, eventually culminating in Brexit.

Adding to this point, infrastructure in Dublin will be more expensive than elsewhere in the country.

Instead, I tentatively say that prioritising Galway/Limerick/Cork for large-scale sustainable transport expenditure would give better bang-for-buck and would still help to alleviate the pressure on Dublin. And sustainable transport expenditure would probably still cost less than some of these roads.