Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

That reads to me like the NDP will be published before the Budget, so in the next week or two. All should be revealed then.

I don't share the optimism but it is refreshing to hear and I hope you're right. You're definitely right about the psychological block being lifted after line 1 is built. As we seen with luas which lead to multiple suburban extensions being built.

The effect would be amplified with metro because it'll be the fastest, most frequent and reliable piece of PT we've ever gotten. Suburban TDs will be getting letters right left and centre demanding a metro for their township, like what them Swords folk have. If it does get built it probably won't be long till a Tallaght-Coolock line comes up for discussion.

I'm now hearing in the NTA that although DART+ is proceding as normal it looks like ML will be shelved for some time, perhaps not as late as the MOS suggests. Some fudge on giving preference to luas finglas, which is far from railway order stage anyway will be given.

The shelving won't necessarily be in the NDP but announced after.

They could use Eamon Ryan's upcoming "feasibility study" for his beloved Terenure Metro as the mask to hide the upcoming cancellation of Metro North, under the guise of wanting to do it "properly". If DELAY+ isn't outright patched, it will suffer death by salami slicing. We'll find out soon enough, I suppose.

I hope you're right and maybe doing the first will finally break the psychological barrier.

With a green party minister for transport, a significant green party presence in Government, and a climate crisis screaming at us to get cracking, we should all be jumping with excitement at the prospect of our car-dependent cities getting a revamp. An NDP should be exciting for the country. We shouldn't be sitting here dreading the announcement, watching yet another Irish government waste all of our time and money on consultants, PDFs and public hearings that amount to nothing. How many times can Platform-For-Change/Transport 21/Project 2040/etc. etc. be re-heated??

I’ve mentioned this before, the Green Party in this country could be sued under trade descriptions.

Ireland has one of the world's longest motorway networks per head of population and its not done growing yet. The funny thing is, 70% of the network was built in a 10 year frienzy that would shame China, proportionally speaking.

This blitzkrieg of road building is testament to how quickly and efficiently government can deliver multiple linear projects simultaneously. But for some reason, that I don't think anyone fully grasps, this can't be done for public transport in cities, we can only get reheated projects with new brochures every few years for things that should have been done the 1970s.

One can only conclude that the urban projects step on more toes and there's more opportunities for politicians to make hey with them, eg the varadkar stables. But there's a psychological element also, devalera-ism seems well ingrained in the public psychology. It'll be a generation before anti urban sentiment dies out

I see in todays business post matt cooper is advocating scraping the metro in favour if a dart link and building houses

At this point 2027 is not achievable. But when it was first announced in 2018 it most certainly was. We're talking 2030 now assuming that it goes ahead. Don't hold your breath until there's a boring machine in the ground

This guy has no clue, just an uninformed opinion piece.

He has regularly thrown accusations at the government of been 'too Dublin centric' when it comes to PT investment.

Depressing state of affairs that no media outlet comes out in support of Metrolink despite it been a gamechanger for Dublin transport.

There should be capability by the NTA & the government to build Metrolink & DART+ along with new housing for both pieces of infrastructure at the same time. Cooper and the Irish media are very much clueless as to how these projects can actually help the housing crisis to become more sustainable overtime. However; if the will is there by our government to build more housing along these critical pieces of infrastructure; you really have to think about what type of housing will be required to make that prospect more sustainable. If a developer was going along with the idea that urban sprawl could become more unsustainable while the country's housing stock from running out over the next few years; the developer in this case has to build high rise apartments than single dwellings to prevent urban sprawl from going out of control. The mainstream philosophy for building new housing in the GDA nowadays is that you have to build upwards rather than outwards. If the Metrolink along with the Metro South upgrade to Cherrywood gets built in a few years time; that can allow itself to use more lands for new housing to be built on it as it has the ability to serve 4 of Dublin's local authorities all along one single line. It will be regarded as brand new infrastructure which can allow property developers to then propose & build new housing on appropriately zoned lands whenever they see fit.

However the problem with building more new houses to make DART+ more attractive to developers on it's own merits is that much of the new services being proposed to be implemented by the NTA & IÉ are being placed on existing rail infrastructure that is currently being used by DART & Commuter rail services that's already in use over several decades. I would assume that it's going to be a very tough job for a developer to build new housing along these new expanded rail lines for the DART because much of the land that is there at the moment is being used for other purposes already.

Some developers have found limited opportunities to build new housing in places like Woodbrook in Shankill or to propose new housing builds at the IÉ Depot at Inchicore now that the LDA can use it for new housing. DART+ Tunnel can give itself the potential to do this sort of work as well; but can this type of trend with building new housing actually last a long time to add to DART+ on it's own when compared to the new potential that will be created by Metrolink? It is very difficult for me to answer that question in a clear & concise way because I am not disregarding one project over the other. We should never be afraid of the potential in how both projects can become critically important parts of solving the housing crisis in our own capital city. We should give ourselves the freedom to build new housing for both projects on appropriate lands when it's neccessary & cut out the petty sniping that prefers one project over the other.

Metro North had planning permission. It was literally about to begin construction. But the Recession hit and the government wasnt spending on anything. So it was shelved until the money came back.

I actually believe the original Metro North and Metro West would have been built were it not for the last recession. The government should not have cancelled those projects imo and should have ploughed ahead with them, but then again the country was royally up **** creek so easy to say that now.

Likewise, Covid has delayed Metrolink.

I actually believe it will be built this time. The government needs to be able to point to successes for the next general election and a huge project like this is one for the Greater Dublin area, just like big road projects for Mayo or Donegal would be for rural Ireland. It says to the public that we can deliver. I said it earlier in the thread before Ryan's comments that it would be around 2030 when it will be ready and I think that is a likely timeframe. They will have noted the uproar over it being delayed or cancelled and Sinn Fein hovering like sharks - don't get me started on them but still no harm to keep this shower on their toes.

I guess we'll know more in the coming weeks.