NTA Greater Dublin Area Transport Strategy Review

They are betting the house that large numbers of people will get PCP/car loans to buy new EVs to reduce emissions. That's the plan as far as I can see.

Construction will commence in Phase 1 of the Plan (the period to 2030). Will then be operational in the early part of phase 2 of the plan. My guess would be a 2024 commencement date subject to ABP approving in 12-18 months and no legal challenges and final business case being approved. Current Govt would need this project to be in construction by next election considering the amount of news on the project over the last few months.

The cbc project just won't be delivered as is, not in the current political climate, too many influential folks will be upset

The biggest problem with the current plan, is that the only actual new route is the Metrolink. Everything else is an upgrade to existing routes, which while welcome to existing commuters it doesn't do much to add new ones and cover the large infrastructure holes in the city. Surprised there isn't a bit more ambition on new Luas lines as they are cheap compared to a Metro or Dart Underground.

The luas will be planned on BusConnects corridors for the time they reach peak capacity and in turn will never get delivered; not dissimilar to the metro upgrade of the green line.

They've made a mess and a bigger mess of cleaning it up. Not willing to show humility and admit that Luas should be delivered instead of bus on some of the BusConnects CBCs to meet future demand. So we get this random post 2042 map using the same corridors for both.

Not one orbital route either. I'm picturing what the city centres stops are meant to look like in 2050 when everyone is supposedly interchanging to criss-cross the city at grade.

The outcome of this plan will be a greater focus on developers doing build to rent apartments inside M50 at lower standards to avail of reduced parking when there's poor accessibility; a poor outcome for residents. Hard to make a business case for anything else when the city is so poorly served by public transport. Outside the M50 we'll keep going with sprawl.

It is just part of a wider issue of an Ireland that is more or less falling apart on every level. The political classes have no desire to improve this country beyond getting a pat on the head from globalists and foreign CEOs now and again. As pessimistic as I am about Irish politicians and civil servants and their attitude to rail transport, even I am utterly shocked by today's announcement. Even in the darkest and grim days of the 1980s - Governments did what they could to invest in the rail system in Ireland. Here we are with undreamt of wealth and it is actually worse now. It is quite terrifying the poor caliber of bureaucrat and politicians we have in this country.

Things are really bad. Ireland is is trouble and the sacrificing of the future of the nation's capital just drives home how much in danger the average Irish person is via the demented nature of Official Ireland. Good grief! I can hardly get my head around this announcement. I really can't.

This plan does not give me any confidence in the future allowing this mess of our rail infrastructure to continue in this way.

It basically sounds like they want to continue building any form of rail transport infrastructure that is prioritized for overground purposes as opposed to underground.

Outside of this country we have about around 70 million Irish people who live in countries abroad who have underground rail infrastructure already in place in various cities around the world. If those ex-pats are using underground rail in those countries as a means of getting around in their day to day lives; we would be giving off assumptions here all the time these ex-pats who use it regularly can do so with relative ease when they use it to go to work or for leisure activities that is miles away from their own home.

But in Ireland however; that sort of stuff just never happens here or is regarded as a pure pipe dream. We are too timid within our current approach to get major infrastructure projects like Metrolink built to support the betterment of our countries economy & quality of life. If we were really that serious in making serious commitments in reducing our emissions because of a major risk of climate change to happen in the future.

Doing things like avoiding to build an underground rail project like Metrolink should not be considered to be avoided to be built when we are making those commitments to build it either now or in the future.

Ireland is not going to stay like a country on the west of Europe with a small population forever. It is going to keep on growing no matter what the naysayers say on this matter. And our recent CSO figures said that over 5 million people live in our own country as of now. And that statistic shows to me there are no emerging signs that it will ever stop growing now or in the future. Based on other things like building new housing; those figures will never stop growing until those figures will start to plateau overtime.

If a government official based in another country had ever considered at one point in their lives to build an underground metro rail line for the betterment of their own population of their city. They just get consult the members of their public & have the planning documents submitted to their own planning authorities to just get the bloody thing finished no matter how long it takes; no questions asked.

There are tons of supporting documents on the NTA's website that informed the GDA Strategy. You'll find them here: https://www.nationaltransport.ie/gda/supporting-documents/

I've only had a chance to have a quick read through some of them. Here's my quick summary of the ones I've read so far. For more details read the full report.

DART Tunnel Route Options and Feasibility

They are re-considering the DART Underground route because of the new tunnel portal location by the Chapelizod bypass and the MetroLink alignment being different to Metro North. The report considers loads of options but really you only have three semi-serious choices if the tunnel portal is at Heuston and connects up to the Northern line near Docklands:

1. DART+ Tunnel connects with DART at Pearse and MetroLink at Stephen's Green (the old DART Underground plan)
2. DART+ Tunnel connects with both DART and MetroLink at Tara Street
3. DART+ Tunnel connects with DART at Grand Canal Dock and MetroLink at Stephen's Green

Drum roll please. They choose the same routing alignment as old DART Underground plan. Partly because they know it will work. Irish Rail did lots of research on that route. Connecting with Tara Street was ruled out mostly because there is a massive sewer under Townsend Street that serves 270,000 people. Irish Water isn't sure it would be possible to move it given all of the other underground projects in the area (read: MetroLink and private office development).

The second half of the report is some silly "demand-led" transport modelling that shows if the NTA do spend the estimated €5BN to build DART Underground that would only add 10,000 more public transport users to the network so it's not worth building. It completely ignores the fact that it would provide better faster journeys to 100,000s of people in Dublin and be the east-west high capacity transport element we need. The second half of this report is why the NTA are pushing DART+ Tunnel out to 2042, which IMHO is a terrible idea and short-sighted.

Park and Ride Strategy

The NTA looked at building lots of park and ride areas with 500-1,000 car parking spaces on pretty much every major approach road to Dublin. The short-term many of them will be bus park and rides, with potentially dedicated bus routes to the city or places like Sandyford Industrial Estate. Medium-term with DART+ there will be more rail based park and rides.

There were two tidbits of information in that report, which were interesting to me. The suggestion to add a Park and Ride on the N4 near Maynooth to connect with DART+ West either at junction 6 or junction 7a. The other was that there is a proposal (within the NTA) to move Sallins/Naas railway station 1.1km west. This would put the station where the new Sallins bypass road was just built. This would allow easier access to the M7 for Park and Ride.

Metro to Knocklyon Feasibility Study

The NTA examined two potential metro line options from Stephen's Green/Charlemont to Ballycullen. It would pass through Rathmines, Terenure, Rathfarnham, Knockloyn. The route did not continue to connect with Tallaght at the Square, which I think is a little suspect, as there are many people in Rathfarnham and Knockloyn that I'm sure would love to travel to Tallaght. There's also lots of people in Tallaght who would love to travel to the city centre on metro and it's an ideal bus hub.

The report recommended against the metro because the passenger number would be quite low (especially compared to MetroLink). There was only high demand towards the city in the morning and away from the city in the evening. Most of the passengers transferred from the future BusConnects bus services rather than from cars. Off-peak there were less than 2,000 people heading in each direction, which is quiet different to MetroLink because of all-day trip attractors link DART+ Interchange, Mater Hospital, DCU and the airport. For context, a good bus route has capacity for 3,000 people. Though capacity shouldn't be the deciding factor on what type of public transport to build.

I've haven't been a huge supporter of a Metro South West, mainly because I don't think it should happen before other projects like DART+ Tunnel, but this report feels a little bit meh, given that they didn't analyse the metro going to Tallaght Square instead of a field in Ballycullen. That's a massive disadvantage for this paper metro.

Metro UCD to Sandyford Feasibility Report

This report is pretty short and takes a firm view that a metro here would be a terrible waste of money. It wouldn't provide great transport improvements and it would mostly benefit some of the most well off neighbourhoods in Dublin like Clonskeagh, Mount Merrion and Stillorgan. It shoots the idea down pretty hard. It looked a a few different options all of which brought the metro from Charlemont or Stephen's Green or Pearse (as a terminus) to UCD and on to Sandymount. If they were going to analyse random metro alignments it would have been nice to analyse Metro just to UCD/N11 or to UCD and then to the DART at Booterstown/Blackrock. But again I suspect the costs would have been huge for small benefits. Also hard to argue for this project above DART+ Tunnel, DART to Navan or even Metro South West, which scored way higher. That's Eamon Ryan's favourite metro idea dead, which is good news.

Draft 2021 GDA Cycle Network Plan Report

This report doesn't have much info in it at all. There have been some changes since the original Cycle Network Plan from 2013 but they aren't detailed in the report. You'd need to spend many hours comparing the old 2013 maps with the new maps. A fun job for some volunteers in a group like Dublin Cycling Campaign I'm sure.

Luas Lucan Feasibility Study

This report is long, and I admit I mostly skimmed it. However, it looks exactly like the four previous reports on building a Luas to Lucan. There are some options. They all score pretty well. There would be large numbers of passengers and it wouldn't compete with either BusConnects or DART+. The costs are reasonable and the benefits are huge. We should build it. Not sure why we needed yet another report on Luas to Lucan instead of just starting the planning process on it.

Navan Rail Line Assessment Report

This report references a lot of the work that Irish Rail did pre-2009 on planning for the Navan Rail Line. It effectively says we should build the thing because buses aren't great for capacity or journey times. There are two route options, that mostly differ by where the station is close to Dunshaughlin. One of the routes is protected from development by Meath County Council, the other route option isn't. Meath County Council should continue to protect the route and the NTA should build the thing. There's loads more details in that report but that's the gist.

Hopefully the summaries of those reports are useful to some folks here.

Draft 2021 GDA Cycle Network Plan Report

This report doesn't have much info in it at all. There have been some changes since the original Cycle Network Plan from 2013 but they aren't detailed in the report. You'd need to spend many hours comparing the old 2013 maps with the new maps. A fun job for some volunteers in a group like Dublin Cycling Campaign I'm sure.

Any idea what "network" means in the context of this plan - especially in rural areas. Does is mean segregated cycle tracks; bike symbols painted on existing roads; reduced speed limits on existing roads; way-marking signs; or just a low-res map with one route selected over another for some unstated reason?

Thanks for that. I searched but couldn't find any detail on what the routes would actually look like. Was this detailed in a similar report back in 2013?