Only in Ireland will people moan and gripe about good forward planning after years of moaning and griping about the complete absence of forward planning. Was the money even public funds or was it development levies?
I didn't realise the surrounding lands were owned by the state? I agree with you though the local authorities have a woeful record in this regard. That a site like O'Deavany Gardens can lie mostly undeveloped for nearly 2 decades - as local councillors spend years bickering and chopping and changing their minds about what should be built - was a complete debacle.
If Kishoge were operating as a station, this location is surely one of the best in Dublin outside the M50 for high density development, under 30 minutes to Connolly by train. With nearly square km of land around this station - development could leverage a massive savings in terms of economies of scale. Allowing decent heights you could have nearly 10k people living here all within 5 minutes walk to the station. That sort of density is what makes rail PT viable and with DART+ and ML coming, you'd have great connectivity - the airport in 40 minutes, Stephen's Green in about the same, etc.
Clonburris won't happen the state has too much involvement. We've seen with O'Deavany, the glass bottle site and the plauer Wilson site, government involvement holds back development, often indefinitely.
But there are also serious questions about how dysfunctional things work (or don’t) in Ireland.
Prime land beside a train station undeveloped while land outside Dublin gets redeveloped for people who then have insane commutes.
These issues need to be fixed or else they’ll happen again and again.
The €3.8m "refurbishment" figure is very misleading. Most of that would have had to be spent anyway. It was always the case that Kishoge would need multi-million euro works to complete the station access and car park. This article from 2017 says €2m:
As for needing more money to meet present day accessibility requirements, this would have had to be spent to upgrade the station at some point anyway. The waste is really only the money that has to be spent to repair any broken or vandalised features. I've highlighted the cost from vandalism before to try and get it opened. It's a shame but it's nowhere close to €3.8m and was clear to anyone campaigning to get this opened. When it was closed with no prospect of opening, it was a struggle to get any news outlets to cover the fact that it's being left to rot and be vandalised but now that it's going to be fixed, it's the only thing they can talk about. Do I like having to spend more money? No but I'd much rather focus on the fact that it's being opened now.
i would have thought the main story was the stunning incompetence and waste of taxpayers’ money.
The main story here is that Kishoge is finally opening. Hugh Creegan said last week that it's being progressed without any delays now. Once the final required works are identified, procurement for a contractor will begin soon followed by construction and opening next year.
Shocking the damage vandals/teens having a rave will do but they might have been naive to kit the station out when they didn't know when they were opening it. Should have been emptied and bricked up.
I think Kishogue is a good (rare?) example of forward planning in Ireland. The reason it ended up never opening is because the plan was to build Adamstown suburb from 2005-2015 and start on Kishogue suburb after. The 2008 crisis delayed Adamstown so much that it's 2022 and it's still years away from being completed. So the housing at Kishogue is a decade away from substantial completion and there's no point opening the station until then. They could open it now but it'd have issues with passive security having nothing around it. I'd be afraid to leave my car parked there all day.
Kishoge should have opened a long time ago to allow passengers connect to Dublin & to other rail destinations on the network. There is also the added expense to include any of the BusConnects routes that were introduced under the Spine C rollout as well to give more benefits to people who live in the surrounding areas. Think of the potential when if any new housing gets built there; a P&R facility would give numerous other benefits to the station which would be nearly the same facilities as that new station will be built at that golf club between Shankill & Bray.
EDIT: The name that escaped me is Woodbrook.
I believe it was originally kitted out with barriers and TVMs but they've all been wrecked over the years and have to be completely replaced,most of the interior has been trashed.
Had they not built a station and had the development gone ahead (as planned), there would be complaints of no forward thinking/planning and increased costs of building a station at greater expense (on top of the active railway) as opposed to as part of the KRRP.
Is the new spend for things that were installed originally? Perhaps they were omitted from the original build because they could be either stolen or vandalised?
Why was the nearby land not built on?
I'd expect that if there were lifts in, they were not maintained and are not salvageable
Everything will have to meet specs for a 2022/3 build station
Is there any info on what the costs of opening now are? Presumably there will be TVMs, passenger information displays, lifts, car park lighting, etc. which didn't make sense to have there before the station opens.
Is it?
The money could have been spent elsewhere providing an actual service.
And it begs the question, why it hasn’t been opened? Land not developed when land for people working in Dublin is being rezoned 50 miles away?
It's certainly better than not having built the station at all.
Not sure if this is the best place for it, but anyway…
It’s behind a paywall, but shows you the absolute lack of joined up thinking in this country. Embarrassing beyond belief.
6 months 6 years does it matter? It's still being planned.
I was asking why they can't build more dart+ stations instead of the Limerick project, hence the relevance??
@crazy 88
That article is over 6 months old and relates to Limerick. It has little relevance to Dart + .
Why are they so reluctant to build more stations as part of this? Instead Eamonn Ryan comes up with daft ideas like this where none of the stations go through major population areas in Limerick.
A station in ballyfermot and/or inchicore would get 1000s of passengers a day
They did. There's a thread on it here.
Scheduled for sometime in May. Pretty sure that they've got no problem with it, and that it's just been delayed into May so that they space out the good news announcements.
Did they?
What were these people thinking when they tried to reorganise this fine website?
Any idea why ML is not yet approved by government and RO submitted?
Gadra had their fourth meeting with the independent expect, RINA. Nothing new or too interesting this time around, mainly focused on questions surrounding the dual bore / single bore debate, along with (of course) the location of the intervention shaft.
Considering that those sites were ready to go years before Metrolink and Dart Underground were ready for planning, no, it's not really a lost opportunity. No real way of stopping those developers of continuing with these sites while the NTA slowly grinds the Metrolink and Dart Underground through the planning system.
Dart Underground also couldn't go in there, didn't Irish Rail or the NTA recently detail how the Irish Water sewage trunk going through there scupper any hope of a DU station there? It caused difficulty for the Metrolink station, and that's got a significantly smaller footprint than a Dart station.
Anybody who has been in Dublin in the last year-and-a half, or so, might reckon that the vast construction sites around the old Hawkins House and Apollo House on Townsend Street, Tara Street and Poolbeg Street, along with the impending development adjacent to Tara Street Station itself, where demolition has already taken place, might have presented an opportunity to build a city centre rail interchange.
It seems possible that the scale of such development could have accomodated perhaps both the proposed metrolink, and a possible future DART Underground station.
Has that chance been squandered?
Tender for topographical and utility surveys for DART+ Coastal
https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/211770/0/0?returnUrl=ctm/Supplier/publictenders&b=ETENDERS_SIMPLE
If the cycle lane was higher than the road, presumably it would be able to connect to the existing road between there and Ashtown Road without a ramp. That would mean cyclists could turn right at that point to access the houses/shops in the area or continue along the canal towards the city.
It would be great if a junction with that road (between there and Ashtown Road) could also be provided. That would mean that section of Ashtown Road between the level crossing and existing roundabout could become one way, allowing for wider footpaths and maybe a bit of a plaza beside the canal. Maybe the levels dont allow for a junction there.
Hopefully that will be feedback that's commonly received in the public consultation
