DART+ (DART Expansion)

i would have thought the main story was the stunning incompetence and waste of taxpayers’ money.

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.

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.

Iirc, the station was paid for by the developer when it was initially built - will they provide funds again for the works needed now? Or will it be the state/Irish rail that are providing the €3.8 million?

I was under the impression is was part of the Kildare Rail Project. This involved Quad Tracking Hazelhatch - Ballyfermot and a couple of stations along the stretch for Dart and Intercity rail.

How can it be good forward planning when after all these years the station is unopened and the land beside it undeveloped?

Good forward planning would have been if the station had have opened in tandem with the land being developed.

As it happens, two weeks ago SDCC started a public consultation on proposed Social and Affordable housing development comprising of 263 residential units on a site located on lands within Clonburris SDZ;

Density is disappointing but that is probably due to the development surrounding the single storey traveller accommodation.

You would hope that much more density is planned for the other side of R136. Really the station should have been the focal point of a village with shops and a public space. The car park is there now but the plan should be to eventually develop that space also.

You can directly blame Colm McCarthy and Sean Barrett raising several generations who were told 'rail has no future'...

As a curiosity, with regards to Blanch, in the 1970s rail plan, it was intended to run a spur into to a terminus located where the centre is now. You can still make out parts of the "alignment" with the satellite view on google maps. Still fairly idiotic compared to developing the land directly around the train line.

Also it wasn't just planners - the old CIE did itself no favours at all in terms of encouraging investment or increasing usage/dependency on rail. It was (somewhat justifiably) seen an an incorrigible, unreformable, union-dominated organisation that existed to benefit the employees and where providing a service to the public was viewed as unfortunate inconvenience.

A frankly bizarre piece of journalism. If you didn't know the project you would think from that interview that the canal was to be permanently removed. She claims that construction can make animals leave, ok so we'll just all live in tents and never build or renovate anything again. Animals leave areas and return to them all the time

And sure why not just let cars pass through the level crossing after midnight. No interviews with normal folk who want to get to work and get home, only fruit cakes on canal barges get air time. I wonder has she carried out a study on the health impacts for the canal wild life generated by the NOx, PM10 and PM2.5 particulate emissions from her diesel powered canal barge.

I don't really see the issue why the canal would be a big problem in providing train services to the Ashtown area.

The amount of construction work to actually build the underpass to let cars, cyclists and pedestrians to use it would be very minimal. The rail line would still remain above ground. You would swear, going from the woman owning the barge along the canal, that the that the whole rail system would go underground in places like Ashtown.

I also wouldn't think the trains passing by the canal would be an issue at all. If IÉ had built the OHLE for Dart+ West. The new hybrid Dart trains that are going to be coming into service will eventually replace most of the current commuter rail stock which effectively runs on pure diesel. This would mean that tere would be way less emissions coming out from most of the rolling stock at that point.

The intercity railcar stock would still be running train services to Sligo at that point on that line as well. This would mean that a small amount of the emissions would still be present from that rail stock unless IÉ had plans to make them run on biofuels in the future which would get rid of the emissions issue.

July is the latest date.

At best, biofuels might lower a train's carbon footprint (and that's debatable - they certainly don't as a mandated additive to US petrol), but they don't reduce local emissions.

But even talk of biofuels irritates me. I wish they'd just stop fannying around with commissioning battery trains and other work-arounds just commit to rolling out OHLE for the main parts of the national network. This graph shows how backward Ireland is in that regard - not only has Ireland the lowest level of rail electrification in Europe by a long shot, it's about a tenth of the European average in percentage terms. Even among the countries known to have a crap rail service, Ireland stands out as an outlier in its dependence on diesel for trains.