Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

The sooner he shuffles off to retirement the better- he’s a cantankerous stream of drizzling misery- never has anything remotely positive or constructive to add.

But then there'd be a very short distance between it and the Tara station. There's no doubt that it would mean more disruption than the carlton option. In any case this is settled, the carlton site will be the location, no point going over it again.

On a separate note I wonder who will get the contract to provide mobile phone signal in the tunnels. I was shocked to learn that berlin brought mobile phone signal to the u bahn in 1995. I remember when they brought it into London Underground the British media acted like it was a global innovation. Then again they acted this way with smoking bans and plastic bag tax, as if it hasn't been already long in place on neighbouring countries

Has any consideration been given to having remote entrances? i.e. you still have to cover 300 or 400m to get to the platform, but you do that walk under cover instead of being either baked alive or drowned. Very common in Munich and Prague

The south section of Metrolink (the bit involving the green line upgrade), while it is low hanging fruit and would be a nice to have, is not essential in my opinion. The route is already very well served by public transport given that it was the first part of Dublin to get a functioning (and still very efficient) light rail connection. Prioritising parts of the city not already served by light rail should be the main goal of future transport planning, especially when local residents are opposed to it. There's far worse fates than having to suffer with existing excellent green line services.

Who told you O'Connell Street was the widest in Europe? This seems wildly untrue and shouldn't be used as a basis for anything.

I think O'Connell Bridge might have some record for 'width divided by length' but that's a different thing.

The thing is we need to get out of the mentality that high capacity rail only has a catchment area 1km either side of it. If the Green line was upgraded to flow seamlessly into Metrolink, we would see a complete reorientation of most bus routes in south and south east Dublin to bring people as quickly as possible to a Metrolink station rather than into and out of the city. It would be the quickest way to improve public transport in a large swathe of the county. Notwithstanding the fact I believe Green line conversion to Metrolink should be prioritised, a completely new tunnelled branch to Tallaght through areas completely unserved by rail should definitely be a high priority. Personally I think the Red Line could and should be upgraded to metro standard over time. A surprising amount of it is already off street.

It didn't happen with Green line, I don't really see why it would happen for an upgraded green line.

BusConnects didn't exist when the green line was built and to be honest even if it had it probably wouldn't have been wise to do it as the green line was already pretty much at capacity (hence the lengthening of trams) as it's a line if sight system with at grade sections limiting the throughput along the whole route. In short, the green line is perfectly adequate for the existing catchment area but if upgraded that catchment area could be widened significantly through BusConnects. If metrolink is actually built we will see that happening on the Northside probably from day one and it will seem a no brainer to upgrade the green line to implement the same on the southside and bring tens of thousands into a one change to the city centre or airport system. Don't even need to upgrade the tricky stuff south of Sandyford initially (or at all really). Just treat the Luas south of Sandyford as another feeder to metrolink like the buses.

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No, I started typing my response before you posted it.