Can we set up a "Metrolink not happening" thread to indulge those who want to promote other projects over it or simply want to write its obituary?
I have said this several times over the past few years, "it'll never happen" contributes nothing to this thread and should be met with a ban.
Metrolink is not just a rail link from the airport to the city centre.
It has trip generators all along its length, and will open up large areas to high density housing. We have a serious traffic problem at the airport, and a serious housing problem in Dublin that can only be solved by many more houses being built with rapid access to high capacity public transport.
DAA cannot provide car parking at the moment - none - it is all booked up. Buses cannot get into or out of the place because it is so congested.
It is absolutely nuts that this project gets delayed and delayed. Cars and buses are not a solution to the airport's access.
.
Lets be honest though. Approved or not. That doesnt mean it will actually be built. How many years has it been spoken about now? 20+ and still not a spade in the ground.
It will be nimbyed into oblivion anyway.
I wouldnt get your hopes up.
But its one or the other over that time frame, if we are lucky
Exactly, you're right. It's one or the other. However, you seem to not realize that they already made the decision. Metrolink won. It's currently with ABP.
Is that you Frank? Lol
Serious.
We wont get both projects delivered within 30 years, so not unreasonable to discuss which rail project should be prioritised.
The airport is 9km from O'Connell Bridge. Yes, its embarrasing we dont have a rail link. But to be fair, its a stones throw to the airport from the city centre and a bus is quick enough. Its a nice to have to have that rail link, but i would say connecting central dublin, from Hueston to the Docklands, along a circular line, would better enable the growth of the city centre through increased connectivity.
It would help make the liberties or stoneybatter as accesible as Grafton St and we will need that space as the city grows.
Sure, if we could have both projects delivered over the next 30 years, lets have both. But its one or the other over that time frame, if we are lucky.
So we should be able to prioritise based on what is best for the city overall, not what is best for those that live on the Green Line. (many of whom dont want ML anyway)
The Level crossing at Dunville Av will go completley, I assume?
Are there other traffic blocks that would occur as part of ML?
Mod: No more DU talk, as it is off topic.
Omg people in this thread actually suggesting ditching Metro and going for DU instead.
Are they taking the actual piss or being serious?
If we did not do MetroLink, then yes DU could happen. The reason we chose ML over DU was the plausible benefits for connecting the Airport to the City Centre, and connecting Swords and the rest of Fingal to Dublin properly in areas which aren't served appropriately by rail or bus.
Dart Underground provides benefits in taking pressure off the Dublin-Cork and Dublin Belfast lines, and acts a true replacement to the Phoenix Park tunnel. However it would prove to be significantly costly, and now the PPT is open, the need for folk on the Heuston Mainline services to access the East of the city is lessened. Not gone but its lessened. That's why ML has been chosen instead. It opens up huge tracts of brownfield sites in North County Dublin for development, enabling quick and easy access for people in those areas to access city centre Dublin (30 minute approx journey time).
The Green Line link in has always made a lot of sense given its relative low cost (300m). It means we can finally close properly the level crossings on Dunville Ave and further south, and we don't need to be using the longest Trams in Europe to try and keep up with growth in Southern Dublin, particularly in Cherrywood and Sandyford.
Dart Underground is an entirely separate endeavour, and if you read the other countless threads discussing the topic, it is a project where most folk have very different visions of what purpose it should serve. Is it to establish a high speed RER style metro service, or is it an intercity Irish rail back bone. Given that the cost-benefit of Metrolink has been well established through the countless consultation processes we have been through, it is clear why the NTA has moved forward with it over DU. Its just desperate that we did not do the GL tie in now at the cheapest time, because we decided we were not ready for the grown up decisions regarding the level crossings, or even worse, that the mere existence of these discussions might sink the whole project.
I understand that the projects wont necessarily be competing for the same funding pot, but i cant see them being built concurrently, due to the labour requirements and the general travel disruption caused.
Would it not be the case that DU would therefore be built sooner, if we didnt progress Metrolink?
Or we at least built DU first and then moved to Metrolink thereafter.
I suppose in the grand scheme, i would be suprised to see either project operating functionally in 15 years time. (even if we dropped Metrolink tomorrow and prioritised DU)
So on that front, I guess Metrolink by 2038 is better than no Metrolink or DU by 2038.
Agree but this is Ireland and the Irish establishment consider anything other than 'a bit of an aul bus' to be a vanity project.
Anyone, whether normal citizen, public representative or engineering consultant who thinks Luas to Airport is anywhere on par with metrolink needs a swift kick up the arse.
I'm getting sick of these half arsed measured being flagged as alternative to proper infrastructure plans. M20 vs m24 springs to mind too.
Our population is constantly increasing, we need proper infrastructure for the future, not continually going for the cheap measure only for it to be fall short within years of completion and have to be amended and reworked.
Still on the peak hours thing? We could do without nearly any infrastructure outside of peak hours.
I'm not going to try an litigate the benefits of DU. However the projected capital cost for such a project is going to be quite large, as large as it is for the existing Metrolink line. This is without any sort of plan surrounding where stations would be located, what this route should be used for etc. Will it be dual or quad tracked to preserve the alignment for through traffic from Cork etc.
GL upgrade nearly doubles the capacity of the existing Green Line, more than will be possible from any sort of capacity upgrades. It also means faster service in the future, should the line be extended towards Bray. The original plan for the Green Line has always been to upgrade it to metro grade given the population density on the southside, especially considering how the Cherrywood development will be coming online very soon. km for km, at 300 million euro, it is the cheapest piece of rail infrastructure we could ever hope to achieve in this country. Dart Underground will come with time, but money not spent on GL upgrade isn't money which can then be used on DU. It is an order of magnitude more expensive.
What would be the route here?
spur from Broombridge?
But surely DU would enable more public transport trips because it would connect so many more people to the existing LUAS, Rail and DART lines?
Metrolink only serves the people on the green line, whom obviously already have a good service today, plus those new locations from Swords and across the northside.
As a green line user, i dont see the material benefit of metrolink (outside of peak hours) and wouldnt appreciate months of disruption to Luas services to accomodate it. And we all know that 3 months disruption will turn into 6 months or 9 months or whatever.
DU, although not a huge benefit to me personally, appears to benefit more people overall, as we dont have any form of orbital PT in Dublin.
A Circle line that links the existing networks would surely be a great thing for Dublin and should encourage more PT journeys as connectivity increases.
The Luas to the Airport 'cheaper option' is now officially out there. Which was the plan all along. Now they are making the classic 'makes sense' fallback clause. You could set your clock by them they are so predictable.
It should be prioritised over DU because it is an order of magnitude cheaper than DU (300mill, vs several billion) and the catchment area for a GL to metro grade is a lot larger than DU.
We don't even realistically know what routing for DU would be in the future, and given GL to metro grade has to happen at some stage, it would've made vastly more sense to do the tie in now, whilst the workers with the acquired knowledge of building Metrolink are now here and employed, vs later when we have to do research and review all of this again.
Some commentary on social media that people are starting to recieve documentation in the post regarding the Property Owners' Protection Scheme. Positive to see things progressing in the background.
Mod: Can we get back to Metrolink rather than waffle about the London Underground, most of which was completed nearly a century ago.
At times I wished we lived in a dictatorship and stuff just got built and screw anyone or anything who gets in the way. Pandering to the masses is what is constantly driving up the cost of big infrastructure projects.
well as of 2018 it was supposed to open in 2027 and we dont have a spade in the ground, just 3.5 years out.
So current projected date of 2034, which is ober a decade away, has to be extended, based on previous and current form.
does it make sense to talk of integrated plans for the whole of Dublin after dismissing the southern part of the luas upgrade saying it’s only really needed at peak times. Surely all these other routes into the city are only going to be really busy at peak times too? No point building them so.
You keep saying, 'Two decades away from completion'. What are you basing that on?
Inspiring or no, it would be a start.
its not too much to ask for the main populated parts of Dublin.It isnt a huge space.
Think DCC, DLR and SCD and theb from Blanch to Swords and Malahide, allowing future population growth along that trajectory in particular - Blanch to Swords is largely empty fields today.
In all the time i have spent in london, i used to live there also, i have never been more than 15 mins walk from a tube station when i searched for one.
The Circle line was designed and thought out very early on and was delivered in the formative stages of the LU, well before 1900.
Its not like London just built a solitary static line and then thought, "oh, wait a minute, we can bolt something on here", some years later.
I appreciate all things need to be built in phases, but i am yet to see any proposal for a truly integrated Dubln PT system fit for today, never mind fit for the future.
At the moment, we have a plan for Metrolink, which is realistically 2 decades away from completion, if we are lucky.
Dart Underground to come after that, at some future date.
Its hardly inspiring stuff.
If everyone was within 800m of an Underground station, we would have something ridiculously more advanced than the London Underground. I suspect it would be the best system in the world, by quite a large factor.
Like I've lived in parts of London where getting to the nearest LU station was still a brisk 20/25 minute walk. By no means out in the far suburbs, Zone 3 stuff in the East End.
This is an increasingly mad conversation. The London Underground is built out and added to line by line. DART Underground would have been an "interconnector" that could be built out and integrated over time. Eschewing rational projects because they aren't the "final solution" is a perfect recipe for nothing ever to be built, which is often the exact intention of those espousing your line of thought.
But arent all of those projects bar the underground just increased capacity on existing routes?
they dont actually deliver any new routes and nor do they connect the current transit lines we have in place?
Did we actually design an underground network though? Not just a line straight up and down from the airport.
Something akin to the London underground but on a smaller scale. Something that would put every resident in County Dublin (rural north county dublin excepted) within 800m of an Underground Station.
