Metrolink south of Charlemont

As of now, the N11 Corridor is carrying approx. 15.5million passengers, per Dublin Bus, that is only going to grow. Only 9 million shy of the Green Line, which is currently beyond capacity. When you look at the passenger intensity on that corridor, when you look at it's suitability for coversion to Tram given the width the alignment, and when you consider a potential connection to Sandyford in the future, planning for and building out a N11 Luas is forward planning.

My Crayon'd plan was CPO part of St. Margarets or cut and cover, Cut and cover really is the cleanest but would cause serious disruption probably.

It’s more than 200m at Donnybrook.

The junction at Donnybrook Garage and Donnybrook Church is a mess, and getting worse with the new lights.

It’s then extremely tight all the way through Donnybrook (including that tight bend at the Garda station). Some retail parking could be taken beyond that alright, along with some front gardens, but expensive (as mentioned).

I’d argue it is basically the entire section up to and over Leeson Street bridge. Basically the whole section that slows down buses as is*.

Anglesea Road is not a runner.

Outside of tunnelling, the only other option I can see is going down Nutley Lane and somehow navigating the corner onto the Merrion Road before moving through Ballsbridge and up either Pembroke Road onto Baggot or Northumberland Road onto Mount Street. Advantage here of linking with Vincent’s Hospital and the DART at Sydney Parade. Disadvantage of missing Donnybrook but also that I’d expect nearly as many issues as the Donnybrook stretch.

I think the only way is some kind of tunnel (s), either straight through Donnybrook and down the Adelaide Rd to link with the existing Green Line or something that potentially cuts across Herbert Park and up either of the two (Pembroke/Baggot or Northumberland/Mount St) access to the city core. I think the mess of a junction will need to be tackled regardless so you way as well put a traffic tunnel under the junction over to Anglesea Rd.

If Donnybrook hadn’t been one of the areas people most wanted to live in when this country was truly a backwater then there is no question it would have fallen victim to the DCC road traffic engineers. It is an absolute mess.

* as an aside this is one of the reasons why I laugh at people who go on about how amazing the Stillorgan QBC is, it’s great until traffic from the much deeper South East Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford narrows 3km from the city centre with some of the busiest destinations (like the RDS) along the way….

My probably insane idea — adjust the existing Metrolink plan (once already under construction) to:

1. Build a temporary Metrolink station at the scheduled end of the tunnel, right beside Ranelagh Luas
2. Add a second, unused spur (let's call it Spur B) of the tunnel south of Charlemont Metrolink station along the Luas track alignment, in addition to the already proposed tunnel over-run (let's call this Spur A).

Then when that's all complete and Metrolink is operating:

• Install crossover tracks just north of Ranelagh on the Luas line (my huge main assumption based on the BXD tie-in is that this could be done relatively quickly?)
• Sever the Green Line between south of SSG and north of Ranelagh. Run separate trams on Broombridge to SSG (with exchange to Metrolink) and Brides Glen to Ranelagh (with exchange to Metrolink)
• On the now inactive track north of Ranelagh, begin constructing the tunnel portal. Connect to the unused Spur B constructed above.
• Perform the relevant Green Line to Metro platform upgrades and road closures (which I believe could be largely done without disrupting Green Line ops)
• Stop running Luas between Sandyford and Ranelagh — begin running Metrolink on this section instead.

At a future point:

• Use Spur A to add another line towards the south-west of the city.

If we are converting the GL to Metrolink, we probably don't want to have a spur of tunnel going SouthWest also. Metro South West should be it's own project probably going from North East(Beaumont/Baldoyle) to South West. A spur tunnel reduces the potential throughput on the existing ML tunnel considerably.

This has been discussed before.

It is not an either or, as the post 2042 plans calls for both.

I again though disagree with the characterisation of the South East of Dublin.

It is a far deeper area. The distance from St Stephens Green to Marley Park is about 8.5km. After that is fields and the mountains. That is the same as from SSG to Brewery Rd (where some have suggested the Luas should turn down from Sandyford). Beyond this you have KM after KM of neighbourhoods including Sandyford all the way out to Bray. The N11 itself feeds in from two motorways and traffic all the way from Wicklow and Wexford.

Yes there is two rail lines but: the DART half covers the sea, unlike the North Coast DART that cuts far more inland. Much of the population growth of the southside is being loaded into Cherrywood and along the N11 corridor. Cherrywood itself is overloading the Luas Green line. UCD is as close to the Luas or DART as Terenure is to the Luas, ditto heaps of places in the SE, not sure why this is brought up. We talk about the QBC but actually look at the travel times, the Stillorgan QBC is exalted largely because it was one of the first ones.

I’d also say again that there is a range of “places of interest” that the South West does. The South West has golf courses and leafy roads.

To me Charlemont has the making of a future hub (IF the metro gets built in the next 100 years) with fans of tram lines extending into parts of south Dublin. Feed them all into the metro.

One of the benefits of Metrolink covering a similar spine as the Green Line in the city core is that we can look at new Luas lines like the 3Arena to Sandyford. Or Broombridge to the 3Arena.

We can also add in really small line increases, 1km or 2km east and west of College Green and expand services.

I think we’ll start seeing ideas around this once Metrolink is started. A lot of the potential of the Luas has been left on the shelf deliberately as they try to get ML to get underway.

The KM distance we have for Luas really isn’t too bad, it’s just doing a hell of a heavy lifting at the moment on spines.