Sometimes thinking of the missed potential of the Harcourt line (invest in a proper tunnel under Bray head to solve the capacity issue to the south, tunnel/elevated line from Harcourt to Broadstone) can be a bit upsetting
I've always felt that since the Coastal Dart is so capacity restrained, getting the Green Line to metro grade all the way to Bray would have been a fantastic way of taking pressure off the coastal Dart.
Would also make the case of terminating Rosslare and Wexford intercities at Bray that bit more palatable.
I don’t have any inside info, but no this isn’t going to happen now, at least not for decades. The green line can’t be extended to Bray as it is already over capacity. The only way it could have happened is if the green line was upgraded to Metro, but that isn’t happening for now and Metrolink is many years off. Alternatively it could be part of a future N11 Luas line, but that is also decades off.
Does anyone have inside news on whether this is at all going to happen? and if yes, what timeline are we looking at?
I think in future, once the Green Line as far as Sandyford has been upgraded to Metrolink, it should then be extended south via Leopardstown Racecourse to join up with the existing Green Line after it has turned east of the M50. That can then be extended to Fassaroe as metro.
The existing Green Line immediately south of Sandyford to Carrickmines should become a separate Luas line and get extended to and up the N11. This section can never become Metro so splitting it off is the only way to continue Metrolink further south.
Indeed. Metrolink was only ever cutting Ranelagh. The real prize was the capacity improvements. Very few people will have a complaint about a commute of 45 mins to 60 mins from Bray. The reality is though it would be far less for many coming from that direction. It is continually ignored that the N11 “corridor” is stacked with places of interest. Sandyford is our La Défense. UCD is our largest University. Cherrywood, Carrickmines, Dundrum Dún Laoghaire and Blackrock are one of or several of services/ retail / educational hubs. These will all be in that 20-30 range to get there from a Bray “hub”.
Opening up some more development land close to this is a no brainer along with facilitating more public transport for those coming from the south east.
If they upgrade the Green Luas to Metro as far as Sandyford, would it knock some time off the 1 hour commute?
Absolutely, given the land available and the current developments around Cherrywood, the route and track bed need to be designed with the future in mind.
The one thing I hope with the Bray Luas extension is that they at least try to build it to a spec which could be converted to Metro in future. The section between Carrickmines and Sandyford basically can never be converted because of the amount of at grade junctions. Would be very short sighted to further kneecap quite a good alignment.
Eh that part of Dublin and North Wicklow is one of the most liveable in the country. One of the biggest issues is accessibility to places like Bray that is wedged between the coast and a major motorway.
Not everything is about funnelling to the centre.
Bit of a straw man there - no one is suggesting scattering disconnected 1.5km stretches of tramlines (SSG to Parnell st.) around the city. If we stuck to "cheap and easy to build" we'd never have bothered with BXD and instead be half way to blessington.
There are load of potential routes for trams in the city covering distances in the 5 to 10km range - Dublin once had one of the most extensive tram networks in Europe.
And "opening up a lot of greenfield sites" also means greenfield in terms of a lack of schools, shops, pubs, restaurants, entertainment, etc. and almost zero walkability or cycleability to reach those facilities. And in the end, you still have a 1 hour commute to get into the city. You're effectively encouraging a doughnut city. There's finally some serious density starting to appear in Dublin in relatively central areas like the Guinness/Hueston area, Ringsend/Glass bottle, the North docks, Connolly station, etc. - this is the sort of development that benefits everyone, densifying the city core, justifying more spending on the public realm, public transport, schools and supporting existing businesses, etc. The cheapness of building 6 story apartments in green fields 10km or more from the centre is a mirage.
Greater capacity is needed in the City Centre, and some linkage of the lines would be good.
Taking the Luas down Thomas Street to TCD is a no-brainer, increases the capacity of the Red Line in the City Centre and gives alternative destinations.
Thing is, you don't just randomly build tram lines in the city center, they usually are built as part of longer lines that stretch into the city center.
Like if the Green line was originally built from just Stephens Green to Parnell Street, it really wouldn't have been very useful and probably not a success.
New lines like the Lucan Luas will bring new lines to the city center, along with the proposed 2042 network.
We build extensions like to Bray and Finglas because they are typically very cheap and easy to build, while adding a lot of utility. Low hanging fruit you might say. The previous Luas extensions went very well, were very cheap and easy and we couldn't imagine the Luas without them now.
I don't think these extensions are in any way competing with more substantial projects. Like no one is suggesting Metrolink won't be built because the Luas is extended to Finglas!
The main purpose of the Bray extension would be to open up a lot of greenfield sites to major transport oriented development. Building high density apartment buildings right next to Luas stops, like Sandyford and Cherrywood.
Getting rid of through traffic cars from the city centre is the first step. Destination-only cars in the city centre.
There are opportunities for increasing Luas in the City Centre. Use Thomas St and Dame Street to bring the Red Line to TCD, then onwards along Pearse Street to Ringsend.
Use the Chapelizod bypass from Heuston instead of the Red Line for the first part of Lucan Luas.
Use Conyngham Road to Heuston West, then into the Park to the Zoo, before along the Wall at Blackhorse Avenue to Ashtown, Dunsink, Abottstown and Tyrellstown.
I agree that long journeys aren’t good, but I wasn’t suggesting that. As I underestand the long-term plan for Green Line, it will start at Bray DART station, intersect with Metro (formerly green-line) at Sandyford , continue north on a new route along N11 serving UCD, interchange again with Metro at Charlemont, St Stephen’s Green and O’Connell Street, then DART at Broombridge. That allows the Luas to collect and distribute passengers for those services. Given those connection-points There will be very few people riding the whole length: just as the 19 tram isn’t the fastest way from Berg-am-Laim to Pasing, there would be better options than sitting on the Green Line all the way from Bray to O’Connell St.
(I wasn’t a frequent user of the trams, as I lived near Trudering, just outside the reach of the Tram… or, in those days, the U-Bahn too).
It's the norm certainly for the German cities you name here that very few people would choose to ride the full length of such a long tram route. Instead, even if you want to go to the end destination of the tram route, you'll fairly quickly pass an U- or S-Bahn station from which you can complete your journey more quickly. Meanwhile, folk who have alighted at those stations will change to the tram to get closer to their planned destination. I used to live in Munich very close to the eastern terminus of the number 19 tram. Its western terminus is walking distance from Pasing railway station. If you actually wanted to travel from where I lived to Pasing, if you chose to use the tram at all (U-Bahn was nearby), you would stay on it only as far as Ostbahnhof (a journey of about 10-15 minutes), then change to the S-Bahn for a much quicker completion of your journey.
Having a really long tram line where many riders have no option for their journey other than to ride the whole route leads to overlong journey times and full trams that travellers towards the middle of the route may have difficulty boarding. There's a reason InterCity trains don't stop at every intermediate station.
Very interesting talk.
Well done @gjim.
We all agree with more heavy rail, Luas extensions through the CC etc I have no issue with discussions flowing, but this isn’t it. This is the same old posters hijacking the discussion at the outset with the same stuff they posted elsewhere. I’ve 50 things I’d prefer were built or were prioritised but this isn’t the thread for that.
If you have anything constructive to add to this discussion, feel free to add it to this thread. Really interested to hear.
The distance is not that big. 5-6 stops with a more rights of way. It is part of the UCD line so it does not necessitate changing.
It’s the same old stuff you post here. Multiple paragraphs to tell us how great things are wherever you are an expat and trying to “educate” us Paddies.
Like I asked before wtf are you on about? I haven't once mentioned where I live. Feel free to provide a quote to or else gtfo.
You either have something productive to add here or you don’t.
You're not a mod as far as I know.
You don't "own" this thread and don't get to dictate what people discuss. You're acting like a spoilt child and turning to personal attacks because - surprise, surprise on a discussion board - people simply have different opinions to you.
It's 42 minutes from Brides Glen to SSG now, from Bray it'll be over an hour, that's assuming you don't have to change at Sandyford if the Metro upgrade ever happens.
I am assuming there would be a fair bit of CPO’ing in Bray itself. The new road down via Ravenswell and the PT bridge will be a good in between route but the Carlisle Grounds can expect to lose space.
there's a good bit of space between the Carlisle and the railway for a Luas stop, I think this was in the previous plan. It's currently a carpark and a power substation for the Dart which will presumably be moved. There's also some space to the east of the Dart track that used to be sidings so the existing tracks could be moved a few metres in that direction. There's basically 30 metres between the 2 walls that's owned by Irish Rail.
Likely service times of 48-50 mins to Bray from SSG based on 80km p/h and existing service times to Cherrywood.
On the UCD / N11 configuration I’m sure it would be similar enough.
Cologne, Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart and Melbourne have very long tramlines - Stuttgart’s U6* is longer than Green would be after this proposed extension; Cologne has lines that are far longer. It’s not unheard-of to run a tram this distance, but it is unusual. Normally this kind of outer-urban service would be carried by commuter heavy rail, but for various reasons (mostly geographical) that’s not viable here.
In any case, It’s not the distance between the end of the line and the city core that matters, but the usage between stops along the line. I strongly suspect that more passengers would have journeys that began and ended on the extension than take a trip from Bray to Broombridge (let alone Finglas).
The top speed of the latest rolling stock used on Green line is 80 km/h, but the earlier sets were 70 km/h. By the time any extension is done, all trams on this line should be capable of 80 km/h - that’s fast enough for a service this length.
I do see the reason behind this, but my personal preference for Luas service extensions would be to add more through the city centre, to provide a more available central network to complement these very long outer services. This doesn’t require extra capacity: lines would split as they approach the city, then re-unite as they leave: overall in/out capacity is the same, but there are more destinations within the city, and the extra track allows new, city-area routes to be implemented (e.g., inner orbital services, or links between Metro, DART stops). Doing this would reduce the number of buses that need to enter the core of the city.
I know it’s disruptive in the short term, but the retailers who complained about the disruption of Luas Cross-City stopped complaining once they saw the effects that nearby Luas stops had on their footfall. We can surely manage a rolling programme of much shorter projects to create a proper city tram network.
__
* Stuttgart’s U-Bahn, despite the name, is a tram system with express sections running on dedicated track or tunnels.
Anyway, keeping this on topic.
I wonder is one drawback of the Wicklow DART that it would involve multiple changes for people coming from further south if they want to get to Sandyford etc.
It is literally from the NTA. It is not a musing. Perhaps start a Metro West thread or post in any number of the crayon related threads on here.
With all due respect, you're being overly angry to myself and other posters.
The thread title is Luas Green Line, Bray extension. I have an opinion on it being the wrong plan to extend from Brides Glen to Fassaroe or Bray as from both a speed and capacity issue.
This is a discussion board and the n11 route to ucd is just other peoples musings so maybe less of the attacking people who have differing views.
There is absolutely nothing unique about going to Bray with the Luas, none whatsoever.
Yes there are other “priorities” - but that is not the thread for those. You either have something productive to add here or you don’t.
It might not be priority no 1, but honestly I don’t care what your opinion of what that should be or not. This is a thread about the Bray Luas extension, not your musings on the one or two places you’ve happened to live yourself (you know others have lived abroad too, right?).
You "honestly" don't care what I think but you read what I wrote and then wrote a response. Sure.
My musings about places I've lived? Wtf are you talking about? Where have I said anything about where "others" live?
I made a simple argument which relates directly to the idea of the Bray Luas extension - that we should not be building expensive rail infrastructure through green fields 15-20km away from the centre of a city in sparsely populated areas while the city core itself is starved of rail infrastructure. Particularly when the tram line being proposed will, for most of its length be 10 minutes walk from a DART line and run through low-density semi-d suburbia.
In the meantime the number of people forced to use slow and unpredictable double decker buses to get into the city centre every day is more than twice the entire population of Bray.
It's not nonsense to point out that rail public transport works best where there is density. The density between the canals is at least 5 times that of the area this extension will run through - yet between the canals the total amount of rail comprises 3km of heavy rail and less than 11km of tram lines. If this extension goes ahead, it will mean that there will be more tram infrastructure between Sandyford and Bray than there is in the city centre itself. This is backwards.
It is literally on the NTA most recent release and also discussed here.
Perhaps do a bit of reading up on the proposals before polluting here with musings.
You accuse me of using crayons and then mention a hypothetical route via ucd! The most recent plan was to extend from Brides Glen. I'm all for new public transport infrastructure, but I stand by my previous post, the Luas as we know it, is the wrong model for a new rail line to Bray.
