LUAS Network + Future Expansion

All those long and winding radial tram routes, ignoring the (potential and planned) much high capacity and faster heavy rail and (planned) metro routes. Bizarre if you ask me. Fair enough if there is a possible highly segregated corridor available but that's not the case in most of these examples and there are no plans to segregate the lines in the city centre anyway. The orbital Luas routes feeding in to heavy rail and metro make a lot more sense to me.

Money is finite but I believe you would deliver far more bang for the buck with a metro line out through the south west of the city (as well as upgrading the Green line) and then feeding passengers on shorter orbital trams (and buses) into these very high capacity, frequency and speed lines.

I won't lose too much sleep over this vision though. It'll almost certainly not materialise.

Yes, it would be great if the traffic reduction plans for the centre were followed with a couple of branches of the existing red/green lines that take varying routes around the centre. This is how other cities with "lots of tram lines" operate.

Building tram lines in the centre is really expensive because of the underground services that have to be found and moved first, but perhaps, as part of a more general street improvement project, this relocation could be done in advance. Even if no tram is laid there later, it would dramatically reduce disruption to traffic when gas/electricity/water/telecoms maintenance is needed later.

Definitely post-T42, the priority should be getting buses out of the centre of the city. Currently living away from Dublin, it's something I never noticed in my years living there but whenever I return, it's striking how damaging having queues of slow moving tall and heavy vehicles is to the urban environment. Everywhere in the city adjacent to heavy flows of buses is unpleasant for pedestrians and cyclists (particularly). And it's about the least efficient use of double decker buses having them crawl through busy city streets. And despite so much street space being provided to them in the city core, they're not much use in terms of hop-on/hop-off to get around the centre since the dwell times are so long and most of the available seating involves navigating a one-way single stairwell.

Long term the goal should be to build a network of tramlines criss-crossing between the canals and have all outer bus passengers transfer to trams at interchanges to get into the centre. The last time I used buses was in Amsterdam and this is how it worked and it's fine - you get off a bus somewhere away from the centre and wait a few minutes at the same platform for the next tram. Amsterdam has plenty of lowish density suburbs, particularly in the south which are served by buses.

Only then, having provided decent tram capacity in the centre of Dublin, should outer extensions be considered. I'd park metrowest, most of Lucan luas and extending the green line further to Bray (the first extension was already a mistake in my opinion) until the core is sorted out. The network should be extended outward in steps from the core, not the periphery, along the busier bus routes, where heavy rail or metro is not an option or justified.

The displaced buses can do what buses do best, provide services in low density suburbs and provide dense connectivity with rail services whether heavy, metro or trams. Despite the NTA being ultimately in charge, PT in Dublin has not been integrated aggressively enough - buses, Luas and DART/Commuter are seen as alternatives instead of being used to each's strength in a complimentary way.

Why doesn't saggart have a park and ride. It's the terminus stop and would be ideal for commuter to leave car if built

Probably at 15x the cost though!!..

Why would you stop 1km from UCD?

Interesting.

Like the Yellow suggestion, could be extended from Zoo to Ashtown to meet the rail and other Luas line there. Could also be extended from Kilmainham to Lucan as an alternative to current Lucan Luas plan.

With Metrolink stopping at Whitehall, not sure how much demand for the Northside aspect of that line. Might be better starting East at Parnell Park, travelling down Malahide Road, then Griffith Avenue before following the rest of your route.

Purple, as said already should extend to UCD and use the Eastern bypass reservation to Sandyford. At the other end as mentioned above, from Ashtown out to Dunsink, across the M50 to Abbotstown, Ballycoolin, Tyrellstown and Hollystown.

The thing is that the city core doesn’t need that much more line length to be great.

Through running the Lucan Luas a further 2km along with Metrolink, DART+ and ensuring lines can be moved between be amazing.

You can have several combination of lines once the Green Line stops having to do the heavy lift N-S and the Red Line W-E.

Low hanging fruit has to be taken as well in terms of extensions. Whilst not all KM are created equally in terms of utility, that is also the same for cost.

This is the 2022 GDA transport plan map with Luas+Metro services only - it features the same Luas network as shown on the map @bk posted.

Surely they would envisage a 2nd or 3rd metro line by 2050

Yes, it's disappointing to see that small but damaging change to the Luas Lucan route...