Luas Finglas

Maybe Finglas Luas shouldn't swing towards the current airport or ML location - for example if the long term plan is to develop a terminal 3 at Dublin Airport to the west of the main airport apron/runway then the current terminus would be well located to continue north towards a potential T3 versus a terminus that travels further northeast/east

Replacing, not converting - Ryanair might be OK with using shed terminals but nobody else is!

Also replacing cargo and flight kitchen facilities beside T2.

The long term plan is not for a T3 to the west.

They do plan long term for satellite terminals to the west connected by internal underground people movers to the central area where passengers will enter/exit the airport complex.

The Finglas Luas line should have went to the airport. The excuses against it are irellevant. So what if too slow and under capacity. This would only further the case for the Metro.

I am convinced many of our infrastructure planners in Ireland never had a train set when they were a kid. 6 year old me, at about 4am one christmas morning figured out that with a hornby trainset, the tracks had to link up for the train to go.

As someone who used the Luas daily for about 15 years, there is no denying, it is extremely sloooow. Too late now, but it would work so much better with multiple straight lines, rather than the two meandering lines we do have.

As you said, if the Luas went to the airport, the powers that be would be like "Great, job done. We dont need to look into improving this for 40 years now - well after we're all pensioned off hehehe".

The obvious extension is along the road to IKEA and connecting to the metro at Ballymun. It ticks the airport box and it's a short, mostly straight extension along a road with a verge along much of the alignment so shouldn't even be all that complex or expensive

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9yy4Sv7JEEEbRfMf6?g_st=ac

Makes complete sense. I do wonder how they would squeeze it in along some stretches of that road though. The Luas might have to share the road with vehicular traffic.

Metro West should be considered here as well, which was planned to connect to Metro North at Dardistown. Luas Finglas could simply connect to Metro West at Meakstown.

You could also continue Metro West to connect with Clongriffin instead of building a heavy rail spur. You could then consider extending Luas Finglas all the way to Ashbourne.

That's an extra 13 to 14km through green fields with only one intermittent stop (at most) really needed. It could be done in 15 to 18 minutes given the 70kmh top speed of the Luas trams.

To clarify, I think Luas Finglas should still be extended, just not all the way to the airport. I quite like the idea of extended Luas Finglas to the Northwood station, and I think after ML is complete it should be considered, as it would be a good connection for northwest dublin to have. And I would have to check, but I believe the plan is to develop a lot of high density housing around the Northwood station, so having a connection between that area and Charlestown SC could help reduce the number of local car journies. I am not sure of what a timeline for this could look like, but for a relatively simple 2-3km extension I think it could be delivered in a short time frame and sooner than we might think. The idea just needs to be picked up by TII, and more importantly they need to make sure an alignment is saved.

I also think what I said above makes the connection specifically to Northwood important, especially compared to connecting it to MetroWest. I have a lot of thoughts about MetroWest, but this isn't really the place to discuss that. However an extension to Luas Finglas to Northwood doesn't make it connecting with a MW Meakstown stations impossible, it just wouldn't be as good of a connection (about 100m apart).

Additionally, I will say. There is no good reason for sending a Luas/tram to Ashbourne. It is too slow and too urban centric of a transit system to be sent through 13-14km of green fields, our Luas lines, as lite-metro as they may be, are still designed for urban areas. Ashbourne will likely need a better connection to Dublin given its size and growth over the past 10-20 years, but that wont be as a Luas. If it ever does recieve a rail connection it would likely be as part of greater metro NW project, with an over ground section running along the M2. For any transit system to compete with private car traffic in Ashbourne, it needs to be able to get to at least the M50 reasonably quickly. That realistically means top speeds of at least 100km/h through those green fields and a Luas just won't do that.

Ashbourne will not grow by 20-30% every 5 years if a closer TOD is built.
Build an area near Charlestown SC close to quality transport links with high density accommodation and Ashbourne won’t grown at that rate.

If you want PT to bypass the M50 and provide an alternative, then metro west needs to be built.

Its a pity there's no bus link from Ashbourne to Broombridge for the Luas and Dart.

And it's a pity there's only the 40e, running every 30 mins from Finglas to Broombridge at the moment too.

There is a new bus service scheduled from Finglas, but it will go down the dual corridor to Broombridge. If it went through Finglas West and South and then to Broombridge, it could offer a good connection alternative than waiting for the Luas to be extended

yeah agreed, the problem is to link these roads up you would have to go through Castleknock Golf course and Luttrelstown golf course.

We need a new thread to discuss this or the old metro west thread!

Have a what?