Metrolink - Alternative Routes - See post one for restrictions.

While it's fine to complain it's too late now. Any tweak and the project would have to go through planning again from the start. It would be dead in reality and we can pack it in.

This has been litigated over and over and over again, by yourself in this account and by your old account.

1. Glasnevin will be largest Irish Railway station after Pearse, Connolly and Heuston in Dublin, and likely will exceed at least two of those in passenger numbers because it is a station which finally straddles both GSWR and the Sligo railway, and the M3 parkway services. This means basically all intercity railways are at the very most, one IC service and 1 Dart from being connected to Metrolink, and in many cases will be more seamless than that. Drumcondra is a small station with much lesser relevance, and will likely become less relevant as a station once Glasnevin is built because of its relative catchment. Its utility as a transfer station is basically nil.
2. If you read the route options report, you will see that in order for Metrolink to serve Drumcondra it would likely require a bored out station under the Mater as the new hospital expansion which has been built is over where the cut and cover site would have been (and please don't mention the reinforcement wall, it would still require a mined out station for significant cost with questionable benefit)
3. And again, if you read the route options report, Glasnevin station will provide a much greater unique catchment area vs. Drumcondra as its catchment is already significantly overlapped by the Mater and Griffith Park.
4. And finally, it is much much much less costly to build a future proofed station at Glasnevin which can actually facilitate significant numbers of people transferring from Irish Rail, to Metro for onwards travel to the Airport. There really isn't any potential future for expansion at Drumcondra which wouldn't require knocking down a significant amount of houses, and even at that stage, the GSWR and Sligo railway lines are quite far apart at this stage.

This soapboxing is against the forum charter so that could have got Strass a warning or ban. There is a mod warning in post no.1 and somebody reminded him of that, yet here we are.

So eh how about a proper orbital line. Has one been proposed in the thread so far?

Seoul Line 2 is a loop that has enabled new lines over the years to intersect and have high quality transfer stations.

Dublin MetroLink 2 could be a large circle. Luas and Bus spines could act as transfer options as we may never get the density required in semi d suburban areas.

With ML ending at Charlemont is their provision for it to, after everyone sees sense that these metro things are actually pretty decent, continue along the green line replacing the Luas?

I'm just asking if it's been catered for in the plans not if it would happen.

I do feel that this is a bit of a red herring.

a) Most folk who would be affected by a 1-2 year closure of the Green line, would not be helped all that much if there was a new line on the N11. If they were then why would we be building it in the first place? If you live in Cowper you're not going to walk to Donnybrook to catch a Luas. Being realistic a rail replacement bus will be needed to facilitate the upgrade.

b) In any other country with rail, rail replacement buses are a normal part of life, and would be perfectly sufficient to serve this catchment for a short period. Heck, simply increase the capacity of the orbital routes to the N11 which has busess supposedly arriving every 3 minutes destined for town.

c) It also would not result in "zero increase in masss transit catchment" beyond a fairly blithe concept of "living beside a railway line". There are plenty of people who live beside the Dart or Luas currently where those modes of transport provide 0 benefit to getting them to work each day. If I live beside the Square in Tallaght, and work in Blanchardstown, why would I use the Luas. Converting the Green Line to Metro Grade increases Mass Transit Catchment in the same way Busconnects does and in the same way Dart+ does, even if in each case folk live quite close to these modes already.

d) The Green Line upgrade remains the cheapests per 1000pphpd infrastructure investment we can make in the country, by a very significant margin. It was costed at 300-400 million back in 2017, but even if we quadruple that costing, 2bn to double the capacity of the Green Line (and double the length of Metrolink) should be a no brainer.

If I live beside a train station which gets 1 service a day to one destination requiring several transfers, I have access to mass transit, despite it being entirely useless to me.

This is meaningfully different to living beside a station which provides a multiplier of services a day to more destinations.

Increasing capacity, increases modal shift, increasing mass transit catchment by extension. I explained it fairly clearly already in my initial post?

On the closure point, that we will be halving the capacity of the corridor for 18 months is simply the cost of upgrading infrastructure. London, New York, Paris does this all the time and people living in this area have a multitude of other bus options available to them. They are slower, but its not like they are living in the sticks.

I took a long long time off from posting here until something made me log in. Brightlights66 They are NOT goign to change metrolink to Drumcondra, never going to happen, the station is actually in bits, and even after Dart+ West will not be frequently used.

You can go through Census Small Areas populations all you want but your methodology is flawed. e.g. Rush and Lusk Station area population is something like 500 People, but that excludes both towns and their hinterlands and THOUSANDS of people get the train in/out of that station per day. Where lots of people use it as a park and ride.

Put the Crayons away and stop crying over Drumcondra

My memory for why the closure was so long on the construction report was that it was done for a tie-in option that the tie-in option selection report scored poorly. Mainly it chose the Beechwood tie-in, which its portal required digging up part of the green line south of Beechwood and required a new Beechwood station on the greenline.

Honestly it was just a poor decision, I think if/when they look at tie-in options again, they will pick an off-line tie-in as it's really the only way to not close the GL for a very long time. I think this will be very important because as Kris says a bus replacement service really isn't going to work well in the long term. It is just too many people to try and move by bus, and a N11 replacement line, while it will help those living further south, it won't help many of the busiest parts of the Green Line. I think a very large consideration was that it reduced the CPO needed and meant they didn't have to close Dunville Ave, but I think that took too much of a consideration and the 3 year closure was more or less ignored.

I am not sure if the original Ranelagh off-line tie in is still feasible (looking at plans I believe ML has changed quite a bit since that study), but for a comparison it was only supposed to require a few months of closure. This was becuase it essentially built the portal, ramp, everything except the final rail and bridge connection to the side, and even then I think part of the closure was needed anyways for OHLE and platform upgrades. But even if that specific option isn't possible, I think it shows the importance of why they need to consider an off-line option to try and reduce disruption.

There is also probably an argument about the cost of congestion and runing costs for a bus replacements over a longer period.

You must have a sixth sense or something 🤔

Sure have a look at the original Metro North Drumcondra Station. Well away from the canal and offline to the main road. It has a wide open plaza, if I'm not mistaken. All are benefits over a station under the main road that wouldn't be generally accessible never mind a plaza entrance for aesthetics and to allow people flee in an emergency.

If the actual plan for a Drumcondra station wouldn't go near the main road with a bargepole it says a lot.

There's a section of path outside existing Drumcondra Station that's only 2 metres wide. I'd consider that a Con in relation to bringing additional services and passengers to the area.

Under main road was assessed and it appears quickly ruled out for reasons many folks have repeatedly brought here on this board.

Professional planners and engineers tasked with building a Drumcondra Metro station, easily eliminated the under main road location for reasons above. Many posters have stated same on this board no less.

Even demolishing a beautiful building that houses a support centre for the deaf was considering better than going under the main road.

It's untrue to say that someone living near a green line station has no access to Tara St. They do: change at Charlemont - it's under 100 metres. I'm not disputing that a no-change option is superior, but the alternative to a metro all the way is not "no connection at all"

I'm not disagreeing about starting to plan an upgrade in 2030, I only said it wasn't necessary to do so in 2020, when Metrolink was designed.

The post you're arguing with didn't advocate the N11 route at all. Since mentioning that, I also proposed an alternative option of a new aligninment to Beechwood being put in place before starting the tunnelling, as this would at least keep Green operational end to end for longer than was planned in the 2019 plan.

I said that starting this without an adequate high capacity alternative service would be extremely damaging, and I stand by that. Can we discuss how that alternative can be done? I am in favour of this extension, but it has to be done in a way that doesn't create total chaos while it's being built.

My post concerned our prior conversation about the main road being unsuitable location for a Drumcondra underground station.

You made it about Glasnevin again. Get some help man ffs!

I've posted this before but you conveniently ignored it and still quote "300-500 metres", which is absolutely false. Maybe this time you'll acknowledge that you're wrong?

Minimal difference between the routes. Drumcondra still maintains a Dart connection. A new Metro/Dart station added at Cross Guns with direct interchange between Metro and TWO Dart lines.