LUAS Network + Future Expansion

Would Lucan not be best served by a Luas on the N4 with buses feeding in to both that line and the heavy rail line?

Surely Lucan would be best served by having dedicated QBC’s feeding into kishogue railway station to the south and Clonsilla to the North.
The railway that Kishogue is on (can’t remember the name of this route?) is quad tracked to hueston station where you have the PPT and RL LUAS

The railway that clonsilla is on connects with GL LUAS at broom bridge station and goes right into the CC.

Expanding parking at clonsilla and improving PT service to both of these stations by providing high frequency and high capacity busses operating in QBCs throughout Lucan is the most efficient way of getting people to use PT as opposed to building another rail line out that direction.

The frequency and capacity of the existing heavy rail lines would also have to improve to meet demand.

Red line was built on the reserved alignment for a future dart. If you ask me, that makes it about as primed for upgrade to metro as the Green line south of Charlemont. They should just turn the inner city part of the red line into the central part of a lucan luas, while building a new east-west metro tunnel in the city centre for a future metrolink line 2 that incorporates the outer parts of the red line with a new inner city undergound.

Some interesting points here, but I can't help feel that we're sort of optimising for the wrong problem here. Anyway I've been out with the google distance tool so all measurements are very approximate.

So firstly in the Blackhorse to Suir Road section. Drimnagh to Goldenbridge is 253m, so yes that's crazy short and I would have been of the opinion originally that there is one stop too many on that canal segment. I lived near Blackhorse when the route was being decided and I distinctly remember some of the route updates (i.e. political flyers) with the general level of political points scoring and meddling. So while not privy to the decision process further along the canal, I'm not surprised.

But having said that, after reading spacetweek's post I went and looked back, and it sort of struck me. Both stops are at ingress/egress points to Drimnagh and Inchicore. Could they not have split the difference? Well not really, because you have to remember the canal was sort of a desolate place back then, isolated and rife with anti-social behaviour, that was never going to be a sell. Could we do it now? I don't think so - while greatly improved it's still somewhat isolated in parts, if it was a must perhaps move Drimnagh up ~50m and remove Goldenbridge, that gives 626m between each stop, but again a hard sell and a lot of expense.

Rialto and Fatima are 261m apart, so not much better. But Rialto is right at the Children's hospital, and Fatima has access into the MISA and the main hospital (during the day when the gate is open), and a lot of traffic from the various schools off James St, so I wouldn't be inclined to try and consolidate those either.

So in both cases, given the catchments and general access I'd try to not to move or consolidate. But as I said I think this is trying to optimise the wrong problem. The real problem IMO is Blackhorse and to a lesser extent Suir Road.

Blackhorse is likely the biggest problem, because if trams backup there, only one can exit the canal towards the Naas Rd with each sequence of traffic lights. There is some sort of priority for incoming trams that sometimes cause the inbound filter on to Davitt Rd to skip a turn, but on exit it's still a problem. I've seen this first hand with 4 trams queued, and each had to wait for the sequence.

The Blackhorse road junction was terrible from day one, IMO a lot of compromises were made on the red line, and while we got the stilts over the redcow eventually :D there are still a lot of "legacy issues". If Lucan Luas joins with the red line at that point, it makes the layout a factor more complicated, and it's too crucial a point to just stick down an extra bit of track, a few traffic lights and paint a few yellow boxes. Suir Road suffers to a lesser extent, in general it's cars blocking the tracks with some accidents on occasion.

So should Luas Lucan share the red line canal section?

For: Assuming a spur after Fatima (or Suir Rd)

• I believe there is enough "raw" capacity on the section
• It integrates two lines as opposed to two separate lines (big win)
• More operational options or commuting options with the spur
• Slightly more resiliency after Fatima with spur

Against:

• Blackhorse flow control and traffic interaction (biggest problem IMO)
• Delays or accidents at Suir Rd
• Single point of failure between Blackhorse → Fatima
• Unless rework of turnback at Heuston as trams can no longer terminate at Blackhorse

Fair point, if possible @riddlinrussell I'd hope those in the know could find viable solutions if they exist, notably at Blackhorse. There are on-going plans around the Suir Road junction on the DCC website (here) - but any Luas references (Improve safety of LUAS travelling through the junction, Maintain LUAS and bus priority through the junction) strike me as more an after-thought to sell the changes as opposed to any real improvement.

If the bridge is structurally compromised - and I can't see how it won't be - try months to a year.

Connolly to Bus Aras is open? I obviously was mixing up my train stations with Heuston and Connolly, a minor enough inconvenience so.

Interesting reply but most people would be viewing it as a Green Line line link to Metrolink on the Northside rather than a Finglas to Ballymun link.

A change in Bus Service to link Finglas with Northwood could work of course

I think the Finglas Luas will end up connecting to Northwood at some stage , especially as we're going to see Broombridge expand with housing and the Jamestown Business centre area. The N4 and N6 don't serve a lot of Finglas but obviously could be modified.

if people in Finglas wanted to get public transport to the Airport then then they'd get the F buses to Glasnevin station which isn't too bad.

I don't think many people are suggesting there is massive demand between Finglas and Northwood themselves. As mentioned, this is covered off by the N6 bus currently.

However, when the Finglas luas is built and the Metrolink station at Northwood is taking shape, people will start saying, why can't we add just 3km of light rail to link the Green line up to Metrolink. Rail to Rail connections are far more popular around the world in cities, and this will be a no brainer.

You will bring the whole Northside of the Green line to a simple change over at Northwood to connect to / from the airport and Swords. That will be Phibsborough, Cabra, Broombridge, all of Finglas and beyond to Northwood with a tie in to Metrolink.

I do feel that they want Metrolink under construction first though. We don't want Metrolink canned in favour of an extension to the Airport!