DART+ (DART Expansion)

If it were me I'd just bring the barriers down and let them learn the hard way, get them to lobby for an underpass/bridge since they like lobbying so much

I don't disagree and I think some people are just going to need to learn to the hard way. However from reading over the D+N objections about increasing Howth frequency to 6tph, I don't think they are going to advocate for real solutions. I honestly think they would fight to reduce the service frequency because "the existing level of service is already fine and I don't want my LCs closing too often."

Honestly elevating the line all the way from Lansdowne to Serpentine would be the only way to get rid of the crossings while maintaining the majority of the road links but the only way to ultimately get anything done would be to override the NIMBY opposition by basically threatening to outright lock down all the crossings at Rush Hour if they keep outright refusing every attempt to remedy the situation.

The crossings will have to be dealt with at some point one way or another as those 5 crossings would be the only one's left in the city center area itself. As for Bray to Greystones realistically they need to go big and widen the Tunnels to get a double track alignment into place to clear the bottleneck in that section. Either that or they Bore a shorter direct route through the mountain that meets the existing DART line at either end.

I know it’s off topic but just to make a point that at the moment, there is a single train on a Friday - the 16:10 - that does the Heuston to Waterford journey in exactly an hour and 40, stopping at only Carlow and Athy and getting into Waterford at 17:50. This is phenomenal and with huge linespeed improvements, new electric rolling stock, and better signaling, this itself can be significantly reduced.

Wexford to Dublin via Waterford is not nearly as bad as it sounds and is actually incredibly feasible. The issues are that Wexford is not the only stop on the line and by no means the main destination, as well as the numerous restrictions on the line itself like the tramway in Wexford town, the Felthouse curve, and many more.

It is clear that for DART South to work, Wexford trains can’t go into Dublin via the DSER. But it’s tricky to figure out an alternative that works best. Probably not a bad shout for another thread…

I think it’d be politically challenging to justify ending services to Dublin on the DSER with so many commuter towns on the line. I’d imagine they should just reinstate one of the termini platforms at Pearse and look at getting a third track between there and GCD. It’d be cramped but if they could get the Luas extended to Bray then at least there wouldn’t be as much pressure on the line.

Any sort of coherent plan for that area is aspirational stuff anyway as it's all privately owned and will be developed piecemeal across probably several decades (just look at Sandyford, even after all this time half of it is still old industrial units), the realities of the market whenever various sites become available will determine what actually gets built

as i mentioned back in the big thread that discussed this there is not going to be any depot or other facilities built on the line to service trains and the regimes would not be changed to suit the line either as the trains are used all over the country anyway.

the reason limerick can work a little different with the 2800s for the mayo branch is that there is slack in the fleet and they are generally limerick based.

i say generally as they do head for the cork suburban the odd time for various reasons.