Luas Finglas

The part of Finglas it goes through after Tolka valley Park is extremely deprived.

I know East Finglas is fine really.

Park and ride has little impact on car traffic in cities.

The largest park n ride, red cow has 600 spaces. It's rarely totally full and the users usually stay parked there for the day. The vast majority are single occupant cars. The luas red line has a daily capacity in the region of 80,000 but this is regularly exceeded in practice. In short, park and ride contributes very few of the luas's actual passengers, less than many regular luas stops in fact, and it takes up land, a serious amount of land. If the land were developed into apartments instead it would generate a lot more luas users and reduce car journeys.

The reasons why people tend not to bother with park and ride are: once people have paid tax, insurance, maintenance and fuel and are already in their car, they're not likely to pay a parking charge and a luas fare even if it saves a few mins. The real influence on whether or not to drive is a) having a car and legal ability to drive it and b) free work place parking

I've worked in companies before where a decision was needed on something, and the usual modum operandum was to put the best and the brightest in a room, explain the problem, and the proposed solution, and then go round the table for a go or no-go from each person.

"I received correspondence from An Coimisiún Pleanála during the week indicating that they require more time for a decision to be made. I presume with the Metrolink decided yesterday a decision should be given shortly."

What exactly do they need the extra time for the decision to be made for? Have they got some guy in a room some where who is mulling it over in detail - for weeks on end??

ok but think of the person living in Ashbourne or slane etc travelling to the CC.
Surely in that case a P+R is a good option for them especially if there was a toll introduced on the road on the CC side of the P+R to incentivise people to use PT?

To appease everyones doubts, it's been approved:

Inspectors report & decision are available to view now:

It's just a microcosm of the problem the country has delivering infrastructure.

In practice one can somewhat explain why it might take that long to build such a small project but it shouldn't take anywhere near that.

It should be that once it's granted planning shovels should be in the ground within 12 months.

I think this one is more unlikely to be JRed just because of the area it's going through (just a statement of fact, not being bad about the area) but we need to make the bar for JRs much higher in the state or bite the bullet and end it completely for vital projects.

600m Is beer money. Even if it's obscenely expensive for what we're getting. The politicians will want it to proceed ASAP, as we are aware and for a while every paper and citizen is now aware. They are achieving nothing, they get nothing done. They'll be eager as anything to sanction mickey mouse projects like this, it's the likes of Dublin metro with the price tag it has, let's see of there's appetite for that, if the financial tide turns, rather, when it turns...

I honestly don't give a flying shite about cost....we need infrastructure AT ALL COSTS in this country.

Would it just share the road with traffic?

It's not very wide.

The issue with the Red Cow though is that it’s a busy interchange, such that you’re going through a big headache to get there.

You’re referring to a variety of different issues with cars that aren’t all P&R related.

The issue with P&R from what I can see is that in more dense areas it becomes a waste of space and drives more local traffic (which is an issue in itself). I’d say theoretically them being near the end of a line with meh density that it works, as you are funnelling people from less dense places into a P&R and local traffic isn’t significant. But as time goes on and you get more ToD, an area gets busier and the P&R is less effective land use and just drives local traffic. An example of this to me would be the Stillorgan/Sandyford Luas stops where the P&R were built when they were more at the edge of the urban area. Sandyford is now like a mini city but we have this car magnet in the form of a P&R there to ship people elsewhere.

Ideally a P&R is a temporary thing until you can fully exploit the land for more dense development around a stop. You will have the density then closer by to get people to the mass transit stop through orbital bus routes and the likes. It’s hard though once a P&R facility is built to remove it. People do use them and enjoy them, even if they arguably lead to more costs than benefits. Really once the Carrickmines extension and P+R was built they should have halved the number of parking spaces in Sandyford at least, and in its place plopped a few hundred apartments.