Painful Swords traffic

I've been on about this before on boards.ie and it never ceases to amaze me. Swords has to be one of the most neglected large towns in Ireland, never mind Dublin. It’s full of hard working people paying mortgages, raising families, running businesses and contributing serious tax revenue, yet the infrastructure simply hasn’t kept pace with the growth.

Metro North promised for what feels like a generation. Rebranded, redesigned, reannounced, pushed out, pulled back in. Meanwhile Swords has grown into one of the largest towns in the country without a rail link to the city or the airport beside it. Every morning and evening it’s the same story on the roads.

I’ve just come back from East Galway where I drove for kilometres on an almost empty motorway. I mean completely empty… Fine road, no issue with that, but it cost somewhere between 8 and 15 million euro per kilometre. That’s serious investment. Yet in Swords, a major urban centre beside Dublin Airport, tens of thousands of people are still relying on buses stuck in traffic or have no choice but to drive.

It’s not about Dublin versus the rest of the country. It’s about proportional infrastructure. Swords isn’t a rural village looking for a bypass. It’s effectively a city sized town with no rail, chronic congestion and years of political promises. People in Swords aren’t looking for special treatment. They just want the infrastructure to match the population and the taxes they pay.

Yes, much to my shame

Tesla lost the race to make humanoid robots, Fianna Fail beat then to it when they extruded Darragh O'Brien from whatever generic paste their politicians are made from

If his head was any emptier of thoughts then it would implode from the vacuum

The metrolink would service over 970k passengers per week.

That was exactly what I said in post #7.

With all due respect, maybe set up a thread about the Maynooth line in the Kildare forum. And maybe one about the empty motorways in the Galway forum.

This is the North County Dublin forum, and we’re discussing the traffic here, how bad it is, how disconnected Swords is, and of course how the long-promised MetroLink would help.

Have they released any data on expected capacity at rush hour? My worry is that the thing will be built and immediately over capacity (memories of the M50 anyone?)

Well, that whole stretch up to the Cloghran roundabout was the subject of my ire

The cycle lane on the pavement is terrible as well, especially going around the bus stop

I'm actually struggling to think of a good part of the way into the city