Metrolink south of Charlemont

How would red line capacity be increased? By making it more grade separated? By putting it underground in the city centre or giving it a new city centre alignment? Fewer city centre stops would help IMO so that it operates more like a metro rather than a bus once it gets into the canals.

Yeah but even if we went to "extremes" and diverted the Red Line right through Ballymount it would be much cheaper than routing a south west metro that far west and thus doing nothing for the beleaguered commuters of south and south west Dublin. Ballymount is passed by Luas on two sides already. It would be trivial to add pedestrian access and a new station or stations to serve it.

I think long before any DSW metro is built we should upgrade the red and green lines to premetro in the case of the red line and full automated metro in the case of the green line. Then as an interim solution run orbital bus routes from red to green lines and begin long term planning for an underground mid-way between red and green lines, but only after DU, Maynooth-Heuston diversion, N11 Luas and ML northern extension to R&L. I really would like to see the red line made into a pre-metro with it going underground at James's and pairing up eventually with a north east tram route. The N11 Luas could do the same and link up with Finglas Luas at Broadstone. I think we should be trying to reduce the amount of planned on street tram that is not highly segregated. If opportunities for highly segregated trams are identified I'm all in, metro west for example.

@bk
The concern I would have with an on street solution for areas like Terenure is that we would have another "Red Line in the city centre" scenario. There would be far too much interaction with road traffic for my liking. This would not be a speedy way to get into the city centre from say Templeogue. It would be a fair crawl on a tram IMO. There just is no obvious path and no handy dual carriageway with a central reservation that can be used. It would be city streets all the way, with every junction being a possible show stopper in the event of an accident. I think the corridor through DSW is a kind of special case with no viable option for a highly segregated tram route if it is to go roughly mid-way between red and green lines.

Folks, the red line is currently near, if not at capacity. Capacity enhancement is with the best will in the world not going to match proposed resi development along the route. Throw in Heuston etc along the route …

Moving back across Robin hood ind est, into Ballymount Ind Est and Greenhills there are hundreds of acres of brownfield lands inside the M50. Unfortunately, the Red line given where it is, won't also adequately manage capacity if there is a strategic decision taken to develop these areas for residential. (Also on the other side of the Naas road - Knockmitten, Bluebell, Kylemore etc have similar potential).

Much of these light industrial / commercial properties are late post-war and are facing obsolesce in the coming years. The tenant mix is increasingly reflecting this. At the margins we can see welcome resi development beginning. However, some of this is 'ad hoc' and increasingly transport capacity issues will emerge.

IMHO the location of the Red line is absolutely not proximate the 'deeper' into these areas you go. There is no question of having a metro at the end of each road, but when building from a relatively fresh canvas lets put it near where people will live. Even if we disagree on that, the RL capacity is not there now, or in the future if these are locations for strategic residential development.

On the south side of the city, with proximity to the centre, there is nowhere else with this potential for development. The reason much of this brownfield has not been developed is we went for the 'easier' greenfield for various reasons. Now we can see the see the issues with sub optimal PT, commutes etc. If we are talking expensive PT solutions, density, sustainability etc brownfield will be part of the solution.

In this context from a proper land use perspective 'densification' is best planning practise, but also provides benefits from a transport sustainability and metro viability. Of course we can try the on-street Luas experiment, sure a few new bus corridors, but if we are talking about doing it properly, extending our PT network in a targeted fashion like other EU countries, metro is the way to go. We all see continental cities have an overlap and density of PT because the built environment facilitates it. This has taken generations to get there, but this is the template we should be seeking to emulate.

We probably have a decade to plan this and get it right (while the current Metro is under construction ), but if projected population developments remain valid and we still have the money to build this infrastructure, it should be a case of doing it correctly. I think we can all agree on that ?

Agreed. The obvious solution is to fix the red Line by doing what countless other European cities did with their on-street city centre tram sections, put them underground. Red Line could be so brilliant if it was a premetro. There would be a real impetus then to gradually add grade separation at key road junctions, like Belgard etc. These small projects could be done over many years and keep skilled teams busy and each piece of grade separation would bring the red line closer to that of a full metro. Trams could be lengthened and run more frequently.

Of course as I have long maintained, an obvious alternative is to reroute the red line to Kylemore and allow passengers to take DART Underground to the city centre instead.

As bk says, a lot of this is pure speculation because we don't know what the real plans are. There is no masterplan. It changes with the wind and political climate and that's a really bad thing. If we could at least commit to DU and GL upgrade to Metro we could begin to plan the other Luas upgrades and new lines around that core network. Building random Luas lines without knowing what the core, very high capacity network is really going to look like is folly IMO. ML is already going to make green line somewhat redundant in the city centre. Sure, we will get some use out of it but it won't be doing what it was design to do. We should be able to plan better than 5 years in advance.

The Malahide Road Industrial Estate is starting to look real shabby. An ideal location for a new metro station and ultra high density residential (Hong Kong style). A new metro line could start there and take in Beaumont hospital, Marino, Ballybough, O'Connel, Temple bar, St Patrick's, Harold's cross and Tallaght. The route between Tallaght and Terenure might have limited development potential but thats fine, lots of metro networks world wide pass through low density areas. Its only about 4kms. Its not like we've ever had an issue with under crowding on public transport. You could even cut down the stations to 1 or 2 in that section.

The current ML project can tie into the green line as planned previously. Combined with other projects we'd then have a rail network worth mentioning without gigantic gaps between lines and entire quarters of the city depending on double decker buses.

I think people are done with the 'Irish psyche' and nimbyism. You can see on social media in the past year or so nimbys get absolutely shredded, and rightly so.