FourNorth - Quad Track Railway - North Dublin

I think they can. Even with our broken planning system we managed to build hundreds of km of motorway on land not belonging to the the state originally. The quad tracking of the northern line shouldn't even require much land take. The embankments need to be converted into retaining walls, but CIE owns those embankments. Some CPOs will be likely around the stations, but much less than has been required for any motorway project.

and pre 2014 when the EU directives were incorporated into the planning system. We've been going backwards ever since on infrastructure delivery. I sense they may try an interim three track solution due to lack of appetite for the planning fight and lack of dedicated funds to do the full job, usual stuff

Bsharpe, sorry if this is a silly question, but could you explain the pre 2014 planning re EU directives? Ive never heard of that.

they'll apply for CEF Funding for the next phases of the project as well

Is it the case that given all the appeals to courts, associated judgements, with issues arising from there, we have had to gradually layer on all the additional 'stuff' to help ensure applications were not caught off-side by the courts ? You are correct it is a cottage industry preparing an actual application these days …

Do we have any anticipation for what the long delayed FourNorth report is going to recommend when it gets published?

This is interesting and really should have been combined with DART+ Coastal North from the outset to avoid re-work, it's hard to imagine how the line can be 4 tracked without at least moving some of the OHLE masts or replacing them with portal frame. But alas here we are, fear of spending money on infrastructure persists, meaning we'll pay twice or have DART+ Coastal mothballed and scope subsumed by fournorth.

It'll be interesting to see what the NIMBY game play will be like. The costal NIMBYs are a powerful set and government has demonstrated willingness to throw money at them instead of reforming the legal system.

Interesting, how far does the land extend to facilitate the four tracking? Also why was there an intention to 4 track in the 1930s? The traffic was hardly there to support it ?

so you are saying then there is the ‘ground’ by the existing tracks to do much of the expansion. That is not to say it will be a big engineering undertaking in an already busy line. However, the benefits are obvious to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the route and future potential (me included !).

Clontarf to Raheny there is space within the existing alignment

There are 4 track across the Tolka bridge

Reconfiguring the Dart Stations for 4 tracking would surely require lengthy station closures and weeks long track possessions?

Does 4 North try de-conflict Connollys throat at all?

As always GoingNowhere, were lucky to have someone with railway engineering knowledge like you.

They need to get cracking on this, it should have been done years ago. Even a partial four tracking is beneficial.

Just out of curiosity but would 4 tracking be impacted by Connolly not having a lot of platforms? Do you need to try to somehow expand the station or create alternate platforms somewhere else in another connected station?

The cost to the economy of closing the northern line for that long would far exceed the cost of CPOing land I reckon. I think if we can CPO and demolish an apartment block for ML we can CPO 200 semis for 4North and then just sell 150 of them with smaller back gardens (probably for a profit). I don't believe that many properties will need complete demolition. I don't see a cheaper way to bring an extra pair of heavy rail tracks out of Connolly to north Dublin and the need will not go away. Tunneling would be far more expensive, even offline and less useful because you'd have fewer possibilities to interchange without spending large sums on station boxes, for as yet unknown interchange locations. Surface heavy rail lines are much more flexible and offer operational redundancy should an incident occur.