Why doesn't Dublin have an underground metro?

Skyhawk - I notice that you have only made 5 posts to date. Can you stop trolling, and look at the facts of the matter as stated throughout the thread.

Dublin does not have an underground Metro because successive governments put it on the "long finger". Their priorities were elsewhere.

1. First proposed in the 1880's as a line linking Pearse Street to Houston via the City centre, a "mock up" bridge was even built across Westmoreland Street to show what it might look like. If you thought the loop line is bad, well....consider.

2. Revived in the early 1970s' CIE began to buy large parcels of land in the Temple Bar district for a central Bus and Rail station. This was at a period when traffic congestion began to be a problem in the Dublin City area, and the population in the Dublin Area was around 750,000.

3. DART (Rebuild of an existing railway) from 1979-1984. The line out to Tallaght and Clondalkin, using Underground from Connolly was expected to commence in 1986. However, the money was not released as it was diverted to building the Dublin to Kinsale gas pipeline, admittedly a higher priority if the valuable natural gas assets were to be fully utilised.

4. Arrow was the low cost cheap substitute, used on Kildare, Maynooth, Dundalk and Arklow commuter services. Phoenix park Tunnel was supposed to be put in use by 1997, but capacity constraints at Connolly prevented that. That would have been an inadequate substitute. Luas proposed in 1992, and after a lot of wrangling, work began on construction in 2000.

5. Interconnector begins planning in 1999. Planning begins in 2002. Funding has been released.

(a) It has not been built because it does not many get votes. Therefore it is down the priority list, while hospitals, schools, housing, welfare, all want state funding (and rightly so).

(b) It has not been prioritised because of the cost. This is a project which could bankrupt CIE, even though the benefits are obvious, and it will pay for itself within 10 years.

(c) Successive Governments who (FF) viewed railways as a vehicle for votes and political patronage (Lab) who viewed railways as a social employment scheme (FG) who viewed railways as something that should make a profit. All three preferred buses, because why pay one driver with 800 passengers on board, when you can pay 10 on buses, each driving 80, and (guess what!!!), get more votes at the cummann, have more political power, and it was cheaper and less effective. Besides, who needs trains anyway, keep the peasants on buses.

(d) Disjointed transport policies, who treated the motorist as a money making vehicle, and have not offered viable alternatives. They are quite content that a worker pays up to 20% of their salary net after tax in commuting costs. Why should they build something that would reduce that to 5% or less?

Here endeth the lesson.

dynamick wrote: »

We may get a railway order for metro north this year. Then we need to select a winning bidder (2011) Then we need to negotiate and sign a final contract for construction (2012). Construction will take 6-7 years. So I think we could be looking at services starting in 2019 and that's if everything goes to plan. We may well have a change of government during contract negotiations which represents further risk and delay for the project. So I think it is fair to say we are at least a decade away from an operational Metro North. The interconnector is not as advanced as Metro North and will take longer to complete.

So we have been in design and planning phase for underground rail in Dublin since 1975 (35 years) and we have at least another 10 years to go. 45 years is a long timeline for any project.

ABP has very recently said PP for MN will be issued in July.

Construction of MN is scheduled for 4-5 years.



Are all your posts made up spoofs?

Railway order?

Not applicable - in these cases it's simple PP.

Underlines that you're making it up as you go along.

You could spoof for Ireland dynamickey.

The RPA are used to referring to RPOs, but because it is being processed under the Critical Infrastructure Act, technically it is a PP.