Dublin Metro South vs Luas

Any idea what will happen in 8 years time when the green lane has surpassed capacity?

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Any idea what will happen in 8 years time when the green lane has surpassed capacity?

They will have to do a more expensive upgrade with more people disrupted in pretty much the way it’s meant to happen now.

ted1 wrote: »

It was designed to be upgraded, the cost is minimal.

If somewhere else needs a metro then build a different line.

How precisely was the Green line designed to be upgraded?

Infini wrote: »

The crux of the problem though is that those resident's DO have a valid point. With transport as bad as it is shutting it down for anything up to 4 year's is too long to leave such a busy route offline. Realistically if you look at the map there's a rather large void of land between the red and green land. Would make more sense to run the south part of the Metro west from Charlemount through Harolds Cross, Terenure, Rathfarnham and down to Whitechurch. If the LUAS needs an upgrade it make's more sense to have replacement services there before any enhancement or find way's to take excess pressure off it. Shutting it down only make's things much worse.

But 4 year shut down was never a thing it was a fantasy. A new metro line to rathfarnahm, great, do you have €2bn?

Isambard wrote: »

how can they ram an entire railway right across London with hardly anyone noticing and yet in Dublin it would involve wrecking countless people's commute?

Because the closures and disruption it caused in London are accepted as part of the development of new lines, they don't moan as much. Irish people are only interested as far as their hedge

Podge_irl wrote: »

No point in engaging in "grass is always greener" thinking. No doubt there are vast swathes of people in the UK looking at us breaking ground on a second runway with minimal fuss and wondering why they can't get anything done.

Of course, but ya know current rage is running high.

OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »

So the Metro wouldn't be able to use the current tram network into the city centre? (past Trinity, etc.)

If this is the case, would we have both Luas and Metro running on the improved Green line, with some going through college green (Luas) and others using the metro north line (metro)?

Are there any merits to the tunnel digging proposals being made in the southside.? The green party has been making a lot of noise about having the metro in the southside service UCD (it was fairly ridiculous that UCD was not serviced by the Luas, but that's history I suppose).

The metro will run from sandyford to the estuary on a line of it’s own. No on road sections or level crossings due to speed and frequency. The luas from near the metro portal let’s say charlemont heading north along the existing line. A separate luas will run from sandyford to brides glen. At no stage will they share a line.

2ndcoming wrote: »

Is there anything to be said for a Monorail? It worked in Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook!

It sure put them on the map

OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »

So Luas cross city would disappear, then? In order to get from Sandyford to college green you would need to transfer at some point?

You'd get out of the Metro at O'Connell Bridge. Cross-City would still run from the tunnel portal to Broombridge and later probably Finglas.

Stephen15 wrote: »

That's all well and good and certainly other options could be looked for the areas you mention such as new additional Luas lines but it doesn't take from the fact that the Luas green line is running at capacity and needs an upgrade. It's also considerably cheaper to upgrade the green line than build a completely new alignment.

but how much of this capacity would be diverted to a metro line a few miles away? I would hazard a guess that the green line catchment area is a few miles either side of the line (prob 10-15min walk away). If a metro line was put at the outer edge of this catchment area, you are then increasing the area. People living between metro & luas can choose to use either for travel.

OneOfThem Stumbled wrote: »

So Luas cross city would disappear, then? In order to get from Sandyford to college green you would need to transfer at some point?

The exact same process as in every other developed country. Google the metro map of any city and you’ll see that people change the whole time
When the frequency exists changing is a breeze.

ohographite wrote: »

Again, I'm not being sceptical to these points. However, if I'm not mistaken there is enough space between the top of the current trams and the overhead wires to allow a second floor. In fairness the amount of doors could be doubled to somewhat counterbalance the increase in dwell times and there could be interiors designed to fit much more people downstairs than the current trams, such as found on heavy rail metro trains.

There definitely isn't space under every bridge/structure.

The other major problem is that double-deck articulated trams do not exist, never have existed and realistically never will exist. All double-deck trams are single unit. Even double deck articulated buses are extremely rare.

Even the few double deck single unit trams still in use are either Very Very Old or are extremely specialist builds for challenging environments (the tiny trams in Hong Kong). There is no off-the-shelf 1485mm 750v DC overhead unit - whereas we could buy articulated trams from any vendor.

Regardless of what happens, the current capacity issues on the Green line will be ignored until it gets to breaking point. Then it will take an additional ten years of talking, arguing, planning and construction to resolve the issue. At which point, the "new" solution wont be able to cope with the capacity issues anyway.

The government ministers of today will be long gone to be replaced with a new generation of numptys who won't have a clue what they are doing either.

Its what we do, we do it very well in this country - leave everything until breaking point and put in a bullshít solution to "fix" it.

Look at the current state of Irish rail, its beyond a joke - over capacity, massive bottle neck in Connolly-Tara-Pearse, trains constantly late, stopping in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. Its actually a disgrace of a service and has been for years yet nothing changes.

ohographite wrote: »

Have they been tried before in other countries? Do you have any article to show me the problems they would have?
Once again, I want to make sure we do not dismiss double decker trams if they could solve capacity issues, but if they do have serious problems that hold them back then I will accept that.

They haven't been tried, because they aren't a very good idea. That was my point - they have never existed. Nobody will try them because of them being a bad idea.

Dwell times will be massively increased, they would be incredibly unsafe at crush loadings, you would lose significant space to the multiple stairs required.

In cities with more modern road layouts they don't even use double decker buses as a general rule - articulated single deckers are used instead.

L1011 wrote: »

Because they're not a very good idea

A more polite phrasing would be... There is no market for them.

ohographite wrote: »

People can climb down to the bottom of the stairs when they want to get off. The trams could have more doors than the current ones to make them quicker to load and empty. The downstairs interior could be designed to fill up with people standing rather than sections with a narrow corridor designed to seat people. It also won't be an issue to have to squeeze through people when upstairs, since standing upstairs would have to be prohibited, so getting downstairs shouldn't be too cumbersome.I do accept that they would be slower to load and empty to a certain extent, but maybe extra dwell time can be minimized enough to not cause delays, if not, they should rethink Rethink Metrolink.

People shouldn’t be climbing stairs on a moving vehicle especially one with good acceleration.
The reason the current luas have so much seating is as they are low floor the wheels are sticking into the carriage so the seats are built around the wheel arches. The double decker one would still have wheel arches downstairs along with staircases taking up space and it would need quite a few stairs to make the top useable that would lower both the top and bottom floor capacity. It wouldn’t give much increase per tram and would slow down the system.