West-East/East-West Railway line
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I’ve been back in Dublin for a few days now.
I think I’m aware of most of the proposals which seem to be making the running, as Dublin seeks to develop a decent transport system.
I agree with other posters, here and elsewhere, that the proposed interconnector could be built through the centre of the city, probably somewhere like Temple Bar or College Green. According to the available figures, this would seem, on balance, to bring more people directly to where they want to go than the current interconnector proposal.
People who wish to go to other areas of the city could then use other – readily accessible – modes of transport to reach their final destination.
One great thing about such a route is that it would leave people in a position to do this. Under the current propsals, it wouln’t be so easy.
I’d also be interested to see what possiblities there are for direct inclusion of the Southern DART line in the interconnector project.
From my calculations, this could be done north of Grand Canal Dock, though it would involve loss of the north-south pedestrian connection on either Erne Street or Erne Place.
Could this be lived with?
If it could be lived with, the result could be a Bray/Greystones-Heuston service and a Howth/Malahide-Heuston service. I think this would really have a positive effect on the west-east “view” of the city.
Given that the interconnector in its current guise is likely to be running well under-capacity, this might be a sensible way around that problem.
Maynooth/Pace Arrow services would, then, have a free run into the city, with interchange possibilities at, say, Pearse.
And no electrification of the Maynooth/Pace line would be required.
The whole thing would be a bit more expensive. But if no electrification costs for the Maynooth Line needed to be taken into account, it possibly wouldn’t be nuch more.
As far as I can see, the current metro proposals would fit in quite nicely with this arrangement.
So, all DART services going through Heuston, heading to Malahide, Bray, Greystones and Howth.
Althougth there would be extra costs – probably (overall) relatively small – of incorporating the Southern DART line into the interconnector project, I think it could make sense in terms of development of the entire city centre, and hopefully also of the surrounding region.
I think the interconnector has good bones but it does miss Connolly.
Then there is fair view park which you will assume might try and be developed in a century.
Every major transport project in Dublin ends with a shopping centre.
We have a curvaceous loop here which is very similar it can add 10-15 minutes to journey times. And after midday it changes directions. A lot of the issues are related to the interconnector and metro north if considered as one and any future line expansion.Lads, before you offer up solutions, you better understand the problem in the first place that requires the interconnector to be built at all. The bottleneck that is called Connolly Station. Now start from there and offer an alternative to the current plan to dramatically free up extra capacity.
@weehamster wrote:
Lads, before you offer up solutions, you better understand the problem in the first place that requires the interconnector to be built at all. The bottleneck that is called Connolly Station. Now start from there and offer an alternative to the current plan to dramatically free up extra capacity.
Maybe thats really the problem then, there is a narrow focus on the Connolly Bottleneck, and a real lack of vision on what a couple of billion euro worth of tunnel could deliver for Dublin. The station locations are the key to delivering value for money and giving Dublin a proper transport system.
Why the hell can’t I expect to get on a train in the heart of the city?
Why would anybody spend 2billion on a tunnel and locate the stations away from demand!?
Lack of vision, certainly not lack of spending anyway!@weehamster wrote:
Lads, before you offer up solutions, you better understand the problem in the first place that requires the interconnector to be built at all. The bottleneck that is called Connolly Station. Now start from there and offer an alternative to the current plan to dramatically free up extra capacity
I think the problem is perfectly well understood.
One of the difficulties with the solution – i.e. the interconnector – is that there seems to be a shortage of trains which will use it.
What I’m suggesting above is an arrangement which would (a) dramatically free up extra capacity at the bottleneck that is called Connolly Station and (b) make more efficient use of the tunnel.:)
@ac1976 wrote:
Why would anybody spend 2billion on a tunnel and locate the stations away from demand!?
Is it really away from demand?
Looking at the proposed stations
- Docklands – For the offices and apartments around the IFSC
- Pearse St – For Trinity, south docklands offices and interchanges
- Stephen’s Green – For shopping in Grafton St and the offices around Leeson St and Harcourt St
- Christchurch – Probably the lowest demand, but there’s a large residential population in the area
- Heuston – Rail connections to the south and west of Ireland
What other alternative would be possible? Maybe through Tara St and Dame St, but then you cut out a lot of the access to some of Dublin’s busiest office districts and don’t link with Metro North. It would also seem to have a very tight bend, which would restrict speed.
To me there are two pities about the Interconnector as proposed
- The proposed spur from Portmarnock to the airport wasn’t included. This would have meant direct services from Heuston and Pearse St (for the Rosslare line) to the airport and would have meant single change connections from the vast majority of Irish rail stations to Dublin Airport, while Metro North doesn’t integrate with any InterCity lines.
- The line will be restricted to commuter trains, which means it can’t be used as a basis for running through trains from the south and west to Drogheda, Dundalk and Belfast or in conjunction with the first point having all InterCities to Dublin terminate at the airport.
@jungle wrote:
Is it really away from demand?
Looking at the proposed stations
- Docklands – For the offices and apartments around the IFSC
- Pearse St – For Trinity, south docklands offices and interchanges
- Stephen’s Green – For shopping in Grafton St and the offices around Leeson St and Harcourt St
- Christchurch – Probably the lowest demand, but there’s a large residential population in the area
- Heuston – Rail connections to the south and west of Ireland
What other alternative would be possible? Maybe through Tara St and Dame St, but then you cut out a lot of the access to some of Dublin’s busiest office districts and don’t link with Metro North. It would also seem to have a very tight bend, which would restrict speed.
To me there are two pities about the Interconnector as proposed
- The proposed spur from Portmarnock to the airport wasn’t included. This would have meant direct services from Heuston and Pearse St (for the Rosslare line) to the airport and would have meant single change connections from the vast majority of Irish rail stations to Dublin Airport, while Metro North doesn’t integrate with any InterCity lines.
- The line will be restricted to commuter trains, which means it can’t be used as a basis for running through trains from the south and west to Drogheda, Dundalk and Belfast or in conjunction with the first point having all InterCities to Dublin terminate at the airport.
Thanks for giving the Leeside perspective it is not just valuable it is vital determinate in Dublin decision making.
The airport spur will happen if any connection is made to Dublin Airport; when one looks at Cross rail one sees an evolution from drawing dots on a map from point A to point B to connecting standard gauge to standard gauge systems and allowing synergies blossom.
Seamus
I detect from your previous posts that you live not to far from me; I see the logic of your point visiting Dub as a tourist and going to the sites; I’m just not sure that excluding St Green would maximise passenger numbers; there are numerous unattractive buildings within half a mile of St Green that have a lot of commuters. By prioritising a viable alternative to car based commuting you need to move away from a leisure district to the office district and St Green is to Dublin what Mayfair/Noho is to London. Clearly Soho/Covent Garden is College Green
I’m not an engineer or an architect, so I’d be interested to hear your views on this.
Rather than digging up the Green itself, would there be any merit in flattening the State-owned Anglo Irish head office (Anglo has said in the past week that it’s committed to a move to North Wall Quay, the only other tenant in the building AFAIK is the State-owned ESBI) and putting the new station there instead?
@jungle wrote:
Is it really away from demand?
Looking at the proposed stations
- Docklands – For the offices and apartments around the IFSC
- Pearse St – For Trinity, south docklands offices and interchanges
- Stephen’s Green – For shopping in Grafton St and the offices around Leeson St and Harcourt St
- Christchurch – Probably the lowest demand, but there’s a large residential population in the area
- Heuston – Rail connections to the south and west of Ireland
I’m afraid It has taken a long fror me to return to this thread and respond to some interesting posts. I was using up some holidays spending time along the west coast of Ireland, without ready access to the internet.
(And, while I’m on that topic, why does everybody always forget about Sligo? What a magnificent county)
It’s not that it’s away from demand, it’s just that there would probably be greater overall demand if the tunnel were to be built through the really central parts of the city. In conjunction with the metro, then, areas like St. Stephen’s Green could also be served.
What other alternative would be possible? Maybe through Tara St and Dame St, but then you cut out a lot of the access to some of Dublin’s busiest office districts and don’t link with Metro North. It would also seem to have a very tight bend, which would restrict speed.
Where’s the tight bend?
Why would it not link with metro north? All of the metro north documentation so far produced has stressed that it will interchange with the interconnector at St. Stephen’s Green.
If the interconnector had a different route, I think it would be sensible for the proposed locations of the metro stations to be altered accordingly. The interconnector is, after all, a much higher capacity line.
Dublin’s busiest office districts? Hmmmm. On my recent visit to the city, I was surprised to see how much of Georgian Dublin had “To Let” signs outside.
The modern offices nearby, on places like Adelaide Road and Wilton Place/Terrace, are obviously too distant from the proposed St. Stephen’s Green interconnector station for it to be seen as a long-term solution to the commuting needs of the people who work there.
@PVC King wrote:
Seamus
I detect from your previous posts that you live not to far from me; I see the logic of your point visiting Dub as a tourist and going to the sites; I’m just not sure that excluding St Green would maximise passenger numbers; there are numerous unattractive buildings within half a mile of St Green that have a lot of commuters. By prioritising a viable alternative to car based commuting you need to move away from a leisure district to the office district and St Green is to Dublin what Mayfair/Noho is to London. Clearly Soho/Covent Garden is College Green
PVCK, I don’t know how you managed to detect that, as I don’t live in the U.K. at all.
(If you’d written that from W1, I might have thought Baker Street, and been extremely disappointed!:))
(But thanks:) for giving me something else to chew on, as I’ve never considered myself a tourist in Ireland. I was born there, I grew up there, my parents are there, I spent some years working there and it is still very much my home.).
I did live in London for some years, though, but I don’t think you can really draw too many comparisons between Dublin and London. I think that comparisons between Dublin and cities like Frankfurt, Munich, Prague, etc., would be more appropriate, because of the sizes involved. I think these are important cities to look at, especially given that not a sod has yet been turned on underground public transport in Dublin.
Severing possibly the busiest section of commuter line in the country for a year or two to build a 1 in 15 gradient tunnel portal in the middle of the city that ends in a 90 degree turn does not make sense.
Particularly when the current plan facilitates all such passenger movements through the interchange at Pearse.
There are real engineers doing real work on the Interconnector at last: geological surveys, station design, project planning, logistics, etc. This is a proper plan that involves minimal disruption to existing services while quadrupling the capacity of the commuter network. The time for amateurs with crayons is over.
@jimg wrote:
The time for amateurs with crayons is over.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
Us Irish are the best in the world for complaining and not doing anything about it. Now I don’t mind people giving suggestions but why is it always when the planning process is in full swing and it is too late to fundamentally change a route.
Why don’t people move on and give suggestions for other possible lines that haven’t started the design process yet. For example Luas line E, the Luas BxD line extension to Finglas, a possible Metro South. A line linking Howth Jtn to the Metro North line. All of these which were proposed in the DTO’s Platform for Change, but were left out of the T21 programme.
@jimg wrote:
Severing possibly the busiest section of commuter line in the country for a year or two to build a 1 in 15 gradient tunnel portal in the middle of the city that ends in a 90 degree turn does not make sense.
Particularly when the current plan facilitates all such passenger movements through the interchange at Pearse.
There are real engineers doing real work on the Interconnector at last: geological surveys, station design, project planning, logistics, etc. This is a proper plan that involves minimal disruption to existing services while quadrupling the capacity of the commuter network. The time for amateurs with crayons is over.
Jim, as we have discussed before, the people behind the 1970s DRRTS survey suggested a Heuston-Connolly line via Dame Street/College Green/Temple Bar. This is the line about which I am talking.
Are you suggesting that they were amateurs with crayons?
The gradients on that proposed line need be nothing like 1 in 15. I think even a very basic knowledge of the terrain would show you that a gradient of around 1 in 35 would bring this line above ground South of the Tolka. I’m not sure where you got the idea that the tunnel portal needs to be in the middle of the city.
This is a gradient which is considerably less than will be required for a line from under the river Liffey up to the level of the Northern Line, via Spencer Dock. Maybe that’s where you got the 1 in 15 figure from?
And the 90 degree turn. Where is that in the plan produced by the DRRTS people?
I would, however, like to see an investigation of a Kildare Line-Northern Line route, via Spencer Dock, Pearse Station, Dame Street and Christchurch. If the relatively steep gradient issues for the northward line emerging from the Spencer Dock station are not insurmountable, I think that could be a runner.
Really, the main problems I see with the currently proposed interconnector route are the catchment area issues which will be encountered at the St. Stephen’s Green station, on Ireland’s highest capacity line.
The DRRTS is a 30 year old proposal, like an earlier proposal to run an elevated train line on stilts along the quays to join Heuston and Connolly. So what? Both proposals are easily bettered by the current Interconnector plan from every practical perspective.
Back to the subject of this thread. So when questioned on some practical matters like gradients and dealing with tunnel boring machines, you’ve switched tack from
this could be done north of Grand Canal Dock, though it would involve loss of the north-south pedestrian connection on either Erne Street or Erne Place
to
I think even a very basic knowledge of the terrain would show you that a gradient of around 1 in 35 would bring this line above ground South of the Tolka
I don’t think you’ve really thought very deeply about this, before you posted your first suggestion, have you?
Also, you avoid dealing with the disruption issue (the severing of the busiest heavy commuter line in the country for a year or two) or the practicalities of dealing with spoil and a tunnel boring machine in a built up area (I’m not going to debate the semantics of “city centre”) requiring the CPOing of about an acre of buildings.
Please put away the crayons. Let the real engineers build the Interconnector as proposed which is the result of years of real technical work not whimsical notions.
Jim, before I can reply fully to your post, I need to know that you have an actual picture of what I am saying.
I know that I’ve heard you writing things like “easily bettered by the current interconnector plan” on a previous occasion. (If you’ve forgotten, the thread relating to “The destruction of St. Stephen’s Green”).
Yet you disappeared before I could get answers from you.:(
Please don’t dash off this time.
I have a couple of questions relating to your recent post:
Where did I change tack on the gradient issue? I’m having difficulty understanding the connection between the bits quoted by you on this matter.
What is the gradient required to bring the proposed line from the Spencer Dock station up to the level of the Northern Line?
Has there been a question about TBMs on this thread?
Why would the busiest commuter line in the country be “severed” during construction? These things are done all the time around the world without this happening. “Disrupted”, yes, but that will happen in any case. Please focus on the word “severed” in your answer.
Why do you seem to be so fixated on “minimal disruption”? There’s going to be disruption if you are to build these interconnector and metro lines which are proposed for Dublin. You obviously don’t want “maximal disruption”, but you also don’t want to be so worried about disruption that you start avoiding areas of maximum demand, such as seems to be happening in Dublin.
And, specifically in relation to this thread, how would you propose to deal with the problem that the interconnector will not be used to anything approaching its capacity? (At least under current IE proposals).
Seamus, I imagine you have difficulties understanding the connections between many things, if you require simple inconsistencies explained to you. You’ve been repeating this nonsense for years about the Inter-connector route. Just let it go – nobody has the slightest bit of interest. You can try scanning your crayon work and posting on one of the transport infrastructure fora and see how you are received – not very well I imagine. In the meantime there is proper grown-up work happening (you know – engineering type “stuff” – not bickering on internet fora) to ensure that a railway order for the current Interconnector plans are submitted by the end of the year. If anyone is interested in what is actually being built rather than Seamus’ la-la land fantasies, the DART underground project is described here.
This is not directly related to the interconnector but O’Connell st bridge for metro north is designed to be the busiest station.
When are we expecting the planning application?
@jimg wrote:
Seamus, I imagine you have difficulties understanding the connections between many things, if you require simple inconsistencies explained to you. You’ve been repeating this nonsense for years about the Inter-connector route. Just let it go – nobody has the slightest bit of interest. You can try scanning your crayon work and posting on one of the transport infrastructure fora and see how you are received – not very well I imagine. In the meantime there is proper grown-up work happening (you know – engineering type “stuff” – not bickering on internet fora) to ensure that a railway order for the current Interconnector plans are submitted by the end of the year. If anyone is interested in what is actually being built rather than Seamus’ la-la land fantasies, the DART underground project is described here.
Jim, I note that you have been bad-mouthing me in your last couple of posts. And I’m not going to thank you for that.
But you have avoided answering almost all of the questions which I have posted on this thread, and, in particular, you have quite carefully avoided providing answers to those presented in my previous post. I would thank you if you could stop dodging, and concentrate on providing them.
The original idea for a metro/interconnector interchange at St. Stephen’s Green seems to have come from the “Platform for Change” document produced by the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO).
There had been a plan to have a rail interchange in the centre of the city, in or around College Green/Dame Street.
The DTO’s plan would see the interchange moved further to the south.
I occassionally wonder whether the DTO – from their offices in St. Stephen’s Green – might not have (subconsciously) overestimated the demand to get to and from that location, relative to more central parts of the city.
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