Reply To: Port Tunnel
It never ceases to amaze me how the media can jump on an issue and report it to death, seemingly without checking a single fact along the way. The fact is that the port tunnel is designed to a specification equivalent to any similar tunnel in Europe or indeed in Britain, and the issue of the Super – Trailers is totally irrelevant as they should and will be banned from all states in the EU, even Britain due the their excessive weight and the damage that they will cause to existing road surfaces.
Why does everyone fall for the bullshit that Irish Road Hauliage and the media (with their insatiable appetite for controversy however they may find it…) constantly spout?
On the subject of The underground link… Theres one very obvious reason why they figured that the Underground station had to be on the other side of the Green. In order to build a station on the Luas side they would first have to close the Luas stop, rip up all the tracks and dig a really big hole to accommodate it (going by the recognised and way cheaper method of Cut and Cover that will probably be used on the line…). I’d like to see Seamus Brennan or anybody else solving that problem within the budget he’s set for the entire scheme..! Of course the logical thing to have done would be to build the underground section first then the Luas on top…
But Logic seems to be in short supply in the current Irish government, especially when it comes to transport management. And the fact is that the problem was known about years ago when the original idea was to run Luas straight through the city centre along Dawson, Nassau, Grafton and Dolier Streets. Still the best option in many people’s eyes, although the government decided to shelve those plans due to complaints from southside traders that their businesses would be disrupted by the construction… Seems Abbey St. traders didn’t have as much clout eh? And what did they do when the plans were shelved? Did they have a valid, sensible alternative? No, they decided to worry about it later and go ahead building the Luas so it would be all nice and shiny and new, just in time for the next general election…
And of course the RPA has to pick up the pieces of this purely political decision and attempt to make some sense of the nonsense of having people travelling North through the city having to get off their trams and transfer to another system at Stephen’s Green. The more you think about it the more stupid it seems. So before you go praising Brennan, spare a thought for the decisions he and his cronies made in the recent past that have caused this mess. And for more information on Dublin’s transport system and how politics has strangled the city you should read the infrastructure chapter of Frank McDonald’s “The Construction Of Dublin”. Or try http://www.platform11.org which is great for showing up how woeful the system in Dublin actually is and comes up with some fascinating and seemingly very feasable alternatives.
