Reply To: All aboard the Luas, at last Tickets, please: the low-down on Luas

Shaun,
To handle this:

Check out Platform11’s site:

The interconnector will contect the main stations in Dublin. If the existing commuter lines are electrified we get an immediate pan-city DART service.

Here is a quote from the Platform11’s site.

Further on from “there” would be a €1.3bn underground electrified “Interconnector” that would link all of Dublin’s commuter train and Luas services as well as intercity services and add a new spur to Dublin Airport and the Meath suburb of Dunboyne. By 2010, under the plan, a commuter could step off a Cork train at Heuston and hop on a train to the airport via the city centre Already spending money at a lick of €250m per year, the grand plan would cost about €3bn.

At the end of the spend, Dublin would have an integrated commuter rail network capable of serving, all the major towns within 100km of the capital city and a rapid and regular intercity service. At this point, commuters probably need to suspend their belief. There isn’t even an hourly service from Greystones or Malahide to Dublin city centre right now, never mind Cork. And before the Department of Transport give the company’s €3bn plan the green light, there will be plenty of debate around whether the country should bet so big on rail.

and

To get more trains into the ‘central zone’, priority will be given to a spur off the existing commuter into a new train station at Spencer Dock in the city’s docklands. A signalling investment will increase trains to 16 per hour, further easing the bottleneck at Connolly.

Trains from Maynooth could be run underneath the Phoenix Park and bypass Connelly and terminate at a new station at Spencer Dock, which would then link into a Luas extension. This too would take pressure off the bottleneck.

Upgrading the Kildare line will not come too far behind. “We have to increase capacity on the Kildare line,” Meagher told an Oireachtas Transport Committee in February. “The problem is that the vast majority of our intercity customers want to travel between 5pm and 7pm and, so do our commuter passengers. If we send a commuter train out serving all or most of the stations along the way, we can’t send an intercity train for 25 minutes. Clearly, that’s a problem,”

The solution, says Meagher, to existing rail infrastructure. is “quadrupling” adding two extra tracks along the lines. More delays? Yes, but nowhere near as sever as one might imagine. Iarnród Éireann owns the ‘way leave’ along the track and should be able to manage the upgrade.

I believe they are going to electrify this line as well.

This is not the metro, which will serve very few people for the same money. I have only recently been to platform11’s site but they are very good on this issue. The interconnector is the way to go.

As you point out the AerDart is good as it is – a DART spur to the airport would be much cheaper than a metro, and everything else would get done as well for the same price as one metro line.