Re: Re: college green/ o’connell street plaza and pedestrians

i remain unconvinced. if a metro is built we will end up with high rise ghettos at the edge of the city. The city has ballooned. the irish times reported that a third of house in the country are less than ten years old . This cannot continue. The city is envitably going to slow down in the next 3 years.

Because of this i say the metro (its not a metro by the by) is too much, too late.

I hate the expression but it is anavoidable. The facts on the ground are that forward tranport planning is not what is needed. dealling with the population in situ is what is needed. And the population in situ needs an orbital tram. The population in situ needs the real metro to be built, the interconnector. Be under no illusions that is is an either or with metro north and the interconnector.

The choices are stark. 3 high capacity lines (2 metros , and this underground tram) and nothing else. because these will cost around 10 billion.

Or the (2 metros + 6/7 tram lines) . This is a much better option. the suburbs are built. lets deal with the people who in misery today on the m50 not the people who might live in swords in the future.

The metro does not solve any transport problems in itself. it only allows for future development to be done in a better way. Building a network of 6/7 tram lines would have an impact on traffic , and would provide for higher density housing , since 6/7 tram lines cover such a large area.

Building the metro north line will mean at least at least a twenty year period to put in place the network.
Building the tram network will take ten years realistically. Plus it doesn’t mean that a metro (real one) can’t be built. The ministry of finance itself reported some years ago that the metro would only carry sufficient numbers of people when the rest of the tram network was built.

This blind support for an underground tram through the least populated part of the city, on the basis that future development will be of a higher quality infuriates me. The large scale housing development is coming to an end , within the next few years. And the fact remains that the airport has a huge exclusion zone around it, wasting the metro line. It is also a fact that people like to drive to airports because lugging your bagges is no fun. It is also a fact that the port tunnel provides an enormous amount of space for a bus service to fly people in and out of the city,swords, and the airport. Finnally buses using the port tunnel will get to the city faster than the tram. This was not, i repeat not examined by the consultants when examining the case for the metro north .

It is quite clearly a gift from de taoiseach to de north side.

It is so wastefull and will have such little impact for the first 15 years of operation that if we continue this discussion much further i might just explode!!!