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

@Rory W wrote:

…
The example of Sandyford is given as to “Oh my God It’s 23 stories tall” – it’s hardly a ghetto at Beacon South Quarter, people want to live there because it’s in the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown area and has the Luas link to the city centre. …

As a northern line commuter the spur to the airport off the Dart line is a non runner – the line is at capacity already at peak time and this would only make things worse (particularly when the interconnector is finished). The only way that a decent link to the airport is created (a la Heathrow) is to build the metro – don’t forget it is possible to run express metros to the airport as well.

Firstly the reason i object to the sandyford towers is because 2000 appartments have been granted, (roughly 1500 more were sought), and only 200 hundred of these are appropriate for one child families. Lots of shops are being built. But no school and no park . No tennis court , No running track. Only a PRIVATE gym. This is not building a community.

If a substantial park was built and 10 million invested into expanding the three primary/secondary schools , i would welcome a hundred storey tower or four, with space for a few thousand single people and a few thousand families. This location would be ideal.

Regards the northern line. This factually incorrect. The interconnector adds 75 million extra spaces to the network. The northern line is held back by congestion which the docklands station halves, and the interconnector removes completely. If these were built in tandem with an airport spur, there would be space to add the same capacity to the airport as the underground tram (25 million) AND add 50 million to the rest of the network. And while the tram will not be able to be further updgraded, the rail network will still have the potential to double capacity again in 5 decades. This means an eight carriage dart for 2500 people every 2 minutes against two trams stuck together for 600 every 2 minutes.

Thomond the airport to busaras time on the bus will be 14 minutes. This was ignored by the consultants who examined the case for the underground tram.

We need the real metro (interconnector) which allows for high frequency on all four routes into the city (instead of metro north one route). We need this because each service on the interconnector can allow for 2500 people instead of 600. We need the interconnector because from the start it allows for four minutes frequencies, and can be double again in fifty years. We need a network of 6/7 tram lines connecting to this very high capacity backbone network. We need 2 tram lines running north south from swords to tallagh(via terenure) and bray (via dundrum). We need an orbital tram outside the m50. and we need two east west trams, one on the north side one on the south side.

The interconnector is so much better by leaps and bounds (ie four routes to the city centre with four minutes frequency services and 2500 people a go) backed up by a network of trams at five minute frequencies and 300-600 people a go. and in turn backed up by buses at variable frequency at 50 -100 people a go.

You see this makes sense . Building an underground tram in the least populated part of the city , where a third of the route can’t be built on , is retarded. Furthermore it’s slower than the bus (we just built a bus metro system with the port tunnel) . Furthermore the patronage expected to the airport which will form the financial bedrock for the first decade won’t materialise because people don’t like lugging their luggage around and the bus is ten minutes quicker.

QUICK QUESTION am i the only engineer ? Because if this is the case i can smugly confirm you don’t know what you are talking about. GOOD day.