Dublin Airport Metro to have unconnected terminus?

@a boyle wrote:

I detect concerns about tunneling under trinity . I asure you these are unfounded. Vibrations do come up from the machine. but the most these could do is crack some tiles/grouting/ or some plaster. It is very important to realise that these effects are the same as what the ground does by itself. Clay is always on the move and all houses develop little cracks. These are NOT the same as structural damage.

Thanks a lot for clarifying the tunnelling methods. My concerns about Trinity were mainly that the nature of the buildings there might delay the tunnelling process, compared to some kind of tunnelling directly under Westmoreland Street, College Green, etc.

I suppose maybe they picked D’Olier Street because it would be closer to Tara Street, if the talk about an underground travelator or walkway connection with Tara Street is to be believed.

If you take a look at what i have written above , you will notice that i consider this whole proposal to be ramblings off an alcoholic chimpanzee on heroin. A metro that requires two changes to get to it (it’s the blue line they want to build) is just daft.

Good work above. I too thought that a DART connection to the airport would have made a lot of sense. The figures were about 440 million for the DART-Airport connection.

The problem with a boyle’s comment is that he’s talking about catering for existing population. If a metro is built then it is likely there will be high density developments built around it, thus making it feasible in the long term. It’s interesting to see the amount of posters bemoaning the lack of a southside link. I think that it’s being built this way because a) the airport route is the logical first line to be built, others can be done afterwards (and I agree with the Knocklyon/Firhouse suggestions b) the Luas line to Ballymun was dropped and the metro is the alternative that has to be used by the Govt to keep voters there happy

@jdivision wrote:

The problem with a boyle’s comment is that he’s talking about catering for existing population. If a metro is built then it is likely there will be high density developments built around it, thus making it feasible in the long term.

Interestingly enough, I used the exact same logic to argue in favour of the construction of a western rail corridor. I do hope Cute Panda is reading this. Why do I have a feeling that this form of logic will go a lot further in Dublin than it will in the west.

The Western Rail corridor was a very good idea with sound economic principles it utilised existing lines between

1> Cork – Limerick
2> Limerick – Ennis
3> Athenry Galway

The idea was to link Irelands second, third and fourth biggest cities by opening a 32 mile stretch of railway between Ennis and Athenry that would not require a lot of work as it was fully operational to freight until a small number of years ago.

Fast forward to the ‘Western Rail Corridor Idea’ that was originally to run from Letterkenny to Cork involving 90 miles of land acquisitions, design and build as well as a complete rebuild of a stretch from Colooney to Claremorris along a route with zero population density in rail terms.

The Western Rail corridor became a political crusade motivated by mistaken belief that rail brings real suatainable development to all areas regardless of existing population density which would provide its viability basis.

My fear is that this metro will also fall victim to parochial changes; the first of which has already occured with the move of station at the intersection of the Maynooth line at Cross Guns Bridge/Dalcassion Downs to Botanic Road. A metro stop intersecting here would give Intel and others a single change link from West Dublin/ West Kildare to the core professional services district around Stephens Green as well as the Airport.

Integration is the key and if a integratable station was built at this point the central area would be covered for all those trains that will be removed from the loopline to be moved to Spencer Dock due to the capacity logjam accross the loopline which is the major flaw in the entire system.

I’m not sure it would be an issue at all – there would either be travelators or a circular cost-free dedicated bus service. Both of these would be pretty standard in any major international airport.

I agree. It should be under the terminal. It would make life so much easier and would make a lot more sense.

The tunnel route is the route that the RPA told FCC to reserve. Check out the FCC website and look for the development plan maps. It’s clearly shown as the terminal route, not the GS Hotel one. I’d say it’s just been thrown in to make up the numbers.

A few points ! ?

how are the metro & interconnector going to integrate?, with the interconnector due to be completed a few years after the metro ( i hope ) its difficult to see how the metro terminus will not be disrupted … the rpa cannot be allowed to ignore the far more beneficial interconnector & should have to construct any new lines to the standard IE gauge (which is 1600mm i think).

also … by building a tunnel from stephen’s green, running up o’connell, are they not in the process actually providing the underground passage, that was originally intended to link the green & red luas lines ?

Selecting route A to link the two luas lines is madness, ramming it through college green is nonsensical, preventing as it will, traffic flow in all directions as it passes through, never mind the aesthetics of the situation. What chance now of re-claiming college green as a plaza or actual green in the future, never mind the mind pulling up o’connell st. again, just after the IAP is complete – whacko.

@Peter FitzPatrick wrote:

A few points ! ?

how are the metro & interconnector going to integrate?, with the interconnector due to be completed a few years after the metro ( i hope ) its difficult to see how the metro terminus will not be disrupted … the rpa cannot be allowed to ignore the far more beneficial interconnector & should have to construct any new lines to the standard IE gauge (which is 1600mm i think).

No I can’t agree. I follow this stuff quite closely and am a member of P11 also. I used to agree with using Irish Standard Gauge for metro to make it compatible with DART but looking at the propsed post T21 network and knowing that the RPA metro is in fact to be light rail, similar to the fantastic Metro do Porto and the metro units will be able to share trackage with Luas, it’s a better call to stay with European Gauge. Think of all the current and future Luas lines that are/will be at or near metro levels of segregation from traffic and imagine the metro units being able to access those stretches, providing many more 0 change journey possibilities. The much maligned Red Line actually has vast amounts of segregated running, virtually all the way from the Square to James’s is highly segregated and crosses few streets-it’s only the awful city centre stretch that suffers delays with the many junctions it encounters. The Green Line from Sandyford all the way to Charlemont is almost entirely segregated. The future Luas to Broadstone will run in the old MGWR alignment from Broombridge Station along by the railway down to Broadstone before emerging onto city streets (probably) to run down O’Connell street to connect with the extended Green Line. This Luas is likely to be extended in a completely segregated fashion to beyond the M50 via Finglas where it will cross the metroWest. The reason this is likely to happen is that the N2 dual carriageway provides an ideal environment to go elevated like the metroNorth along the swords Bypass. Don’t think of it as purely Luas and purely metro-there is a blurring of the lines on the horizon and it makes sense for a sprawling city like Dublin to have a two-pronged approach to it. It will be possible for example for metroWest trains to run from Ballymun to Citywest or the Square, rather than terminating at Belgard Road and forcing a change.

Look at sneltrams in Amsterdam or premetro’s in Cologne/Stuttgart for further examples, and these cities have higher population densites! A short train every 2 mins is far better than a long train every 10.

I totally disagree that this would constitute anything like a ‘perfect metro’ the perfect metro would be capable with integrating with the existing mainline system and proposed interconnector.

A spine system where all other lines such as Kildare line via interconnector, Maynooth line at Liffey Junction, Rosslare line via spur via Tara St and Northern line where a spur via Connolly could all be accomodated at a later date.

Instead we are to have a metro based on narrow gauge and low capacity based on street trams with the full cost and timescale of a proper job.

Watch this space