Dublin’s Highest Capacity Line

I suppose your chance for input is next week Seamus.

I don’t see a better route alignment to be honest from a connectivity view point, save a far more expensive tunnel that would possibly straddle the liffey south/north/south/north.

I would simply like to see the thing built, as proposed, although talk of a ‘naturally-lit’ station within Stephen’s Green worries me.

I see they’re officially calling it ‘Dart Underground‘ now which at least gives some semblance of what the thing is or might mean to people on the street.

Thanks for posting that.

Seamus,

I did a bit of digging this morning and it seems that a feasibility study was done in 2002/2003 by Parsons Brinckerhoff. I couldn’t find out any more details as time was limited (the T21 website has a passing mention of it), but the route selection might date from this time. Let us know if you turn up anything else.

I agree with Peter that, given its function, the current alignment seems fine, but I understand your problem with lack of consultation, if that turns out to have been the case.

What options would you like to see considered, as a matter of interest?

@Peter FitzPatrick wrote:

I suppose your chance for input is next week Seamus.

I don’t see a better route alignment to be honest from a connectivity view point, save a far more expensive tunnel that would possibly straddle the liffey south/north/south/north.

I would simply like to see the thing built, as proposed, although talk of a ‘naturally-lit’ station within Stephen’s Green worries me.

I see they’re officially calling it ‘Dart Underground‘ now which at least gives some semblance of what the thing is or might mean to people on the street.

Thanks for posting that.

Unfortunately I’m not even going to be in Dublin next week.:(

It has never been explained, as far as I am aware, why they don’t just build a line between Heuston and Connolly via the really meaty bits of the city centre.

Shorter (and thus probably cheaper), connecting with the metro (when it is built) and the LUAS (when it is connected).

All this business of circling around the city centre, rather than building through it, as one might expect from the city’s highest capacity line, is very puzzling.

I very much want this line to happen. But, having seen a number of underground systems in operation over the years, it disappoints me that people on this line will need to change to get to the really busy parts of the city, rather than being brought there directly, and changing (if they wish) to get to the less busy parts (like St. Stephen’s Green).

In my opinion, the proposed route is erroneous.

It also disappoints me that the public’s contribution is to be effectively limited to decisions about which entrances or exits to the various stations are to be included or excluded.:( After the example set by the RPA and similar route selection processes in other countries, you’d have to ask why this has been the case.:(

What do you think would be a more direct route? Are you thinking Dame Street or the quays or Temple Bar?

The major public destinations are determined by the DTO. Stephen’s Green North has a huge catchment area within 5 minutes walk: Trinity, Grafton St shopping area, Dame St, Georges St and government buildings. Temple Bar is 7-10 minutes walk

The public consultation collects information to help the project designers- not the public. Whatever it’s stated purpose, it is not some kind of democratic process whereby the man on the street gets to exert influence on the design. The process is invaluable to the designers as there are often people with highly specific local knowledge who can point out design flaws. The designers can and do reject advice from the public out of hand. ABP just rubber-stamps their decision.

The route selection has already been carried out in private by IE with their consultants and the government and the DTO. The NRA works the same way.

I’m happy with the route because it provides good rail connections to the North and West for the IFSC which will accommodate tens of thousands more workers and residents in future years.

The simple fact is that Dublin 2 remains the employment and retail core of the city, and this line conects to it at 2 key locations, SSG and Pearse. I never have, and still fail, to see the problem with this alignment. Dame street will be served by the Lucan LUAS in any case, which will perform practically the same function as an alternative interconncector at this location (ie connect this part of the city from Heustn to Docklands (southside instead)

Apart from the connectivity benefits, the route takes account of the expanding city to the east, so it will not only serve the traditional CBD around the Green but the emerging major business district in docklands also.

Is there enough spare land in the Connolly area to bring a track above ground there?

Also, building an underground railway is not as simple as connecting dots on a map. Geology, the tightness of curves and the gradients involved in comeing to the surface will rule out some route options.

@jungle wrote:

Is there enough spare land in the Connolly area to bring a track above ground there?

No thats one of the problems, the tunnel would have to continue on to spencer anyway to surface and connect with the northern line.

the route takes account of the expanding city to the east

And with a stop at Heuston and NCAD, it also facilitates the Digital Media District, Heuston Gate Devt and whatever the future may hold for the Guiness site.

Its not so much the ‘ideal’ route as the ‘only’ route.

@Seamus O’G wrote:

It has never been explained, as far as I am aware, why they don’t just build a line between Heuston and Connolly via the really meaty bits of the city centre.

They have. It’s the Luas.

Lads, you’re all making good points. There is really no point in me suggesting alternative routes as I most certainly do not have the expertise.

However, the alternative route mentioned above (Connolly-Heuston, via Dame St/Temple Bar) was suggested many years ago in the DRRTS study of Dublin’s rail options. It is unlikely that it would have been suggested if it had not been feasible.

It is therefore not a proposal just produced by some guy on a message board.

That is an example of a feasible alternative route which could realistically have been presented to the public, in much the same way that the public were presented with various options for the metro. And, worth remembering that after consultation with the public, the preferred metro route was changed considerably. There may well be other feasible routes between the Northern line and the Kildare line. Who am I to say what they might be?

Whether or not the Connolly-Heuston idea is a good one, or Spencer Dock to Heuston via Temple Bar, or whatever, I think it is incredible that we are being led to believe that the only feasible way of connecting the Northern line and the Kildare line is via Spencer Dock, Pearse Station and St. Stephen’s Green.

At the very least, since it has been Irish Rail’s plan for a long time to link the two lines, they should reveal what routes were examined as they attempted to find a way to do this, and why they were dropped.

Fair points Seamus. Perhaps Temple Bar was looked at in the 70’s as it could have formed a pt interchange with the central bus station?

At the very least, since it has been Irish Rail’s plan for a long time to link the two lines, they should reveal what routes were examined as they attempted to find a way to do this, and why they were dropped.

As far as I know the Heuston-Connolly (via Dame St.) was the only other route given serious high-level consideration. The problem with this route is that, even currently, Connolly or more particulary the line just north of Connolly is severely conjested as it serves a mixture of slow intercity trains, Darts and suburban. Building along this route would mean that every single train going through the city would have to negotiate this single pinch point. This is a receipe for disaster for a railway system in terms of punctuality and capacity.

The proposed route is perfect as far as I can see. By branching off the nothern line just south of the East Wall road, you can run high frequency, high capacity service without getting caught up in the melee north of Connolly. This opens up capacity for trains coming from the Maynooth (or Navan eventually). You double the city centre north-south capacity. Initial estimates suggest a fourfold increase in carrying capacity of the whole rail system as a result of relieving the pressure on the Connolly pinch point. You increase rail coverage eastwards into a growing part of the city and you provide the best possible integration: Luas in the north docks; DART, suburban and intercity at Pearse; Luas (again) and airport metro at Stephen’s Green; and Luas, suburban and intercity at Heuston. This is the most important part of T21 for Dublin as far as I’m concerned. It will be higher capacity than any metro and will have 10 times the capacity of a Luas line and it will link with everything.

jimg, I’ll have to read your post in more depth later – but the following figure jumps out straight away, and it’s not related to the route.

@jimg wrote:

10 times the capacity of a Luas line

The tunnel is to be designed to handle 12 carriage DARTs. If you can have, say, 1,200 people in an 8-carriage DART, my basic maths suggests that you can fit 1,800 in a 12-carriage DART.

Although it won’t initially be running at such frequencies, there are tunnels in Europe which run up to about 30 trains per hour in each direction. Unlikely we’ll ever get there, but that’s probably the theoretical max. 60 trains per hour through the tunnel.:p

60 x 1,800 = 108,000 passengers per hour.

The max capacity of a LUAS line is around 8,000 people per hour, while the metro capacity is to be 20,000+ per hour, according to the RPA.

By my calculations, that puts the actual figure at around 13 times the capacity of a LUAS line and around 5 times the capacity of a metro line.:D Tsk, tsk.

A good platform to build bolt on lines upon and ramp up capacity on the existing network

London Tube had a billion passenger journeys in 2006 on a population of 8 million

I am also happy that it has finally got a name that doesn’t sound like a Wavin Pipe!!!!

@jimg wrote:

As far as I know the Heuston-Connolly (via Dame St.) was the only other route given serious high-level consideration. The problem with this route is that, even currently, Connolly or more particulary the line just north of Connolly is severely conjested as it serves a mixture of slow intercity trains, Darts and suburban. Building along this route would mean that every single train going through the city would have to negotiate this single pinch point. This is a receipe for disaster for a railway system in terms of punctuality and capacity.

I’m sure this is all true. But I think Frank Taylor’s comment above is very telling:

@Frank Taylor wrote:

The public consultation collects information to help the project designers

There might have been a solution which the designers were not aware of. I’m not in any way suggesting that there is, but given that the route was never presented to the public, who’s ever going to know now?:(

(As an aside: If the problem was indeed insoluble north of Connolly, it does not appear to explain why the rest of that particular route might not have remained largely intact – something like Heuston-Spencer Dock via Dame Street, or some such).

I don’t wish to bore the board. But it is my feeling that the public consultation phases are a good thing as they generate debate among the general public as well as among very interested parties. Once the problems and advantages with particular routes are known, they can be discussed, ideas can be aired and maybe solutions can be found.

@Seamus O’G wrote:

There might have been a solution which the designers were not aware of. I’m not in any way suggesting that there is, but given that the route was never presented to the public, who’s ever going to know now?:(

It would be better if multi-billion euro plans like this were more openly assessed with the consultants reports available early to the public without resorting to FOI requests. There is always the danger that a less-than-best route is chosen due to corruption or simple failure to gather enough information. The Shannon tunnel fiasco comes to mind.

I question whether an underground train via Temple Bar would work. I don’t think the capacity is there to justify it, it’s only ever really busy on Saturday day and Friday and Saturday nights. The area around St Stephen’s Green is always busy because of the retail, office and entertainment venues in the area. There’s 12,000 people on Grafton Street every hour on a Saturday. There are also major redevelopment opportunities to take advantage of the public transport infrastructure such as St Stephen’s Green shopping centre which would justify that approach. It also needs to link up with the Luas and without having any experience in such matters I wonder how difficult it would be to do a near right turn from Temple Bar to Stephen’s Green (which it must serve, the project after all is about linking up public transport services). In addition Christchurch is right next to Temple Bar and a stop at Christchurch would cater adequately for such commuters.

I just saw some of the station plans in the exhibition in the Civic offices in Wood Quay.

It was quite interesting, I see that the Heuston Station stop will really be below Guinnesses. I wonder will all the disruption the building will cause finally force them to move? The RPA are planning to route the Victoria Quay’s traffic through the middle of Guinness site during the construction phase (on a new temporary road).

Also there is a suggestion that one of the stations could be below the Liffey (with an entrance from both the north ansd south quays.) That would be cool! Unfortunately, the guy from the RPA explained that as this construction option was more expensive and difficult, they would probably end up putting it under the new Luas stop in Mayor St instead 🙁

Do go along if you get the chance i think it is on again to tomorrow (Tuesday).

The RPA has some quite cute Italian or Spanish Engineer guys to explain things to you there – if you are a straight female or a gay male they are quite an attraction in themselves!

& Stephen’s Green, any info ? curious as to what the hell they’re on about with a ‘naturally lit’ station within the green … intended to go down myself, but can’t make it.

@forrestreid wrote:

the guy from the RPA explained that as this construction option was more expensive and difficult, they would probably end up putting it under the new Luas stop in Mayor St instead 🙁

Who’s project is this? RPA or Irish Rail?

Answer: Irish Rail! 🙂

I dropped in to the Civic Offices this evening, had a chat and filled in a form with my opinions.