Interconnector aka DART underground

20 trains an hour opens up huge oportunities. A third Dart line would be a possibility, ie one starting at Heuston, going under the park(possibly an underground stop) and stopping at Blackhorse Avenue, Glasnevin, Drumcondra, Into the docks and through the tunnel back to Heuston, It’d be similar to London’s very succsesful “Circle Line”, and connect with all other modes.Making public transport a much more atractive option

It adds Blackhorse Avenue, Glasnevin and the Pheonix park to the network. Also it alows for better connectivity between modes. There is an oportunity to make better use of liffey jnct. to Heuston track. If the track was extended to north from liffey jnct, in a tunnel or surface track, through the airport and on to Drogheda. This would allow Trains coming from Belfst to stop at Dublin Airport and Dublin Heuston and It would make train journeys from Belfast to Cork, Waterford and Limerick etc. a real possibility. This would have the added benefit of freeing up capacity on the Docklands to Drogheda track for Dart and Commuter services without quadruple tracking. all intercity services Terminating in Dublin puts pressure on our railways as trains have turn and go back very quickly. It is possible for a Rosslare to Belfast Service now, but IÉ seems to lack the will.

First you suggest a DART line through the Phoenix Park tunnel and on to Docklands, then a mainline to Belfast…

I can see some rationale to using the Phoenix Park tunnel for mainline if it could be joined up with Connolly and wouldn’t disrupt DART services, that would probably require four tracking from Connolly to Howth junction or Malahide and a few new tracks and platforms through Connolly. Major work. Then you could have mainline trains that run to Heuston continuing to Connolly and on to Belfast e.g. Cork-Dublin-Belfast.

Again, not a priority, let’s build what we can first of all.

All of these plans for the stations look perfect.

I dont see any problems with any of it.

Although Spencer dock is still a puzzle for me, arent they allready building on top of where that station is. In the map i cant tell if there is a building there but its plausable that they would do it.

Also, im not one for all the historical stuff, but i can see their being problems with the high street/Christ church station, its comendable that the station entrances itself are in wood quay, but the vents and amenities at the foot of the city wall could incounter a lot of previously un-excavated archeology, after all it is the city wall.

Heuston’s plan A is looking good and the provision for at least 1 terminal platform is very good planing for both versions of the plan.

Although my only concern is the use of the double tunnel’s. What if one direction is blocked, that whole tunnel will be jammed and by the look of things only 1 track exists in each with no switches at the stations, who will you keep traffic flowing if you’re down to 1 tunnel and only 1 track? Wouldnt a 2 tracks in each tunnel or some sort of switching procedure help alleviate such a problem if it ever occured? Even in the case of terrorism or an accident 1 tunnel could be impeded and we would only have the facilities to send trains 1 direction through the whole tunnel length? That seems dangerous. New york and London have multible switches but the main flaw of some subway’s such as Glasgow’s is their isolation and lack of switching. Even the Channel tunnel has a lot of crossing points due to its traffic.

I guess they have thought about such problems but a serious blockage in one tunnel could seriously slow down the network.

Something tells me IE’s tunnel is going to look much better than the RPA’s train set

I presume they’re not going to cut and cover at docklands givent that Treasury are currently building over…and originally they had the docklands station under the river

that’s just not true about the port tunnel.

because it was not intended to accommodate ‘super trucks’.

Dempsey supports cross city underground

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0406/1224244068221.html

hopefully it’ll happen

There has been a lot of surveying done on northside of Merrion Square also in the last few weeks