Interconnector is go

IE’s Barry Kenny was just on Newstalk. As Im sure a lot of people already know, the plan is essentially to run 2 Dart corridors from:

1: Bray/ Wicklow line – Pearse – Connolly – Maynooth

2: Howth/ Drogheda line – Docklands – Pearse – Heuston – Kildare line

Its certainly a step forward, but I cannot understand why the existing Phoenix Park tunnel isnt to be incorporated :confused:

Just think about it – if new junctions were put in at Heuston and Liffey Junction, you could have

1; A continious city-centre circle route, a la London or Paris. It being Ireland, lets call it “The Golden Circle” 😀

2: The routes crossing each other twice, ie;

A) Bray – Pearse – Connolly – Heuston – Kildare line

B) Howth – Docklands – Pearse – Heuston – Maynooth

Any thoughts?

Anyway –

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/…iew&news_id=78

Work to commence on developing underground DART line by Corporate Communications

Iarnr

There are probably very practical reasons for not incorporating the phoenix park tunnel.

I would imagine the first and most important is that the connection between the pheonix park tunnel and the mainline is a level crossing. So all trains accessing the station would have to be timed with trains heading south out of the tunnel, and every train using the tunnel would be one less using the station. There is little or no scope for increasing the total number of services.

Political . There is probably room to reorganise the services in and out of heuston to allow for 2/3 services each way an hour, but if people get this into their heads they won’t be able to see the virtue of building a tunnel. I am assuming that the tunnel will take two tracks and sink them without crossing other lines.

thirdly noone (relatively) lives on the northside. the route the intreconnector takes passes through the most densily built part of the city, and services the most amount of businesses.

Fourthly with metro (or tramplus or moneyflusher) there will be two high capacity services. three would be over kill.

lastly and most importantly the interconnector doesn’t stop a circle line being developped in the future. Since iarnrod earrain are in competition with the rpa (mad country) they are probably holding the circle line idea for the future.

I don’t understand why a circle line should be a good thing. By its nature, it always travels by an indirect route when the primary benefit of underground rail is grade separated, straight line travel. It is most useful to those who wish to make a journey between two places that are the same fixed distance from the city centre as the line radius.

Although it provides a direct route between certain locations outside the central core, radial routes do this too (so long as the planners aren’t stupid enough to terminate them in the city centre).

The circle line in london has lower annual passenger numbers than radial routes of the same length

Circle line: 68m
Bakerloo: 95m

other radial routes (longer routes)
Victoria: 161m
Piccadilly: 176m
Jubilee: 127m
Central: 183m

it is not that simple. You have applied the old problem of cause and effect: all old men are wearing top hats , therefore wearing top hats improves longevity.

These numbers by themselves mean nothing. You may indeed be right. However there are other possiblilties.

Most of the people on the circle line could be coming from other lines, so the circle increases the patronage on all other lines, by increasing the possibilities.

dimishing returns. It is important when the circle line was built. The improvement to other lines is reduced as more and more lines are built , because as you point out there are more direct routes.

Wrong place. this circle line could be in the wrong place . Other circle lines could be in the right place. With respect to dublin: a southern interconnector passing along the canal route could be a better idea than the current proposed routing.

unless you have smartcards for just about every one , so that you can investigate where people are coming from and going to, in what numbers ,and at what price. it is extremely hard to make conclusions. This is why the smartcard system is so vital to dublin. It also explains why it is so hard to implement. it is possible that half the bus routes are not needed, though the buses clearly are.

@Thomond Park wrote:

Areas such as Dolphins Barn, Harolds Cross, Ranelagh and Baggot / Leeson Streets do not possess the density to justify the additional cost and because of heritage concerns densities will never acheive that required to justify such a diversion

Yes probably. But there will be war if the tunnel is not sunk deep enough at high street. as it runs beside wood quay.

Just because platform11 have discussed things endlessly doesnt mean they are right. The media have repeated endlessly that we need a metro to swords when we patently don’t. And don’t start disagreeing with me Thomond. You have just said that ranelagh , and leeson street don’t have the densities required. Well north dublin is the least populated part of greater dublin. A huge tranch can’t be built on because of the airport. As for future development, maybe , but considering that a third of all house in the state are less than ten years old , their is only so much building you can do. A metro to the airport ought to be very very low down on the list of priorities.

The point about the Botanic Road station is well made…it would be madness not to link the two lines at this point.

I also don’t understand why the RPA are developing Luas and Metro – because their brief is to develop new transport infrastructure – but Iarnrod Eireann are developing the Interconnector and Spencer Dock Station. Am I missing something? Aren’t these new infrastructure too? Surely the fact that we have so many cooks is one of the reasons why the city transport network (I use term loosely) is such a shambles.

And why the resistance to any talk of the Phoenix Park tunnel? There must be some rationale to it as it keeps cropping up …even if its only a temporary measure. Like the temporary Spencer Dock Station! What kind of planning is that….allowing a new station but only for 10 years when it will have tp be replaced! Honestly, there is no logic to any of this T21 rubbish. It sounds like something Martin Cullen put together on the back of an envelope. Although I am sure that was never the case!

Also where is this new “Dublin Transport Authority” we heard so much about. Not a dickybird since. The last I heard was that a business plan of sorts on what the DTA should actually do (after it having been created) was due by the summer. If it was so important that all this was in place to guide the development of T21 then why are all these agencies pushing ahead with their plans in such an ad hoc way.

Meanwhile the integrated ticketing project wallows in bureaucratic no-mans-land. Another union leader berating the lack of progress in the Times today.

@StephenC wrote:

The point about the Botanic Road station is well made…it would be madness not to link the two lines at this point.

I also don’t understand why the RPA are developing Luas and Metro – because their brief is to develop new transport infrastructure – but Iarnrod Eireann are developing the Interconnector and Spencer Dock Station. Am I missing something? Aren’t these new infrastructure too? Surely the fact that we have so many cooks is one of the reasons why the city transport network (I use term loosely) is such a shambles.

And why the resistance to any talk of the Phoenix Park tunnel? There must be some rationale to it as it keeps cropping up …even if its only a temporary measure. Like the temporary Spencer Dock Station! What kind of planning is that….allowing a new station but only for 10 years when it will have tp be replaced! Honestly, there is no logic to any of this T21 rubbish. It sounds like something Martin Cullen put together on the back of an envelope. Although I am sure that was never the case!

Also where is this new “Dublin Transport Authority” we heard so much about. Not a dickybird since. The last I heard was that a business plan of sorts on what the DTA should actually do (after it having been created) was due by the summer. If it was so important that all this was in place to guide the development of T21 then why are all these agencies pushing ahead with their plans in such an ad hoc way.

Meanwhile the integrated ticketing project wallows in bureaucratic no-mans-land. Another union leader berating the lack of progress in the Times today.

Spot on. If they cant even integrate ticketing, what hope is there for the integration of vast projects ? 😡

@Thomond Park wrote:

the interconnector is the most direct way of linking both stations whilst taking in the interface between the retail and office core zones South of the Liffey.

I’ve never understood the proposed route. In my opinion we should be building it through the centre of the city, somewhere like College Green. The Trinity stop was, apparently, predicted by the RPA to be the busiest station on the metro. The busiest station on our north-south underground line. A good indicator, one would think, of where we should build our east-west line.

What was the figure that came out last week? 58 million journeys per year which start or finish in the vicinity of Trinity. How many journeys per year start or finish each year in the vicinity of St. Stephen’s Green? Anyone got any figures? It’s certainly not anything like 58 million.

I have always had a strong suspicion that the route chosen was designed to cover Mary O’Rourke’s backside. Not with the citizens of Dublin in mind.

TP, don’t get me wrong, I’m in favour of the project. But I have my reservations about it.

I think you were right in your remark further up above that integration is very important. But not surely at any price. And it depends on what one means by integration. I have a strong suspicion that St. Stephen’s Green is a proposed stop because the LUAS is stranded there, thanks to Mary O’Rourke. If the LUAS had been built as originally planned we might be looking at the interconnector project in an entirely different way. So we build it through St. Stephen’s Green and get integration with the LUAS.

But what about Bus passengers. How do they connect to the train? A huge amount of these bus passengers are down in College Green. So they’re faced with a walk of 5-10 minutes to get to the train. Great integration for them, eh.? OK, you can reroute the buses so that more of them go up to St. Stephen’s Green – that would be a sensible thing to do. But you could also build the LUAS down into the centre of the city. And guess what, that’s part of the plan.:confused:

I also think building it through St. Stephen’s Green could unbalance the city in a big way. For any passengers in the interconnector it would be necessary to change to get to the really central parts of the city. This is not efficient. In general, the largest group on each train will be people who want to go to the centre. The efficient way to do it is to bring the train directly to the centre, and if you actually want to go somewhere else, then you change.

Let’s put it like this: a metro train coming in from Swords/Airport contains 3 types of passengers. A are the group of passengers who wish to go to St. Stephen’s Green (for whatever reason), B are the group who wish to go to the Trinity stop (for whatever reason) and C are the passengers who wish to go to to some other stop (for whatever reason). The RPA are apparently predicting that group B will be bigger than Group A. Now one would expect that this pattern on the north-south line would be replicated on our east-west line. Wherever it’s built, group C passengers are going to have to change anyway. So we can forget about them:D But if it’s built through St. Stephen’s Green, we would be delivering the smaller group A to where they want to go, while forcing the larger group B to change!:confused:

Quite apart from it not being efficient, there are very large portions of the day, and pretty much the entire weekend, when there will be only a very small catchment on the St. Stephen’s Green/Merrion Row/Merrion Square side of the line. Can’t blame William Dargan this time.

It probably wouldn’t be such a serious issue if the capacity of the line was not so huge. Although the current plans are a little “minimalist” in terms of the number of trains which are planned for the tunnel, that could change in the years to come. I believe that if it’s ever used to anything like its potential it could result in a serious shift southwards in the city if it’s built through St. Stephen’s Green.

We’ve got a fair idea where the centre of the city is. So let’s build this line through it. OK, so it’s probably O’Connell Bridge, but I’d imagine that there would be difficulties building a prolonged stretch under the river and I’m not sure that a lot of passengers would be too keen on the idea. I’d settle for College Street or College Green.

the reality that none of the investments are going to connect is mental. The news that not even the linkup of the two trams is a linkup is just CRAZY ! i give up

douche bags .

The entire T21 thing is IMO presently floundering without any real sense of where its going or why its needed.
Those behind the project are as divorced as ever from the reality of Life on the Buses/Trains.
We cannot even mange to get rid of a few miserable Pay N Display spaces in the City Centre to allow for a far greater Bus Throughflow.
However what is REALLY worrying me is a nagging sense that ALL of this is going horribly wrong.
I had a couple of hours on Thursday evening to stroll around the Temple Bar and South Georges St area and I was immediately struck by the pretty impressive amount of EMPTY office and retail space in the area.

It doesnt look right …….:eek:

Part of the reason for the empty office (and consequently retail) space has to do with the way the city has sprawled and lots of office space has been provided in the suburbs like Tallaght and Blanchardstown. My employer (for example) relocated fom Burlington Road to North West Dublin to consolidate their operations and save expensive rent in town. If transport was more effective it could potentially encourage business back into the city centre. Just a thought.

The same sort of thing can be seen in Glasgow actually but some companies (including one my mate works for) have decided to move back into town as their employees want it. Suburban industrial estates are soulless holes to work in much of the time with no decent pubs around to socialise etc. We might see that reversal here too. We definitely won’t if T21 isn’t delivered in its entirety and with proper integration.

The Phoenix Park Tunnel issue is political not practical. The union issues surronding it are ridiculous. Heuston drivers (much more militant than Connolly lads) don’t want to know. Freight trains are driven through by Connolly drivers who have to get taxis over to Islandbridge to pick up the trains for Dublin Port. Iarnrod Eireann (and govt) are shying away from conflict.

They should be using it for Kildare suburban services into Spencer Dock when it opens but they won’t. They don’t want the hassle. God help us when the interconnector negotiations come about. The unions badly need facing down in Irish Rail, really badly.

@Sunday Independent wrote:

By Tom Prendeville
Sunday November 25 2007

A new underground Dart service linking Heuston Station to the Docklands which is scheduled to cast €2bn is set to go ahead — despite the fact the two destinations are already linked by a fully functioning but little used railway known as “The Ghost Line”. .

The existing high speed railway travels from Heuston through the Phoenix Park tunnel before surfacing again and travelling through Cabra, Phibsboro, Drumcondra and onto Connolly Station and on to the Docklands

The neglected rail link is fully functioning and occasionally carries freight and is used to shunt locomotives between Dublin’s two main railway stations.

Now a rail user lobby group have questioned the vast amount of money which is earmarked for a new tunnel under the city when the old Victorian railway line could be used to service some of the city’s most densely populated areas.

“They are wasting an incredible asset and instead ploughing vast sums of money into a new inter-connector tunnel,” said Derek Wheeler of Rail Users Ireland. “The rail lines have been there for over one hundred years and have carried passenger trains in the past and are begging to be used again. It is a rapid rail service that can be up and running within a year. The whole system is just about ready to go.”

In the past, the Phoenix Park tunnel was portrayed as an unsuitable, crumbling and leaky vestige of Victorian engineering. But in reality the tunnel was engineered to the highest standards and is vast and cavernous. Approximately 757 yards in length, it was built to accommodate two wide gauge 9 foot 10 inch trains travelling in either direction.

“Transit time to either Connolly or the North Wall from Heuston would be about 10 to 12 minutes and the Phoenix Park route would have the benefit of servicing a lot of densely populated areas,” said Wheeler.

“Currently, the lines through the Phoenix Park are fully signalled to passenger standards, with signal spacing adequate to support trains at approximately five minute intervals in both directions.” However, Iarnrod Eireann insists that the Phoenix Park route is a non runner and would only add to the congestion at Connolly Station:

“The Phoenix Park tunnel is currently used for freight services and special train services, particularly during the GAA season,” said spokesperson, Barry Kenny. “Using the park tunnel would result in cancellations of other services. Connolly station is at full capacity at peak times, and using the park tunnel in this way would not generate any additional commuter capacity in the greater Dublin area. Kildare services could not serve Heuston without an additional platform and track work being provided there, and could not serve docklands without track modifications at a multi-million euro cost.”

Three years ago, Iarnrod Eireann had an entirely different view. On February 25 2004, Joe Maher, the then chief executive of the company told the Dail Transport Committee: “We certainly intend to use the park tunnel in the short-term to bring trains from the Kildare/Newbridge area into Spencer Dock because there is demand for that.”

Meanwhile, Transport 21’s proposed inter-connector tunnel which would extend the Dart service to Heuston and onwards to Park West, Adamstown and Hazelhatch is being hailed as a panacea to all the city’s public transport needs. In 2003, it was estimated that the new inter-connector would cost €1.3bn. However, the cost of major infrastructure projects have a history of spiralling out of control, and some critics have suggested that the new tunnel could eventually end up costing €2bn.

– Tom Prendeville

A fairly valid point, I would have thought. Far from it that Im against the Interconnector, it just seriously bugs me that the existing line isn’t used – and nor are there any plans to complete the circle by incorporating it into the future interconnector 😮

Perhaps the catchment for the southern loop is greater – Digital Hub, Stephen’s Green, TCD and the general Dublin 2 commercial core? Seems to be a busier part of town than Cabra, Drumcondra and the North Strand

It hardly travels through densly populated areas – the back end of Cabra – Prospect cemetary, etc.

If they were to increase densities along the track then it would warrent a full reopening however at the moment this argument is spurious. You could still run trains through to Specer Dock if this was the next stop.

Isn’t the point that the bottleneck is the loopline bridge, using the phoenix park tunnel doesn’t add extra capacity across the river: the assumption being that these new dart lines all need some stops south of the river. Without the interconnector, kildare, maynooth and malahide dart services will come in to connolly or spenser dock and only a half or so of these services will be able to connect to the southside, whereas with the interconnector, the maynooth dart will continue south along the current southern dart and the kildare line will travel south of the river before continuing along the current northern dart.

Now a rail user lobby group have questioned the vast amount of money which is earmarked for a new tunnel under the city when the old Victorian railway line could be used to service some of the city’s most densely populated areas.

“They are wasting an incredible asset and instead ploughing vast sums of money into a new inter-connector tunnel,” said Derek Wheeler of Rail Users Ireland.

I thought that Platform 11/ Rail Users Ireland was very keen on the interconnector. Must have had a policy change.

Biffo seemed to suggest recently that borrowing would now be increased to invest in NDP projects to take up the slack from a contracting construction sector. I would have thought that the interconnector would be just the sort of project to fast-track. Platform 11 must really believe that the interconnector is now never going to happen. I guess they have some inside knowledge. More’s the pity. If we can build 800KM of motorway I don’t see why we can’t put a 5km railway tunnel across the city centre. Is there not a few votes in it from the commuters along the kildare and maynooth lines?

I am sure the sindy misreported p11; they want the ppt in use now but the interconnector to go ahead asap. you would worry why they would be misquoted in this way.

@notjim wrote:

I am sure the sindy misreported p11; they want the ppt in use now but the interconnector to go ahead asap. you would worry why they would be misquoted in this way.

There was a part on the last word on Today FM this evening, p11 cleared up the reporting -they are infavour of the interconnector but said there was a promise to use the existing tunnel. Serious guff coming from Barry Kenny in Irish rail about capacity at Connolly again. There must be an engineer out there that can design a solution to the Connolly issue. After watching what the much criticised British did with St Pancras this must be kids stuff. Will London’s crossrail project be finished before our interconnector -place your bets?:(

@CC105 wrote:

[/I][/I]
Will London’s crossrail project be finished before our interconnector -place your bets?:(

Most likely, but more disturbing it has now been confirmed that there will be 5 empty trains each way a day between Claremorris and Athenry before then, and this is without a doubt the greatest scandal regarding the T21 project. Irish Rail managers and engineers are standing in the bogs of Mayo when they should be everywhere else instead. It’s partly political, but also partly cowardice on behalf of IE engineering. That like nice easy gigs. It’s a disgrace.

I spoke to a someone recently and asked why the Interconnector was last on the T21 timetable. I was assuming that part of the reason was waiting for uncle arthur to sell up shop and move. But she said no. It’s down to two things. CIE are completely out of their depth with this project and for this reason the Government is holding off on the chequebook. CIE bit off way more than they could chew pushing the Interconnector alighnment – they simply do not have the experience nor team to build it. They also widly underestimated the cost of building it. 5-8 billion is a number which is being thrown around. The government want to build the Interconnector, but they have no faith in CIE/Irish Rail to pull it off.

I feel it is very unlikely the Interconnector will ever be built and I suspect a east-west metro line will replace it at some point and Irish Rail may have no choice but to use the PPT. I would nearly bet money RPA will take over the Interconenctor concept as soon as Metro North is near completion and the CIE Interconnector ends up are MetroCentral or something. Even though I am a huge fan of Metros, I would be sad to not see the DART Underground go ahead, but it would be better than nothing.

another interesting side note is that a train station is included on the draft development plan for Glasnevin Jct and Croke Park which suggests that CIE are working on the PPT line behind the scenes. Smells of a hidden defeat to me.

Bottom line: The Interconnector as proposed by CIE is looking terminally ill. Claremorris will be “the Grand Central Station of the Irish railway network” and not Stephens Green.

@Cute Panda wrote:

Most likely, but more disturbing it has now been confirmed that there will be 5 empty trains each way a day between Claremorris and Athenry before then, and this is without a doubt the greatest scandal regarding the T21 project. Irish Rail managers and engineers are standing in the bogs of Mayo when they should be everywhere else instead. It’s partly political, but also partly cowardice on behalf of IE engineering. That like nice easy gigs. It’s a disgrace.

I spoke to a someone recently and asked why the Interconnector was last on the T21 timetable. I was assuming that part of the reason was waiting for uncle arthur to sell up shop and move. But she said no. It’s down to two things. CIE are completely out of their depth with this project and for this reason the Government is holding off on the chequebook. CIE bit off way more than they could chew pushing the Interconnector alighnment – they simply do not have the experience nor team to build it. They also widly underestimated the cost of building it. 5-8 billion is a number which is being thrown around. The government want to build the Interconnector, but they have no faith in CIE/Irish Rail to pull it off.

I feel it is very unlikely the Interconnector will ever be built and I suspect a east-west metro line will replace it at some point and Irish Rail may have no choice but to use the PPT. I would nearly bet money RPA will take over the Interconenctor concept as soon as Metro North is near completion and the CIE Interconnector ends up are MetroCentral or something. Even though I am a huge fan of Metros, I would be sad to not see the DART Underground go ahead, but it would be better than nothing.

another interesting side note is that a train station is included on the draft development plan for Glasnevin Jct and Croke Park which suggests that CIE are working on the PPT line behind the scenes. Smells of a hidden defeat to me.

Bottom line: The Interconnector as proposed by CIE is looking terminally ill. Claremorris will be “the Grand Central Station of the Irish railway network” and not Stephens Green.

What use would an East-West metro be, the point of the interconnector is to free up capacity on the rest of the irish rail network.

Who is this lady you were talking to, on what is she basing her opinions?

You know the interconnector is not needed to serve the area between tcd and heuston, the lucan luas can do that: the only and important point is to allow the kildare, maynooth and malahide dart services to all have stops on the southside and to avoid having terminuses where there is no room for terminating trains. It is obviously a desirable project, but it is hard to shake the felling that there is a cheaper alternative to tunnelling the width of the city. The problem is I just can’t think of it.

Peter: you are not falling into the trap of assuming the only possible DART journeys will be ones with no interchange are you?

well were are getting into subtleties; my point was that what is important is the extra capacity across the river, not somehow, the joining of the east coast lines to the western bound lines, this is a detail of the putative solution. if someone was cunning enough to come up with a cheaper plan, it wouldn’t matter if it left the east coast line as a single line, provided it interchanged with the maynooth and kildare dart.

BBC 2 has a program on London ST Pancras starting now 22.00