Luas BXD

http://www.pleanala.ie/casenum/NC0005.htm

that’s great but I think the money would be better spent on the metro and interconnector.

@cgcsb wrote:

that’s great but I think the money would be better spent on the metro and interconnector.

I agree but it will be interesting if they design the spaces and then try and plan things.
reference points ect.

Bridge to go ahead:

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/city-news/new-bridge-to-open-up-city-centre-1699894.html

I would prefere if the new bridge had a was a respectful mimic of O’Connell Bridge, I can’t help but fear how a modern design would detract from O’Connell Bridges old fashioned appeal. Especially as the two bridges will be only a few feet apart

I think they did one of those old new bridges in galway…

This bridge makes no sense… as does running bxd down there…
but maybe its all because of the so called tara plan…
tara station should be moved…
A bailey bridge fine but anything wider than 2.4 metres is crazy…

http://www.rpa.ie/Maps/Luas%20Line%20BX/Line%20BXD%20Map%200409.pdf

http://www.rpa.ie/Documents/Luas%20Line%20BX/BX%20Documents/BXD%20Final%20Draft%20Scoping%20Report%20210409/BXD%20Final%20Draft%20EIS%20Scoping%20Report%20210409.pdf

all these telcos stakeholders theres loads… who owns all the cables?

some of this stuff is amusing you cannot even call these guys

Underground Intelligence

Surveillance of numerous criminal community resources help us know what the bad guys are discussing, sharing, planning and doing.

Net Intelligence

Over one million sensors, honeypots and honeynets are dispersed throughout our Internet backbone. Powerful data analysis engines enable near real-time examination of nefarious activity around the globe.

whta are you harping on about?

There is like 9 different telco’s!
All I did was look at one I had never heard of and that’s what turned up…
I have never even heard of half of them…

All i’m saying is there must be some very important cables around…

You should probably start your posts with an introduction of some kind before you ramble. What’s a telco? and what cabels? what does your ramblings have to do with this thread or BXD?

As far as I can see, he thinks that the cables on the luas lines are used by either telephone companies or intelligence companies to conduct surveillance on people.

He’s talking about the utilities that will need to be moved to make way for Luas BXD.

Does anyone remember Eyre Square most of the money was spent on organizing the utilities
thats why it took so long.

Are there underground trenches in the footpaths?

We will have to what and see…

@pippin101 wrote:

He’s talking about the utilities that will need to be moved to make way for Luas BXD.

And why can’t he just say that then?:rolleyes:

is missarchi a he!! 🙂

miss – archi … the penny drops (as with everything else (s)he posts, took me a while to figure out)

@missarchi wrote:

Does anyone remember Eyre Square most of the money was spent on organizing the utilities
thats why it took so long.

Are there underground trenches in the footpaths?

We will have to what and see…

the underground in Budapest is a great example of forward thinking. It is just under the road and between the top of the tunnel and the road they laid all the utilities in the road median under removable gratings. This isn’t possible everywhere in the city but it does mean that large tracts of cables / utilities etc are easily accessible without causing general chaos to road users and pedestrians. It also means that they can be accessed without waiting for some lazy hairy arsed Sierra employee to take a week to dig a hole and then patch it up in a crap fashion. I know that Budapest has the advantage of long straight wide eastern european boulevardes but there is a principle in there that could be looked at. Of course, Budapest probably didn’t have to worry about Siptu….

Foreigners. What do they know?

@marmajam wrote:

Foreigners. What do they know?

cables follow trains! and parks some nice trenches might be good in the long term…
I missed that…

@marmajam wrote:

Foreigners. What do they know?

How to build a metro system apparently:rolleyes:

Originally I thought this whole BX thing was a complete shambles.
By adding a D to the end I think maybe it’s not so much of a shambles.
Still kind of a shambles though……..

Looks like this has also been shelved – actually seems more like Transport 21 is on hold.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/new-crosscity-line-to-link-luas-is-derailed-until-2018-at-earliest-2173955.html

New cross-city line to link Luas is derailed until 2018 at earliest
By Paul Melia
Monday May 10 2010

It also says that even with the “most pessimistic of economic outlooks”, with no growth for decades, it still makes financial sense to build the line.

MADRID Amey PLC and Bechtel Group Inc. have agreed to sell Tube Lines Ltd. for GBP310.2 million, Amey parent Grupo Ferrovial SA (FER.MC) said late Friday.

In a Spanish regulatory filing, Ferrovial said TLL, which is tasked with the maintenance of three London Underground lines, will be purchased by the U.K. state-owned Transport for London.

Company website: http://www.ferrovial.es

Metro North will go ; then it will be dead as it was predicted on a PPP model that did for Argentina in 2001 and Greece in 2010.

If Luas completed to Abbey Street at least they could terminus the trams at the point Depot whilst they work out how much further North it goes. No better symbol for 2016 than a Luas going down O’Connell Street from College Green; symbol of progress and all that.

I wouldn’t say shelved…

All these projects are linked.
Inter connector is waiting for metro north
BXD is waiting for metro north.

Argentina… ubiquitous architecture/banking they still don’t trust the banks there!

How is the interconnector dependent on Metro North?

@PVC King wrote:

If Luas completed to Abbey Street at least they could terminus the trams at the point Depot whilst they work out how much further North it goes. No better symbol for 2016 than a Luas going down O’Connell Street from College Green; symbol of progress and all that.

Okay PVC King, thats one of your suggestions I like and it makes a lot of sense. Of course if MN was built at the same time, luas might never need to be extended north, whether to Broombridge or Ballymun… Work for extending green line to O’Connell Street could be done in conjunction with MN, reducing the overall cost. I think this is about as close as you and I will get to a compromise so any chance of you budging on metro issue now or are you still in favour of interconnector over metro?

Each addition to public transport should improve the overall return of the network. MN improves the business case for interconnector and vice versa.

It does in environmental terms but in financial terms it doesn’t assuming that the system moves to weekly, monthly and annual season tickets priced on a zoned basis. By loading more debt on to the exchequer Metro North will increase borrowing costs as will the interconnector; but at least the interconnector delivers an additional 65m p.a.x. on proven existing transport corridors.

The days of raising money at Bund plus 25 basis points or 3.25% are gone and rates will only come down when it is clearly demonstrated that the public finances are under control.

The interconnector will have virtually no running costs as the majority of the rolling stock already exists as do all but 5 stations plus bolt ons; in contrast Metro North involves a huge amount of guesswork as none of the route is proven and all stations excluding Stephens Green would be additional. Add to that the fact that MN will be accompanied by a tied in operational contract which will probably be over-spec’d and difficult to scale back if the 3 bed semi’s perform as normal and it constitutes real potential for a serious black hole for cash for decades to come.

PVC I think you’re factually incorrect when you say that the stock are in place – DART Underground will have to be fully electrified and Iarnród Éireann (IÉ) have advertised for the stock they’ll need to provide an urban/suburban network … so a direct cost there, comparable with Metro North (MN).

You’re argument vis-a-vis tickets moving to time-based (rather than journey-based) tickets also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Any component of a network will suffer from the same ‘problem’, but each component of a network adds to the potential consumer/traveller base and thus to the viability of the whole system. MN also has the distinction of connecting the Airport to the network – surely of all the stops, the Airport is the most likely to generate additional revenue from journey-based tickets (both infrequent public transport users and tourists/business travellers alike).

Both DART Underground and MN are critical pieces of infrastructure and do very different things as part of a network. Both achieve critical objectives for turning public transport in Dublin into a coherent system and not just an assemblage of lines and routes with different operators – let’s pray that the National Transport Authority hurries up and becomes useful (no early signs of that happening – very disappointing).

On financing, both are proposed as Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP). I am personally against this model of financing, with perhaps the exception of right now. They have the very attractive feature of involving private finance during the construction phase, then accruing payments once operational. This allows the Government to introduce a stimulus into the economy at a time when it really, really needs it, but without adding to the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PBR). This is very appealing though the lifetime cost to the state would be higher. I think the Government should progress both of these asap…

As an aside, let’s not forget that DART is a very inferior version of urban transit (in terms of frequency, integration etc) – personally, I have little confidence that IÉ will run the system well – look at Western Rail Corridor (WRC) – renewed infrastructure and they’ve put in a completely uncompetitive timetable that makes no effort to integrate into their other existing services – it would make you cry. Meanwhile, the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) with Veolia (the operators of Luas) appear to have been very customer oriented, with rapid capacity enhancements and a very frequent level of service. In the same time DART has ‘regularised’ services to 15 min frequency all day (the clockface element is to be welcomed), but a significant reduction in peak time services – a 15-min frequency is as far as you can push a ‘turn-up-and-go’ system.

Very positive business case for Luas BXD, written last June:
http://www.transport21.ie/Publications/upload/File/Business_Cases/BXD_obc_150410_mfp2_opt.pdf

@ppjjobrien wrote:

PVC I think you’re factually incorrect when you say that the stock are in place – DART Underground will have to be fully electrified and Iarnród Éireann (IÉ) have advertised for the stock they’ll need to provide an urban/suburban network … so a direct cost there, comparable with Metro North (MN).

I said the majority of stock is in situ; which I believe it is; journey times will be quicker as the timetable would be less padded due to the number of trains crossing being reduced so much of the existing stock will at least in the early years by usable. MN does not enjoy that luxury as a complete new fleet would be required to run a 5 minute headway timetable regardless of the loadings.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

You’re argument vis-a-vis tickets moving to time-based (rather than journey-based) tickets also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Any component of a network will suffer from the same ‘problem’, but each component of a network adds to the potential consumer/traveller base and thus to the viability of the whole system. MN also has the distinction of connecting the Airport to the network – surely of all the stops, the Airport is the most likely to generate additional revenue from journey-based tickets (both infrequent public transport users and tourists/business travellers alike).

I have never said that the Airport won’t generate an independent load but the forecasts for the airport are outdated and out by I’d say 40% as the base passenger level for this year is c20m versus the 25m predicted and growth rates are likely to be 3% at best versus the 8% growth predicted when the proposal was put together. 40% is a lot of revenue to be missing.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Both DART Underground and MN are critical pieces of infrastructure and do very different things as part of a network. Both achieve critical objectives for turning public transport in Dublin into a coherent system and not just an assemblage of lines and routes with different operators – let’s pray that the National Transport Authority hurries up and becomes useful (no early signs of that happening – very disappointing).

You refer to it being critical but can you name one element of the transport network that would fail to function without this line?

@ppjjobrien wrote:

On financing, both are proposed as Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP). I am personally against this model of financing, with perhaps the exception of right now. They have the very attractive feature of involving private finance during the construction phase, then accruing payments once operational. This allows the Government to introduce a stimulus into the economy at a time when it really, really needs it, but without adding to the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PBR). This is very appealing though the lifetime cost to the state would be higher. I think the Government should progress both of these asap .

You mean rolling up interest and a profit margin of 200 to 300 basis points so that when it comes due the exchequer has to pay a significant amount of interest upon interest. There is nothing attractive about paying an extra €20m – €60m a year in interest

@ppjjobrien wrote:

As an aside, let’s not forget that DART is a very inferior version of urban transit (in terms of frequency, integration etc) – personally, I have little confidence that IÉ will run the system well – look at Western Rail Corridor (WRC) – renewed infrastructure and they’ve put in a completely uncompetitive timetable that makes no effort to integrate into their other existing services – it would make you cry. Meanwhile, the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) with Veolia (the operators of Luas) appear to have been very customer oriented, with rapid capacity enhancements and a very frequent level of service. In the same time DART has ‘regularised’ services to 15 min frequency all day (the clockface element is to be welcomed), but a significant reduction in peak time services – a 15-min frequency is as far as you can push a ‘turn-up-and-go’ system.

You have just made the perfect argument for the interconnector; when DART launched in 1984 it involved 5m frequencies; due to significant growth in out commuter services to Maynooth and Drogheda and the funnel effect of the Loopline section frequencies have needed to be cut back. You can knock the WRC but be clear IE never wanted this project it was foisted on them by the Government in a political decision; a bit like Metro North purely political and completly unviable in financial terms.

@Frank Taylor wrote:

Very positive business case for Luas BXD, written last June:
http://www.transport21.ie/Publications/upload/File/Business_Cases/BXD_obc_150410_mfp2_opt.pdf

Far from being opposed to this line I am simply concerned about its fundamentally altered route; the link up between red and green is absolutely a must have. However as the DIT campus at Grangegorman is likely to be delayed for quite some time and as Broombridge is already plugged in to the rail network; it would to my mind make more sense to extend towards Ballymun as Metro North is a complete waste of money. When Luas was sanctioned by Mammy it was to be 2 lines now and 1 line later; I would suggest the RPA should do what their Mammy told them when they were young 😀

When DIT has funding for Grangegorman; which is itself dependent on a real estate turn around i.e. a lot of the costs were to be covered by the disposal of their existing campus in D2 and D1 then the revised routing would involve a synchronised delivery programme between Campus and Luas. However building a Luas to Grangegorman before then would mean it went through a real donut district which would dramatically affect its operational viability.

Wow! Quick reply! To clarify, I am not arguing against DART Underground – I think the case builds up well and it is a must have project – I just don’t accept that MN is not needed as a lot of those who take an interest in trains long seem to have argued on online fora. On your specifics, in as much as I feel able to answer!

@PVC King wrote:

I said the majority of stock is in situ; which I believe it is; journey times will be quicker as the timetable would be less padded due to the number of trains crossing being reduced so much of the existing stock will at least in the early years by usable. MN does not enjoy that luxury as a complete new fleet would be required to run a 5 minute headway timetable regardless of the loadings.

The electrified fleet available to IE is about 60 EMU sets (DARTs – based on a mix of 2-4 car sets) – to convert the commuter and future DART stock, IE have estimated that they will need to add in excess of 100 additional sets (432 cars) at a cost of about €900m. (source: http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view//iarnrod-eireann-to-order-432-dart-cars.html. At a bear minimum, they’re essentially talking about an additional DART line, so looking at it simply, they’d need a minimum of twice the current stock. Further background info is available on the transport1.ie website.

I have never said that the Airport won’t generate an independent load but the forecasts for the airport are outdated and out by I’d say 40% as the base passenger level for this year is c20m versus the 25m predicted and growth rates are likely to be 3% at best versus the 8% growth predicted when the proposal was put together. 40% is a lot of revenue to be missing.

I may have misunderstood your point – I thought you were saying that the added revenue delivered by MN would somehow be reduced (or not visible) by virtue of a shift to season/monthly tickets etc – this was the point that didn’t make sense to me – I was not commenting on wider forecasts.

I would say, in response to this point, that the forecasts for all projects are likely to be outdated in the short run in the context of a recession (thus pinch of salt for IE’s 100m passenger scenario). Whether or not they will return to trend after the recession (when the projects would come on stream) is of course a matter for debate. Forecasts for Lines A and B (Luas) turned out to be pessimistic – I believe because the models underestimate how patterns change when quality options are introduced.

You refer to it being critical but can you name one element of the transport network that would fail to function without this line?

Well, I would’ve thought linking the second biggest trip generator in the City Region (the airport) is essential to any network! As the airport will only account for something like a quarter of trips to MN (source: RPA on MN pages FAQs), we can only assume that the other 75% is about bringing a wholly new catchment into the network (in a way which the revised DART component does not necessarily achieve). Added to this, as a key component in the planning of the City Region over the next 20-25 years, both DCC and Fingal CoCo have predicated their Development Plans on this piece of infrastructure and therefore a significant component of our future housing provision will live along the line. Ireland has for too long been guilty of not promoting infrastructure-led development – MN is a very positive example of where this was starting to happen. MN unleashes more capacity (in land and ‘city’ terms) than a simple case on the existing status quo implies.

And just to hedge off any NAMA/boom to bust/all new housing is inherently evil type commentary, there is still a demand over a 20-yr period for new housing (even if we only concentrate on domestically driven demographic changes – people are living longer, having families later, still having a high level of babies etc) – so when, the current backlog clears, there will be a need to ensure that housing is provided in sustainable locations integrated with a sustainable transport proposition.

You mean rolling up interest and a profit margin of 200 to 300 basis points so that when it comes due the exchequer has to pay a significant amount of interest upon interest. There is nothing attractive about paying an extra €20m – €60m a year in interest

PPP is not counted as part of the national debt. In that sense, it is a source of finance we can access right now. I’ve already said I don’t like the model (in general) and that it will be more expensive in the long run. But, and it’s a big but, it does offer us an opportunity to deliver these projects when costs are at their lowest, while providing significant direct and indirect employment, and thus a significant short term boost for the economy. Payments for the system will be accrued over a 20-25yr period once it’s compete – by then, it will hopefully be something we can afford. Frankly, were we to get both MN and DU, €20-60m (very big range) still seems like a valid amount of money to pay from the point of view of a state for a multi-billion euro investment.

There is no other show in town, the state simply does not have the financial capacity to borrow the money required itself in the coming years. Those that want to see either, or both projects progress will have to accept this component of the process.

You have just made the perfect argument for the interconnector; when DART launched in 1984 it involved 5m frequencies; due to significant growth in out commuter services to Maynooth and Drogheda and the funnel effect of the Loopline section frequencies have needed to be cut back. You can knock the WRC but be clear IE never wanted this project it was foisted on them by the Government in a political decision; a bit like Metro North purely political and completly unviable in financial terms.

IE may not have wanted WRC, but the timetable and interaction of services (same with Limerick Junction to Waterford line) demonstrate how determined they are not to run a decent, customer oriented service. The example I gave about the reduced peak service on DART is not one of capacity constraint, it was a financial choice and a bad one. CIE and its siblings inadvertently (because I don’t believe it’s intentional) are incapable of placing the travelling public at the heart of what they do. (simple example – three subsidiaries of one parent company – as a customer in Dublin, I cannot look up a journey planner to plan my journey between DB/IE/BE, let alone (shock horror) Luas. I cannot but tickets easily across the three(four). There isn’t even a map of high frequency rail and/or bus services available, nor even a link on DB/IE/BE’s website to other providers. This is where the NTA should be stepping in immediately and flexing its muscle, but sadly I think the NTA is going to be a complete waste of space – it was a mistake to dilute its focus as a Metropolitan Transit Authority for Dublin.

As a by the by – what IE wanted or otherwise is of no relevance, except to prove the point that they are not fit for purpose. There is an arrogance within these organisations which is startling to behold at times. They should do what they’re told – that simple.

DART Underground is an excellent project and should proceed – the numbers stack up. MN is also an excellent project and should proceed – the numbers aren’t as good but they still work – with the two in place and a radically overhauled bus network (arguably more ambitious than the current Network Direct project), combined with one organisation providing the customer interface (all ticketing, info and branding) and we start to have in place something like a modern metropolitan transport system along the lines of london, paris, berlin (or any german, dutch, french, scandanavian, austrian, swiss – need I go on! – city). Bring it on!

@ppjjobrien wrote:

The electrified fleet available to IE is about 60 EMU sets (DARTs – based on a mix of 2-4 car sets) – to convert the commuter and future DART stock, IE have estimated that they will need to add in excess of 100 additional sets (432 cars) at a cost of about €900m. (source: http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view//iarnrod-eireann-to-order-432-dart-cars.html. At a bear minimum, they’re essentially talking about an additional DART line, so looking at it simply, they’d need a minimum of twice the current stock. Further background info is available on the transport1.ie website.

You make a fair point on this there is expenditure required; however the cost of the tunnel and stations is listed in the EIB report as being €1bn which I’m not sure if is totally correct but you are taling about a short tunnel and only 5 stations it won’t be the full €2bn so there will be an allowance towards rolling stock; even if the rolling stock needs to be expanded this can be done an incremental basis unlike MN as there is a substantial existing base stock to work from.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I may have misunderstood your point – I thought you were saying that the added revenue delivered by MN would somehow be reduced (or not visible) by virtue of a shift to season/monthly tickets etc – this was the point that didn’t make sense to me – I was not commenting on wider forecasts.

I believe that in the case of MN that most of journeys would involve another mode given that MN only serves 3 City Centre stations and that North of Drumcoundra’s catchment the population centres are Swords pop 34,000 but on a very low density (massive parking provision required); Ballymun 20,000 and DCU 10,000 total students including part timers; unlike the interconnector which would by virtue of hitting 5 City centre stations involve just one mode; this would be most evident on the Kildare line where a lot of potential passengers are currently driving to D2; also many more who have given up on Dart because it is currently crush loaded.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I would say, in response to this point, that the forecasts for all projects are likely to be outdated in the short run in the context of a recession (thus pinch of salt for IE’s 100m passenger scenario). Whether or not they will return to trend after the recession (when the projects would come on stream) is of course a matter for debate. Forecasts for Lines A and B (Luas) turned out to be pessimistic – I believe because the models underestimate how patterns change when quality options are introduced.

Agreed 100m passengers within the first 5 – 10 years is certainly very optimistic but the additional operational costs are limited to the tunnel and only five stations all of which would have retail concession opportunites yielding stonking rents. Luas was underestimated on the basis that the accession states added a massive increase in the population of Dublin more or less the year it opened and the development machine was churning out apartments along its route at a scale it won’t for a long time to come again.

With interconnector you are not dependent on 1 narrow catchment but 4 seperate catchments that each serve a higher existing population than that of MN; none of these routings are severed by an airport in terms of their development potential.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Well, I would’ve thought linking the second biggest trip generator in the City Region (the airport) is essential to any network! As the airport will only account for something like a quarter of trips to MN (source: RPA on MN pages FAQs), we can only assume that the other 75% is about bringing a wholly new catchment into the network (in a way which the revised DART component does not necessarily achieve). Added to this, as a key component in the planning of the City Region over the next 20-25 years, both DCC and Fingal CoCo have predicated their Development Plans on this piece of infrastructure and therefore a significant component of our future housing provision will live along the line. Ireland has for too long been guilty of not promoting infrastructure-led development – MN is a very positive example of where this was starting to happen. MN unleashes more capacity (in land and ‘city’ terms) than a simple case on the existing status quo implies.

Both DCC and Fingal have predicted their development plans on the basis of existing transport infrastructure and the basis that this route may happen. Don’t forget that DCC is served by all 4 existing IE lines and Fingal by both the Northern and Maynooth lines. With housing completions nationally down from 90,000 in 2006 when this route was planned to a predicted 12,000 in 2010 and 10,000 in 2011 no development plan in Ireland will be stretched for quite a while to come. To lose one development corridor of 7 (including 2 Luas Lines to be enhanced by link up) to compensate for a 90% decline in demand seems to have no prospect of damaging future prospects.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

And just to hedge off any NAMA/boom to bust/all new housing is inherently evil type commentary, there is still a demand over a 20-yr period for new housing (even if we only concentrate on domestically driven demographic changes – people are living longer, having families later, still having a high level of babies etc) – so when, the current backlog clears, there will be a need to ensure that housing is provided in sustainable locations integrated with a sustainable transport proposition.

The demographics of the naughties were underpinned by two statistical facts; firstly the baby boom of the late 1970’s into early 1980’s and the influx resulting from liberialisation of freedom of movement for citizens of the accession states. The next baby boomer generation won’t be working for another 15 – 20 years and the accession state scenario will not be repeated again as it was amplified by the limited number of states (Ireland, Sweden, UK) who granted full access in 2004.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

PPP is not counted as part of the national debt. In that sense, it is a source of finance we can access right now. I’ve already said I don’t like the model (in general) and that it will be more expensive in the long run. But, and it’s a big but, it does offer us an opportunity to deliver these projects when costs are at their lowest, while providing significant direct and indirect employment, and thus a significant short term boost for the economy. Payments for the system will be accrued over a 20-25yr period once it’s compete – by then, it will hopefully be something we can afford. Frankly, were we to get both MN and DU, €20-60m (very big range) still seems like a valid amount of money to pay from the point of view of a state for a multi-billion euro investment.

The range is based on an s-curve distribution and fluctuations in spread; ithe rate of finance certainly would involve a significant spread to be taken by the PPP provider to compensate for risk and cannot be taken as either accruing only at completion of the project or being on a stright line basis. What it does not include is the interest on interest which would be significant over a 5 year period.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

There is no other show in town, the state simply does not have the financial capacity to borrow the money required itself in the coming years. Those that want to see either, or both projects progress will have to accept this component of the process.

There is a limited amount government borrowing for projects economists as being essential; the concealment of 30% of GDP by the outgoing Greek Government has meant that all debt must now be ‘on balance sheet’ under the methodology adopted by the ratings agencies. Given that the state lacks the capacity to pay for Metro North it should be scrapped.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

IE may not have wanted WRC, but the timetable and interaction of services (same with Limerick Junction to Waterford line) demonstrate how determined they are not to run a decent, customer oriented service. The example I gave about the reduced peak service on DART is not one of capacity constraint, it was a financial choice and a bad one. CIE and its siblings inadvertently (because I don’t believe it’s intentional) are incapable of placing the travelling public at the heart of what they do. (simple example – three subsidiaries of one parent company – as a customer in Dublin, I cannot look up a journey planner to plan my journey between DB/IE/BE, let alone (shock horror) Luas. I cannot but tickets easily across the three(four). There isn’t even a map of high frequency rail and/or bus services available, nor even a link on DB/IE/BE’s website to other providers. This is where the NTA should be stepping in immediately and flexing its muscle, but sadly I think the NTA is going to be a complete waste of space – it was a mistake to dilute its focus as a Metropolitan Transit Authority for Dublin.

As a by the by – what IE wanted or otherwise is of no relevance, except to prove the point that they are not fit for purpose. There is an arrogance within these organisations which is startling to behold at times. They should do what they’re told – that simple.

The unions at CIE have to be brought into line; the failure not to is a fundamental failure in government policy; instead of bringing Veolia in on Luas as some neo-liberal symbol they should have brought a Willie Walsh type character into to sort out NBRU/SIPTU; they still can and I suspect they will over the next three austerity budgets.

I am surpised you champion the Waterford – Limerick Junction service as it is clearly a relic of the ‘boat train era’ when the Irish were the actors playing the accession state guest role; in the contemporary phase the ex-pats choice is AER or RYA. Like the WRC this line is another example of political interferance undermining commercial decision making and the taxpayer paying for a service that serves few people.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

DART Underground is an excellent project and should proceed – the numbers stack up. MN is also an excellent project and should proceed – the numbers aren’t as good but they still work – with the two in place and a radically overhauled bus network (arguably more ambitious than the current Network Direct project), combined with one organisation providing the customer interface (all ticketing, info and branding) and we start to have in place something like a modern metropolitan transport system along the lines of london, paris, berlin (or any german, dutch, french, scandanavian, austrian, swiss – need I go on! – city). Bring it on!

Could you list the population density for 1 kilometer either side of the MN route and then complete the same exercise for each new route built in the past decade in the places you have mentioned

Frankfurt
Amersterdam
Paris
Stockholm
Wien
Zurich

Unfortunately for Dublin it does not resemble any of these high density cities where apartment living dominates household formation patterns; the MN route pases through residential housing estates that are predominently on a density of 16 to the acre. How many of these areas have seen bus level services cut in the past couple of years? What interconnector does is it provides a tunnel from Hueston to Spencer Dock; a route that serves most of the highest density employment hubs in the state and a lot of development land in Dublin 8 that will be high density residential as soon as Nama deems appropriate.

With an impressive 4,787 contributions and a strong grasp of both transport, urban development and economics themes, I should tread carefully!

I will agree with you that given an either/or choice, the arguments begin to stack up in favour of DU, as a preference.

I believe that in the case of MN that most of journeys would involve another mode given that MN only serves 3 City Centre stations and that North of Drumcoundra’s catchment the population centres are Swords pop 34,000 but on a very low density (massive parking provision required); Ballymun 20,000 and DCU 10,000 total students including part timers; unlike the interconnector which would by virtue of hitting 5 City centre stations involve just one mode; this would be most evident on the Kildare line where a lot of potential passengers are currently driving to D2; also many more who have given up on Dart because it is currently crush loaded.

I wouldn’t see a modal shift as a problem and interchanges will go both ways. The key is the overall number of city centre stops, and the overall catchment feeding into them and into interchange stations. The current arrangement is a bunch of lines. I remember reading (can’t source it) that the RPA were taken aback by the level of traffic from Heuston to city centre/Connolly and vice versa – it’s the power of interchange! I wouldn’t see this as the killer for MN per se, and would reiterate the point of how important it is for the airport to be connected to the system.

There is a limited amount government borrowing for projects economists as being essential; the concealment of 30% of GDP by the outgoing Greek Government has meant that all debt must now be ‘on balance sheet’ under the methodology adopted by the ratings agencies. Given that the state lacks the capacity to pay for Metro North it should be scrapped.

I’ll take this at face value, but if PPP projects cannot be left of the PBR balance sheet, then I would wonder if DU can be afforded. If we take media estimates (Arup quoted €1.5bn after a study, media reports €2bn for the tunnel) – my suspicion is that the wider electrification is seperate to this, as is the additional rolling stock.

So, let’s be generous – say, they don’t need all the stock right away and prices are good – let’s put€1.25bn for the tunnel, €1bn for further electrification, and only €450mn for stock – that gives us a project total of €2.7bn. Let’s say that’s spread over 6 yrs 2012-18 – or €450mn per annum.

Imagine for comparison (or totalling) that a cost in the current climate of €3bn could be achieved for MN on a similar timeframe or €500mn per annum over the same period. Also take into account political emphasis on green/sustainable modes of travel over roads and the completion of the national moterway project – spending on capital projects this year was almost €2.8bn – suddenly you start to see that with a slightly slowed down project timeframe it could become possible to finance this investment from Government resources. I suspect this won’t happen, because of the quite public commitment to the PPP process – especially in the case of MN.

The unions at CIE have to be brought into line; the failure not to is a fundamental failure in government policy; instead of bringing Veolia in on Luas as some neo-liberal symbol they should have brought a Willie Walsh type character into to sort out NBRU/SIPTU; they still can and I suspect they will over the next three austerity budgets.

I am surpised you champion the Waterford – Limerick Junction service as it is clearly a relic of the ‘boat train era’ when the Irish were the actors playing the accession state guest role; in the contemporary phase the ex-pats choice is AER or RYA. Like the WRC this line is another example of political interferance undermining commercial decision making and the taxpayer paying for a service that serves few people.

I think Jo-Public doesn’t care how it’s run, organisationally, as long as it’s run well – in fact they’d rather not be exposed constantly to the internal politics of the providers – this has been happening for my whole life and the travelling public has been held to randsom over and over again. I’d rather not stick with something that’s clearly broken, just because of a political standpoint. I’m not in favour of privatisation per se, but Veolia do an excellent job running Luas, and I think most people would rate the performance of Luas favourably in comparison to DB/IE. Incidentally, it’s not just the unions – I’m sure they haven’t placed a veto on integrated ticketing/information/putting the customer first …

As for the lesser used lines, I use them as an example to show how IE has never tried to make them work and provides an awful, awful service. Go to their journey planner and try to make any sensible connection on the network – Clonmel-Dublin – Gort-Dublin – Clonmel-Cork – just examples and you’ll see that the timetable has been created to make switching as unviable as possible – for barely used lines, I am sure this is not due to traffic jams on the railway! But rather a deliberate attempt to run down the lines, or even worse a reflection of inept transport planning/timetabling within the organisation.

Could you list the population density for 1 kilometer either side of the MN route and then complete the same exercise for each new route built in the past decade in the places you have mentioned

Frankfurt
Amersterdam
Paris
Stockholm
Wien
Zurich

Unfortunately for Dublin it does not resemble any of these high density cities where apartment living dominates household formation patterns; the MN route pases through residential housing estates that are predominently on a density of 16 to the acre. How many of these areas have seen bus level services cut in the past couple of years? What interconnector does is it provides a tunnel from Hueston to Spencer Dock; a route that serves most of the highest density employment hubs in the state and a lot of development land in Dublin 8 that will be high density residential as soon as Nama deems appropriate.

Well, a fascinating task and with time one I’d love to look into! Your point is of course valid that the existing railway lines are a focal point for much existing development, and the planning system has encouraged significantly high densities along these routes – that is an example of planning reacting to provision. My ‘planning’ argument in favour of MN (not at the expense of DU) is that we need to move to an infrastructure led approach – there is much more scope for intensification along that route (an axis far more preferable to the patchwork sprawl to the west and one which is more intimately connected with key economic drivers such as the airport/DCU etc).

Fingal, for example, has plans to grow Swords to 100,000 – the MN corridor is Dublin key growth and capacity axis for the 21st century – it represents an opportunity to put in place a more sustainable series of medium-high density mixed-use neighbourhoods along a flexible piece of infrastructure which can be scaled up to meet demand as it arises.

Again, this is not a question of MN instead of DU to my mind, but if you pushed me I would accept your argument that DU should happen first. I would also say that fatalism isn’t necessary – it may just be a case of MN, yes, but not quite now – delivering to a plan which takes longer to deliver is better than delivering to no plan at all – it’s the funny thing about strategic spatial planning – we, as people, are in-built to think in current situation terms – they will not last and we need to think beyond the now and plan positively for the future. Impassioned plea over!

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I wouldn’t see a modal shift as a problem and interchanges will go both ways. The key is the overall number of city centre stops, and the overall catchment feeding into them and into interchange stations. The current arrangement is a bunch of lines. I remember reading (can’t source it) that the RPA were taken aback by the level of traffic from Heuston to city centre/Connolly and vice versa – it’s the power of interchange! I wouldn’t see this as the killer for MN per se, and would reiterate the point of how important it is for the airport to be connected to the system.

Most of the Luas traffic from Heuston will switch to interconnector; but you are right it was real progress finally providing a link from the busiest mainline rail station in the country to the city centre. I just don’t see the passenger numbers to interchange from beyond Drumcoundra in the first place other than from the Airport; most of whom will take any connection to the city centre and take a taxi from there to their end destination. Whether it is Stephens Green or well Stephens Green would make no option but you would feel that Pearse and Heuston with no change would be preferable to O’Connell Street for most visitors

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I’ll take this at face value, but if PPP projects cannot be left of the PBR balance sheet, then I would wonder if DU can be afforded. If we take media estimates (Arup quoted €1.5bn after a study, media reports €2bn for the tunnel) – my suspicion is that the wider electrification is seperate to this, as is the additional rolling stock.

So, let’s be generous – say, they don’t need all the stock right away and prices are good – let’s put€1.25bn for the tunnel, €1bn for further electrification, and only €450mn for stock – that gives us a project total of €2.7bn. Let’s say that’s spread over 6 yrs 2012-18 – or €450mn per annum.

Imagine for comparison (or totalling) that a cost in the current climate of €3bn could be achieved for MN on a similar timeframe or €500mn per annum over the same period. Also take into account political emphasis on green/sustainable modes of travel over roads and the completion of the national moterway project – spending on capital projects this year was almost €2.8bn – suddenly you start to see that with a slightly slowed down project timeframe it could become possible to finance this investment from Government resources. I suspect this won’t happen, because of the quite public commitment to the PPP process – especially in the case of MN.

Irish GDP is roughly €210bn with the deficit being truely horrific for the next three years and about 2.9% in 2014 when it starts to go back to normal levels; €500m would result in a deficit figure being above 3% as each €500m equates to 0.23% of GDP and then there is the annual subvention to the line which would be substantial rasing the cost further.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I think Jo-Public doesn’t care how it’s run, organisationally, as long as it’s run well – in fact they’d rather not be exposed constantly to the internal politics of the providers – this has been happening for my whole life and the travelling public has been held to randsom over and over again. I’d rather not stick with something that’s clearly broken, just because of a political standpoint. I’m not in favour of privatisation per se, but Veolia do an excellent job running Luas, and I think most people would rate the performance of Luas favourably in comparison to DB/IE. Incidentally, it’s not just the unions – I’m sure they haven’t placed a veto on integrated ticketing/information/putting the customer first …

There are some great people in both IE and Veolia but I would point to London where underground rail is run by Transport for London and where there have been some spectacular failures with PPP’s not least of which were National Express on the East Coast Mainline who unilaterally withdrew and the tubelines project bought back from Bectel and Ferrovial last Friday. The job of Government is to govern and in relation to NBRU/SIPTU at all CIE group companies a succession of ministers have failed abjectly.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

As for the lesser used lines, I use them as an example to show how IE has never tried to make them work and provides an awful, awful service. Go to their journey planner and try to make any sensible connection on the network – Clonmel-Dublin – Gort-Dublin – Clonmel-Cork – just examples and you’ll see that the timetable has been created to make switching as unviable as possible – for barely used lines, I am sure this is not due to traffic jams on the railway! But rather a deliberate attempt to run down the lines, or even worse a reflection of inept transport planning/timetabling within the organisation.

You list Gort with a population of 3,000 and Clonmel with a population of 15,000 but both are within 30 minutes drive of stations with good service to Dublin; Derry and Letterkenny trade very effectively between each other and don’t have a rail link as is the case with Enniskillen with a similar population to Clonmel of just under 14,000 which has no rail link. It is about using taxpayers money in a manner that delivers services only where the population density merits it.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Well, a fascinating task and with time one I’d love to look into! Your point is of course valid that the existing railway lines are a focal point for much existing development, and the planning system has encouraged significantly high densities along these routes – that is an example of planning reacting to provision. My ‘planning’ argument in favour of MN (not at the expense of DU) is that we need to move to an infrastructure led approach – there is much more scope for intensification along that route (an axis far more preferable to the patchwork sprawl to the west and one which is more intimately connected with key economic drivers such as the airport/DCU etc).

The airport can be connected in a short Dart spur for a fraction of the cost.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Fingal, for example, has plan to grow Swords to 100,000 – the MN corridor is Dublin key growth and capacity axis for the 21st century – it represents an opportunity to put in place a more sustainable series of medium-high density mixed-use neighbourhoods along a flexible piece of infrastructure which can be scaled up to meet demand as it arises.

Swords was never going to reach anywhere close to 100,000 population; too much of it is already built on with 16 to the acre 3 bed semi’s so it is what you would describe as a highly dispersed and nimby rich development pattern; I’d be all in favour of a Dart link from Swords to the Northern line directly extending DART services that currently terminate in Malahide; but if Swords grows at an average even 3,000 people per decade for the next 20 years I will be very surprised. A town of this scale should be connected but claims of 100,000 population projected simply exemplify the flawed predictions that MN relies upon.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Again, this is not a question of MN instead of DU to my mind, but if you pushed me I would accept your argument that DU should happen first. I would also say that fatalism isn’t necessary – it may just be a case of MN, yes, but not quite now – delivering to a plan which takes longer to deliver is better than delivering to no plan at all – it’s the funny thing about strategic spatial planning – we, as people, are in-built to think in current situation terms – they will not last and we need to think beyond the now and plan positively for the future. Impassioned plea over!

I agree with your reasoning of putting MN off; if the airport Dart link fails and if the Northern line post interconnector can’t accomodate Swords then clearly it is back to the drawing board. But building an underground under Drumcoundra, Glasnevan and Ballymun will I fear always be doomed to cost more than the loadings that the population density can provide.

@PVC King wrote:

Irish GDP is roughly €210bn with the deficit being truely horrific for the next three years and about 2.9% in 2014 when it starts to go back to normal levels; €500m would result in a deficit figure being above 3% as each €500m equates to 0.23% of GDP and then there is the annual subvention to the line which would be substantial rasing the cost further.

GDP in 2009 was less than 171bn.
http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/economy/current/qna.pdf

These projects will be paid for over 25-35 years not 6 years.

Frank at €2bn cost these projects will never be paid for they will simply sit on the national debt; €2bn would equate to an interest bill of €100m per year every year for a very long time. Some projects merit that ongoing cost and some don’t. What was discussed above and below is what if the projects were funded year on year and just how much would be added to the exchequer borrowing requirement. Debt to GDP level is very much in focus and clearly each €2bn added will have implications for the rate of interest that one has to pay as each existing bond expires, is redeemed and then has to be replaced by new securities.

In terms of the erroneous figure itresults from my taking a figure based on an outdated US Dollar conversion rate; it does however understate the point I was making; the annual subsidy to one project would equate to a total of 0.29% of overall GDP a sum equal to 10% of the total Government deficit for all capital and current services for five years when fiscal discipline has never been more critical; unlike coming out of the 1980’s we don’t have the low wage rates this time so significantly more needs to be invested in higher education. Given that the route is unproven and that there would be further operational losses to be covered by an additional subvention the project is clearly unaffordable. BXD to Drumcoundra in terms of the link ups over a five year period would be a fraction of the cost and link just as many lines.

Most of the Luas traffic from Heuston will switch to interconnector; but you are right it was real progress finally providing a link from the busiest mainline rail station in the country to the city centre. I just don’t see the passenger numbers to interchange from beyond Drumcoundra in the first place other than from the Airport; most of whom will take any connection to the city centre and take a taxi from there to their end destination. Whether it is Stephens Green or well Stephens Green would make no option but you would feel that Pearse and Heuston with no change would be preferable to O’Connell Street for most visitors

I agree that many will carry on their journey, but Red-line and Luas serve different City Centre catchments (simplistically North and South City). Pearse Station or St Stephen’s Green is a long way to O’Connell St from a transport point of view.

I don’t think I’m understanding your point about taxis – I assume you’re talking about tourists etc from the airport – otherwise taxis are a very expensive way of finishing your journey. The thing is that until there’s a network is in place real interchange is not going to happen so seamlessly and the city starts to become more polycentric in terms of how it works. Cologne is a smaller city than Dublin and is served by tram/underground lines (which are interoperable) and interchange between bus, tram, u-bahn is normal – london, paris, berlin etc all achieve this – we don’t have this culture among our providers which is reinforced by the ticketing system. I strongly suspect that they just don’t get it and need to go!

Irish GDP is roughly €210bn with the deficit being truely horrific for the next three years and about 2.9% in 2014 when it starts to go back to normal levels; €500m would result in a deficit figure being above 3% as each €500m equates to 0.23% of GDP and then there is the annual subvention to the line which would be substantial rasing the cost further.

It’s not where I was going with this and your argument seems to work against DART Underground just as much. My point was that even if capital spending were reduced it would still be possible. Capital spending is important to the economy and has a multiplier effect in the short run and and investment return in the long run. The government will continue to invest and its a matter of choice regarding allocations.

There are some great people in both IE and Veolia but I would point to London where underground rail is run by Transport for London and where there have been some spectacular failures with PPP’s not least of which were National Express on the East Coast Mainline who unilaterally withdrew and the tubelines project bought back from Bectel and Ferrovial last Friday. The job of Government is to govern and in relation to NBRU/SIPTU at all CIE group companies a succession of ministers have failed abjectly.

The PPP model (I’m not a fan) failed spectacularly in relation to London Underground- accepted.

however, TfL sub-contracts bus operations to operators, which are all branded TfL (London Buses – bright red busses), and the bus network has performed extremely well in (with Ken Livingstone’s support). Prob most close to the RPA-Veolia model.

National Express east coast was a franchise which failed, but to be fair to them, they were supposed to pay hundreds of millions back to the Government, but then the economy changed. The service continued (and improved while they ran it) and the Government then took it over – Jo Public barely noticed – I have no problem with that necessarily.

My point throughout is that I don’t care how it’s run per se. I want an excellent coherent service which is about the journeys that I and others make and not about the internal machinations of organisations that are systemically broken. The CIE group will of course have good people in it, but the organisation is broken and does not have passengers at the core of what they do. I’m not promoting Veolia, but I don’t recall reading endless pages about the internal workings of Veolia, I just know that Luas is clean, safe, efficient and convenient – not sure I can apply the same observations to DB/IE? I very much agree with you that this is a failure of political will to emasculate the unions in this regard. I think breaking up the organisations would be ideal, but I suspect ‘creeping privatisation’ or the threat of may ultimately be the thing which makes them start to put the customer first.

In theory the NTA should be starting with the transport system and passengers and working back from that … in practice, I fear it’s going to be a huge disappointment pandering to the existing status quo – sigh.

You list Gort with a population of 3,000 and Clonmel with a population of 15,000 but both are within 30 minutes drive of stations with good service to Dublin; Derry and Letterkenny trade very effectively between each other and don’t have a rail link as is the case with Enniskillen with a similar population to Clonmel of just under 14,000 which has no rail link. It is about using taxpayers money in a manner that delivers services only where the population density merits it.

Examples to prove a point. It’s true of the timetabling on the recent WRC – Ennis is a bigger example than Gort – if it’s there and your running services, it should be used to serve passengers (and freight if there’s any demand), and to feed other services. That IE should be allowed to deliberately (or through incredulous ineptness) be allowed to run services that seem to deliberately not connect with other services, thus undermining their usefulness, is amazing to me and I can’t see how anyone can defend deliberately running a bad service!

The airport can be connected in a short Dart spur for a fraction of the cost.

Not to labour the point but, MN is about a corridor, not a single connection point. Plus, I’m not sure a spur into that stretch of the northern line that carries other DART services, intercity and commuter services doesn’t just programme in capacity constraints in the future.

Swords was never going to reach anywhere close to 100,000 population; too much of it is already built on with 16 to the acre 3 bed semi’s so it is what you would describe as a highly dispersed and nimby rich development pattern; I’d be all in favour of a Dart link from Swords to the Northern line directly extending DART services that currently terminate in Malahide; but if Swords grows at an average even 3,000 people per decade for the next 20 years I will be very surprised. A town of this scale should be connected but claims of 100,000 population projected simply exemplify the flawed predictions that MN relies upon.

Swords was an example – the figure below shows just how much housing was delivered during the boom:

There will be significant housing demand in the future. CSO forecasts imply something like 750,000 additional people living in the the GDA by 2026 over 2011 (-250,000 if you strip away ALL migration to Ireland from outside). With an average household size of 2.8 (and declining), this implies a housing requirement of something like 175,000 units or just shy of 12,000 per annum. This brings us back to the lower end of the range delivered during the Celtic Tiger years. My fear is that allowing this need to be loosely distributed all over the GDA will just reinforce the unsustainable form which has been delivered with gusto outside of the better work occurring within the Dublin authorities (higher densities within more sustainable communities have been achieved). These need to be supported by infrastructure and made viable by supply side constraint in less sustainable locations. Development levies can then be used to support schemes such as DU or MN.

The advantage of this northern corridor is in its future capacity – and the North is better placed to accept further growth that the south (we’ve hit the mountains!), the west – it’s already and unsustainable messy, shapeless sprawl. Growth northwards has been amazingly subdued and represents a realistic growth corridor which could pull a lot of uses together.

I agree with your reasoning of putting MN off; if the airport Dart link fails and if the Northern line post interconnector can’t accomodate Swords then clearly it is back to the drawing board. But building an underground under Drumcoundra, Glasnevan and Ballymun will I fear always be doomed to cost more than the loadings that the population density can provide.

An amount of me suspects that you may well be right and the future may not be rosy for MN. I think a DART spur would be a weak second for the airport and wouldn’t give the City the room for growth it will need in the next 20yrs and beyond.

Frank’s point is that these project will (or could) be paid for over a very long period is valid and you seem to be assuming that other elements of the cost of running the country won’t be cut instead (and/or as well). I still believe both are deliverable if the timeframe is slowed down. I get the impression you just don’t like MN!!! As an aside we were paying about hundreds of million per junction upgrade on the M50 and no one blinked an eye … there’s something very particular about public transport that seems to get people going and no one seems to question whether or not there is a need/demand/justification for (say) the level to which the Atlantic Corridor is being built out – seems to be a mix of Motorway/Dual Carriageway – seems excessive when 2+1 might have done … a parting thought – I need to eat!

how about instead of that, we can four track the northern line to Drogheda, but instead of putting the new tracks next to the current ones(probably not possible), move them a few KM west and provide a station at the airport, the new tracks should continue towards heuston instead of Connolly, have a small underground section under Finglas, connect to the currently dissused liffey junction and on to Heuston via the Pheonix park tunnell. The new tracks could be very high spec, almost entirely overground through open country, and trains could hit their max speed (200km/h) for most of their journey. This would give us a main line rail connection to the countries main airport and would allow for a new direct service: Cork-Limerick Junction-Portarlington-Dublin Heuston-Dublin Airport-Dundalk-Belfast. This would free up the current Northern line from Drogheda to the city centre for as many DARTs as ya like. Also it would mean that around 4million people would be within 10km to a train station that could take them to either the countries largest airport or the city centre of either of Ireland’s 3 metropolitain areas. journey times between Airport and Heuston could be around 10 minutes, and around 18 mins to Drogheda, also about 15 mins would be cut off the Belfast-Dublin journey. Heuston would have more capacity because Cork trains would terminate in Belfast instead of Heuston and Belfast trains would terminate in Cork instead of Heuston. A new depot could be constructed near the airport to allow Galway and Limerick trains to terminate at the airport instead of the city centre, this frees up more terminal capacity in the city centre, and allows most people in Ireland to access the airport without changing in the city centre. The extra capacity on the Northern line might make the interconnector unecissary because the lack of Belfast trains terminating in Connolly would reduce the bottle neck. Metro would no longer be required, Swords could be served by express feeder busses to the airport, or Malahide, Drumcondra already has a station, Ballymun and DCU should have the QBC improved to actual QBC standard, not a glorified bus lane.

@PVC King wrote:

It does in environmental terms but in financial terms it doesn’t assuming that the system moves to weekly, monthly and annual season tickets priced on a zoned basis. By loading more debt on to the exchequer Metro North will increase borrowing costs as will the interconnector; but at least the interconnector delivers an additional 65m p.a.x. on proven existing transport corridors.

The days of raising money at Bund plus 25 basis points or 3.25% are gone and rates will only come down when it is clearly demonstrated that the public finances are under control.

The interconnector will have virtually no running costs as the majority of the rolling stock already exists as do all but 5 stations plus bolt ons; in contrast Metro North involves a huge amount of guesswork as none of the route is proven and all stations excluding Stephens Green would be additional. Add to that the fact that MN will be accompanied by a tied in operational contract which will probably be over-spec’d and difficult to scale back if the 3 bed semi’s perform as normal and it constitutes real potential for a serious black hole for cash for decades to come.

‘The interconnector will have virtually no running costs as the majority of the rolling stock already exists’

lol more fantasies. There’s a 700million euro tender out for rolling stock for the IC

As has been pointed out several times. the MN capital will come form the EIB at 5%
The architecture of an infrastructure bond is being constructed at this moment. The NTMA
has said it will put approx 10 billion into that. That will also be at 5% interest.

usual nonsense from pvcking

European backing for Dublin Metro
Tuesday, 11 May 2010 18:10

‘The Metro North project represents a significant contribution to sustainable urban transport in the greater Dublin area and will be the backbone for a future integrated public transport network in the Irish capital.

‘The European Investment Bank looks forward to working closely with the Irish authorities and the bidders involved in the Dublin Metro project’ said Plutarchos Sakellaris, European Investment Bank Vice President responsible for Ireland.

New Irish housing completions may fall below 10,000 in 2011;
By Finfacts Team
Jan 19, 2010 – 2:26:47 PM
Goodbody Stockbrokers chief economist, Dermot O’Leary, says new Irish housing completions may fall below 10,00 in 2011, compared with almost 90,000 in 2006

Housing output down another 50% in 2009…

The major contributory factor in the severity of the recession in Ireland is the construction sector in general and specifically the residential sector. Final data today confirmed the extent of the collapse in housing output in Ireland in 2009. There were 26,820 house completions in Ireland, representing a decline of 48% yoy. At the peak in 2006, almost 90,000 units were completed. Over the past three years, we estimate housing alone has knocked 8% off the level of GDP (9% of GNP).

One way of tracking the extent of the housing boom and subsequent bust is to compare the level of completions relative to the population. At the peak in 2006, Ireland was building 21 housing units per 1000 of its population, when the European average was 5.6. In 2009, Irish completions amounted to 5.8 units per 1000, whereas the European average is estimated to be less than 4. Ireland should drop below the European average in 2010 (see chart).

Output has further to fall – Irish house completions will fall sharply again in 2010. Housing commencements fell by 63% in the first ten months of 2009, with housing starts on larger scheme developments down by 83% over the same time period. Tighter credit conditions continue to be an issue for both developers and potential homeowners, but there is also a need to curtail new supply until the vacant housing stock is reduced. We expect 12,000 units completed in 2010 and this could go below 10,000 in 2011.

That graph you posted above is lazy in the extreme and about as relevant as the vast majority of the figures which underpin the Metro; see the true picture above. In any event even when the market was out of control the maximum completion rate across the County of Fingal was about 9,000 units and that included the much larger development area such of Blanchardstown which now stretches from Castleknock to the South Meath Fringe. In addition there was significant development at Malahide, Donabate/Portrane, Rush/Lusk, Skerries and Balbriggan not to mention the estates in Fingal that feed off Leixlip and Ashtown. In the basis that 90,000 houses were built in Ireland in 2006 and of these 6,000 were built in Fingal it is likely that 1,100 houses will be built across the entire county; except that one off houses now make up 25% of completions and you don’t build those in Swords. Taking that on todays figures and you are talking about 733 houses across the entire borough; Swords may get 200 houses a year.

I agree that many will carry on their journey, but Red-line and Luas serve different City Centre catchments (simplistically North and South City). Pearse Station or St Stephen’s Green is a long way to O’Connell St from a transport point of view.

I don’t think I’m understanding your point about taxis – I assume you’re talking about tourists etc from the airport – otherwise taxis are a very expensive way of finishing your journey. The thing is that until there’s a network is in place real interchange is not going to happen so seamlessly and the city starts to become more polycentric in terms of how it works. Cologne is a smaller city than Dublin and is served by tram/underground lines (which are interoperable) and interchange between bus, tram, u-bahn is normal – london, paris, berlin etc all achieve this – we don’t have this culture among our providers which is reinforced by the ticketing system. I strongly suspect that they just don’t get it and need to go!

I live 200m from Paddington where the Heathrow Express terminates; it is my local shop; you see very few people descending the stairs and escalators with cases; the vast bulk of them take the Express into Paddington and then for a modest fare take a taxi to Mayfair or the City or wherever their destination is. Of course you see people who take the Piccadilly line into London and change but few of them have cases and few of them would complain if they had to take a bus for 30 mins into Dublin CC versus the 1 hour and 3 minutes the tube takes to Oxford Circus (considered to be the most central point). If a Dart extension were built that would be real progress as it would hit Connolly 18 mins Spencer Dock for Connolly and the additional 2 stops to Stephens Green would take max 25 mins.

It’s not where I was going with this and your argument seems to work against DART Underground just as much. My point was that even if capital spending were reduced it would still be possible. Capital spending is important to the economy and has a multiplier effect in the short run and and investment return in the long run. The government will continue to invest and its a matter of choice regarding allocations.

It does and the real worry is that when the either or decision gets made and it is either or because the combined inpact on borrowing would add roughly a billion to the EBR for about 5 years; that they approve MN and do not approve the interconnector on the basis of their complete loathing of SIPTU/NBRU and addiction to PPPs.

The PPP model (I’m not a fan) failed spectacularly in relation to London Underground- accepted.

however, TfL sub-contracts bus operations to operators, which are all branded TfL (London Buses – bright red busses), and the bus network has performed extremely well in (with Ken Livingstone’s support). Prob most close to the RPA-Veolia model.

First Group run the aircoach service in Dublin and do a great job; rail is different as the road space is government controlled; allthey need to do are paint bus lanes and it is regulated; other than the UK I have not visited any European country which privatised rail; SNCF provide a great service when they are not on strike and D-Bahn would wipe the floor with Veolia.

Examples to prove a point. It’s true of the timetabling on the recent WRC – Ennis is a bigger example than Gort – if it’s there and your running services, it should be used to serve passengers (and freight if there’s any demand), and to feed other services. That IE should be allowed to deliberately (or through incredulous ineptness) be allowed to run services that seem to deliberately not connect with other services, thus undermining their usefulness, is amazing to me and I can’t see how anyone can defend deliberately running a bad service!

Ennis has a number of services that take about 3 hours mush of it down to the indirect Limerick Junction Route being longer; not ideal but driving the 145 mile journey wouldn’t take much less once you factor in Dublin City traffic. There is room for improvement over time.

Not to labour the point but, MN is about a corridor, not a single connection point. Plus, I’m not sure a spur into that stretch of the northern line that carries other DART services, intercity and commuter services doesn’t just programme in capacity constraints in the future.

Of the 19 stations on the line and excluding the City Centre which is presumbly either the destination or an interchange; then only 4 passenger origin stations seem to have any real potential to give decent passenger numbers (Drumcoundra is served by the Maynooth line) namely DCU and Ballymun which could just as easily be served by a Luas which is going to Parnell Sq anyway; which leaves the Airport and Swords. The airport has been verified as IE as being doable and extending the Malahide service to Swords would actually reduce pressure on the line by meaning that trains cross tracks at Swords and not Malahide. Metro North is not required to acheive all but a link from Ballymun to Swords via the airport. There is no Bus service from Ballymun to the Airport indicating no demand and Dublin Bus would have passenger data for the Airport Swords loadings.

Swords was an example – the figure below shows just how much housing was delivered during the boom:

There will be significant housing demand in the future. CSO forecasts imply something like 750,000 additional people living in the the GDA by 2026 over 2011 (-250,000 if you strip away ALL migration to Ireland from outside). With an average household size of 2.8 (and declining), this implies a housing requirement of something like 175,000 units or just shy of 12,000 per annum. This brings us back to the lower end of the range delivered during the Celtic Tiger years. My fear is that allowing this need to be loosely distributed all over the GDA will just reinforce the unsustainable form which has been delivered with gusto outside of the better work occurring within the Dublin authorities (higher densities within more sustainable communities have been achieved). These need to be supported by infrastructure and made viable by supply side constraint in less sustainable locations. Development levies can then be used to support schemes such as DU or MN.

The advantage of this northern corridor is in its future capacity – and the North is better placed to accept further growth that the south (we’ve hit the mountains!), the west – it’s already and unsustainable messy, shapeless sprawl. Growth northwards has been amazingly subdued and represents a realistic growth corridor which could pull a lot of uses together.

I’ll take it that the demographic forecasts date from the 2006 Census; the same year Anglo Irish Bank’s profits peaked. Population growth will be very modest for the next 10-15 years as the accession state population goes elsewhere with their families. Wild forecasts based on demographics that weren’t sustainable led to a banking bust that will slow the economy down for years. With the IDA’s help growth of 3% will be just about acheivable.

The logical place to develop is along the four interconnector corridors and the Luas extensions. It is a long way to the twelve pins mountains if you go west.

An amount of me suspects that you may well be right and the future may not be rosy for MN. I think a DART spur would be a weak second for the airport and wouldn’t give the City the room for growth it will need in the next 20yrs and beyond.

Frank’s point is that these project will (or could) be paid for over a very long period is valid and you seem to be assuming that other elements of the cost of running the country won’t be cut instead (and/or as well). I still believe both are deliverable if the timeframe is slowed down. I get the impression you just don’t like MN!!! As an aside we were paying about hundreds of million per junction upgrade on the M50 and no one blinked an eye … there’s something very particular about public transport that seems to get people going and no one seems to question whether or not there is a need/demand/justification for (say) the level to which the Atlantic Corridor is being built out – seems to be a mix of Motorway/Dual Carriageway – seems excessive when 2+1 might have done … a parting thought – I need to eat!

I find the €1bn Tuam Motorway just as offensive as Metro North; pouring concrete for the sake of it in both cases.

@shytalk wrote:

‘The interconnector will have virtually no running costs as the majority of the rolling stock already exists’

lol more fantasies. There’s a 700million euro tender out for rolling stock for the IC

As has been pointed out several times. the MN capital will come form the EIB at 5%
The architecture of an infrastructure bond is being constructed at this moment. The NTMA
has said it will put approx 10 billion into that. That will also be at 5% interest.

usual nonsense from pvcking

European backing for Dublin Metro
Tuesday, 11 May 2010 18:10

The European Investment Bank’s Board of Directors has given its approval in principle for a €500m loan for the Dublin Metro PPP project.

‘The Metro North project represents a significant contribution to sustainable urban transport in the greater Dublin area and will be the backbone for a future integrated public transport network in the Irish capital.

‘The European Investment Bank looks forward to working closely with the Irish authorities and the bidders involved in the Dublin Metro project’ said Plutarchos Sakellaris, European Investment Bank Vice President responsible for Ireland.

As they said they would consider funding a €1bn Motorway to Tuam I’m sure they haven’t looked at it in too much detail. I note the total project value is still missing as is the planning consent.

pvcking. You asserted above that:

‘The interconnector will have virtually no running costs as the majority of the rolling stock already exists’

How does that fit with the 700million tender that IE has out for rolling stock for the IC?

any chance of an answer?

It looks to me that you’re a total bluffer and fantasist.

That 700m will comprise rolling stock for the wider network which if you hadn’t noticed is crush loaded. The value of the current rolling stock of the fleet would if ordered today and not valued at depreciated levels be higher. In any event the rolling stock on the Kildare line is aged as is much of the stock on the Maynooth line; given that completion wouldn’t be for 8 years much of the DART fleet will be over 30 years old at that stage.

In terms of running costs they will be minimal as there are only 5 stations and all of these will be busy enough to attract significant poster advertising and retail kiosk opportunites. Not a massive running cost in operational terms.

I further note the approval is approval in principal; bankers are political beasts, they only say no when they have to.

@PVC King wrote:

That 700m will comprise rolling stock for the wider network which if you hadn’t noticed is crush loaded. The value of the current rolling stock of the fleet would if ordered today and not valued at depreciated levels be higher. In terms of running costs they will be minimal as there are only 5 stations and all of these will be busy enough to attract significant poster advertising and retail kiosk opportunites.

I further note the approval is approval in principal; bankers are political beasts, they only say no when they have to.

utter tripe.

most of that 700m is for the DART extension which will more than treble in capacity.

As already asked, why did you assert that there was no need for increased rolling stock?
when the opposite is the case.
As pointed out you are a complete bluffer and fantasist.

Accross the wider the network the majority of stock does exist following additions post 2004; a lot of it will be replaced but would have been replaced anyway. The Maynooth line and Kildare lines were extensively added as commuter routes in the early 1990’s the stock is more or less 20 years old anyway. How do you know the tenders don’t have break options and aren’t based on ademand led approach?

For you to call me a bluffer and a fantasist is rich coming from someone who claimed to know more about economics than the ex-chair of Goldman Sachs Int and BP. You are incapable of fluid thought and I’d imagine you have never negotiated a structured agreement of any kind.

pvcking you asseted above that there would be no rolling stock costs for the IC.

In fact, as the capacity of the DART system will more than treble a huge expense is involved here.
There is a 700million tender already out for this rolling stock

pvcking, how does this square with your assertion that no rolling stock is required?

Are you capable of giving a straight answer to a straught question?

It’s not a complicated question.

I’ll repeat it. Why did you assert that no rolling stock was required when700million was earmarked for this RS?

Another question is why do you repeatedly plaster in irrelevant and meaningless psuedo jargon when you are questioned on the inventions you persistently resort to to bolster your eccentic views?

It does look as if you are a bluffer and psuedo expert fantasist.

You have serious communication issues and for the the record have never stated what you do professionally; that is assuming you have one but I’d doubt its an economist as to claim you knew more than the ex Chair of Goldman Sachs Int and BP who just happens to be Irish, youngest ever Attorney General and EEC Commisioner who liberalised a transport market through the open skies agreement; failure to read anything and then make personal attacks is just typical of you.

Statement 2 parts

Part 1 – Rolling stock tender is smaller than existing rolling stock on Dart lines and Maynooth and Kildare lines much of which will be 25 years old when the interconnector completes and would have been replaced anyway on a like for like basis in the absence of the Interconnector; agreements can involve orders in 2 phases -order certain and order cum break option. Metro North has no rolling stock and to deliver 5 minute frequencies that will require a lot of rolling stock.

Part 2 – 5 stations and a short track; are you saying that this section will be expensive to run and will be unable to leverage all the existing stations on the network?

I have never claimed to be any kind of transport economist or expert; but for the record transport economists are actually called planners the other are general economists who claim to specialise in transport; judging by Sean Barrett and his inability to grasp the bigger picture you could be quite good as one if you listened to people instead of ranting at every possible opoortunity.

As they said they would consider funding a €1bn Motorway to Tuam I’m sure they haven’t looked at it in too much detail. I note the total project value is still missing as is the planning consent.

You really have got it in for MN with all your stats,but please spare a though for us poor taxpayers who would love to see a nice metro route to the airport and city in return for some money instead of bailing out the banks and I do live along the proposed route and the much talked about Luas route to the airport was ruled out due to lack of road space on the way to the airport.

I respect your position; If I lived beside the route I probably would want it as well even if it did inflate my tax bill; according to the EIB website both the Tuam Motorway and Metro North project are two of three Irish transport projects under assessment. The third is listed below

The PPP contract comprises the design, construction, operation and maintenance of 16.5km of dual carriageway on the Arklow to Rathnew section of the N11 and of the N7 Newlands Cross Junction

There is no mention of the interconnector or any other rail project.

I too pay tax on bad banks and have paid taxes for a war that I didn’t agree with but the economic climate has changed; public expenditure needs to be cut dramatically and I would prefer to think that the focus would be on the projects that are most viable rather than a project that puts an underground through areas with such low population densities.

I have no back up to sugguest this but I would suspect that the Anglo Irish bank situation may change to one where upon expiration of the deposit guarantee scheme that it may be split into a new good bank where performing loans will be transfered and a lot of the existing debt owed by Anglo Irish bank which trades at a significant discount will not move to it but stay in the bad bank which will be declared insolvent; giving the opportunity to walk away from a lot of the junior debt which stretches to billions. At least AIB and BoI are now able to stand on their own 2 feet without further help and should from 2011 by paying corporation tax start to repay the assistance that they have received.

Things are not going to be pretty for the next few years and I do not believe that Metro North is the answer to Dublin’s transport problems on a sufficient scale to warrant the cost. The hope is that like the 1990’s that the payback of low taxes and low inflation and better public services will come for the difficult 1980’s and that this time the lesson will be learnt to cut expenditure early and in sufficient quantity.

@cgcsb wrote:

how about instead of that, we can four track the northern line to Drogheda, but instead of putting the new tracks next to the current ones(probably not possible), move them a few KM west and provide a station at the airport, the new tracks should continue towards heuston instead of Connolly, have a small underground section under Finglas, connect to the currently dissused liffey junction and on to Heuston via the Pheonix park tunnell. The new tracks could be very high spec, almost entirely overground through open country, and trains could hit their max speed (200km/h) for most of their journey. This would give us a main line rail connection to the countries main airport and would allow for a new direct service: Cork-Limerick Junction-Portarlington-Dublin Heuston-Dublin Airport-Dundalk-Belfast. This would free up the current Northern line from Drogheda to the city centre for as many DARTs as ya like. Also it would mean that around 4million people would be within 10km to a train station that could take them to either the countries largest airport or the city centre of either of Ireland’s 3 metropolitain areas. journey times between Airport and Heuston could be around 10 minutes, and around 18 mins to Drogheda, also about 15 mins would be cut off the Belfast-Dublin journey. Heuston would have more capacity because Cork trains would terminate in Belfast instead of Heuston and Belfast trains would terminate in Cork instead of Heuston. A new depot could be constructed near the airport to allow Galway and Limerick trains to terminate at the airport instead of the city centre, this frees up more terminal capacity in the city centre, and allows most people in Ireland to access the airport without changing in the city centre. The extra capacity on the Northern line might make the interconnector unecissary because the lack of Belfast trains terminating in Connolly would reduce the bottle neck. Metro would no longer be required, Swords could be served by express feeder busses to the airport, or Malahide, Drumcondra already has a station, Ballymun and DCU should have the QBC improved to actual QBC standard, not a glorified bus lane.

Actually, I have to say in terms of the island’s future infrastructure requirements say for 2030, I’ve always thought it would make sense for a new/re-newed hi(gher!) – speed line to be built from Belfast to Cork, via Dublin Airport and heuston, instead of trundling into Connolly. That is a piece of national infrastructure and not really part of Dublin’s metropolitan transit system.

With the Phoenix Park Tunnel you could theoretically get a line to Blanchardstown without building any new lines; albeit that you would need to refit the tunnel itself and probably need to reconfigure track where the tunnel link joins the Maynooth line to or including a route facing West vs the eastern path that heads towards Liffey Junction and Spencer Dock that the (freight only line) currently takes. It could reach the airport on the routing envisaged for the now abandoned Metro West scoping exercise and reach the Northern line via the routing envisaged by the IE Dublin Rail plan. It would be a great idea long term as it would make say a Belfast to Cork journey much easier but would be very expensive which would be difficult for the current fiscal set up. Great idea to park up and re-examine when finances improve.

The absence of an EIB application for the Interconnector is very worrying.

@PVC King wrote:

That graph you posted above is lazy in the extreme and about as relevant as the vast majority of the figures which underpin the Metro; see the true picture above. In any event even when the market was out of control the maximum completion rate across the County of Fingal was about 9,000 units and that included the much larger development area such of Blanchardstown which now stretches from Castleknock to the South Meath Fringe. In addition there was significant development at Malahide, Donabate/Portrane, Rush/Lusk, Skerries and Balbriggan not to mention the estates in Fingal that feed off Leixlip and Ashtown. In the basis that 90,000 houses were built in Ireland in 2006 and of these 6,000 were built in Fingal it is likely that 1,100 houses will be built across the entire county; except that one off houses now make up 25% of completions and you don’t build those in Swords. Taking that on todays figures and you are talking about 733 houses across the entire borough; Swords may get 200 houses a year.

hmmm – I’m not quite sure how to take that. Lazy, it certainly isn’t. The point I made was twofold:

* growth in population WILL occur (the para on pop forecasts – to help you I even subtracted the component of pop growth which is connected to the economy (migration). I even tried indicate where the growth will come from (aging population, people deferring having children, more single person households – all of these mean more households and are independent of the economy – as a by-the-by there is by all accounts another baby boom underway …

* the additional households will need to be housed unless prices are to rise unsustainably and to create another property crash in 30 yrs time! The purpose of the graph was to demonstrate that the likely levels are nothing like those of the boom years, but that there would be additional housing, but more likely at a level seen at the start of the boom before housing went crazy. You do have a habit of reacting quite hysterically when the point being made is actually far closer to the one you were making than you realise.

I then made the point that I thought that planning policy should seek to concentrate future growth along a small number of corridors where infrastructure (not just transport) is being provided. MN corridor has more capacity than most and that is a positive – notwithstanding the financial case for the project – and I have to say the difficulty about someone such as yourself making such specific arguments about the viability of the MN scheme is that none of us have seen the Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and therefore none of us can say for sure – that suggests a slightly more conciliatory tone to any debate rather than an absolutist one.

I live 200m from Paddington where the Heathrow Express terminates; it is my local shop; you see very few people descending the stairs and escalators with cases; the vast bulk of them take the Express into Paddington and then for a modest fare take a taxi to Mayfair or the City or wherever their destination is. Of course you see people who take the Piccadilly line into London and change but few of them have cases and few of them would complain if they had to take a bus for 30 mins into Dublin CC versus the 1 hour and 3 minutes the tube takes to Oxford Circus (considered to be the most central point). If a Dart extension were built that would be real progress as it would hit Connolly 18 mins Spencer Dock for Connolly and the additional 2 stops to Stephens Green would take max 25 mins.

I envy your salary – a taxi from Paddington to the City would set you back about £20. Also, I’ve been on the Piccadilly line myself many times in general and specifically to the airport. There are a very significant number of passengers using the Underground, with the heathrow express/taxi combo most used by business travellers on expenses. Buses in the transport world are always considered less likely to achieve modal change (from private to public) that fixed rail connections. Dublin CC could be 15 mins from the airport – think what a competitive advantage that would be for Dublin CC as a city to do business and visit. The bus is entirely reliant on traffic, albeit that the Dublin Port tunnel has improved consistency.

It does and the real worry is that when the either or decision gets made and it is either or because the combined inpact on borrowing would add roughly a billion to the EBR for about 5 years; that they approve MN and do not approve the interconnector on the basis of their complete loathing of SIPTU/NBRU and addiction to PPPs.

Well, hopefully at least one of the projects will get the go ahead! Failing that you could fall back on the other comment above which correctly stressed that there is no need for this to be paid from current spending, but rather the cost could be deferred over a longer period of time – we don’t need to repeat the interest on interest argument – I accept it’s a more expensive way of doing it in the long run, it is however less outlay on a year-by-year basis.

First Group run the aircoach service in Dublin and do a great job; rail is different as the road space is government controlled; allthey need to do are paint bus lanes and it is regulated; other than the UK I have not visited any European country which privatised rail; SNCF provide a great service when they are not on strike and D-Bahn would wipe the floor with Veolia.

There are private operators in Sweden and Germany to name but two. I have no ideological beef with IE – they’re just rubbish at running a train system. I’m not saying you could ever directly privatise them – I was reacting to your arguments against PPP/Private Operators.

Ennis has a number of services that take about 3 hours mush of it down to the indirect Limerick Junction Route being longer; not ideal but driving the 145 mile journey wouldn’t take much less once you factor in Dublin City traffic. There is room for improvement over time.

This was my point. There’s no reason for the service not to continue onto Limerick Junction and make the connection. They’ve just not thought about it as a system – room for improvement over time isn’t the issue – they’ve designed it to be useless to the consumer – either to prove their point that they don’t believe in regional services, or because they couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery, let alone a well connected, integrated public transport offering.

I’ll take it that the demographic forecasts date from the 2006 Census; the same year Anglo Irish Bank’s profits peaked. Population growth will be very modest for the next 10-15 years as the accession state population goes elsewhere with their families. Wild forecasts based on demographics that weren’t sustainable led to a banking bust that will slow the economy down for years. With the IDA’s help growth of 3% will be just about acheivable.

The logical place to develop is along the four interconnector corridors and the Luas extensions. It is a long way to the twelve pins mountains if you go west.

Like I said the 500k figure excludes all migration (a very negative assumption over a 20yr period) and is based purely on demographic trends as explained above. We’ll just have to disagree on the relative merits of western sprawl versus intensification and some greenfield to the North – my central point is that whichever new housing is provided in the future, it should be far more concentrated and much more closely tied into existing and/or planned infrastructure, which improves the sustainability of the communities and also the viability of the schemes, although you’ll always have the chicken and the egg issue.

I find the €1bn Tuam Motorway just as offensive as Metro North; pouring concrete for the sake of it in both cases.

I am in 100% agreement.

@PVC King wrote:

With the Phoenix Park Tunnel you could theoretically get a line to Blanchardstown without building any new lines; albeit that you would need to refit the tunnel itself and probably need to reconfigure track where the tunnel link joins the Maynooth line to or including a route facing West vs the eastern path that heads towards Liffey Junction and Spencer Dock that the (freight only line) currently takes. It could reach the airport on the routing envisaged for the now abandoned Metro West scoping exercise and reach the Northern line via the routing envisaged by the IE Dublin Rail plan. It would be a great idea long term as it would make say a Belfast to Cork journey much easier but would be very expensive which would be difficult for the current fiscal set up. Great idea to park up and re-examine when finances improve.

The absence of an EIB application for the Interconnector is very worrying.

Absolutely. I think in (say) 10 yrs time when the Enterprise service is acknowledged to be worse than useless and we’re on a more favourable part of the economic cycle, there could be a very strong case for linking all the major economic drivers on the island together (Belfast-Dublin Airport-Dublin Heuston-Cork) – journey time 3.5hrs??? (just a thought). This would be very much a national project as it would radically enhance connectivity to and from the airport for the whole island, with resulting tourism and economic benefits – as you rightly say – one to park for now, but perhaps worth getting into the Regional Planning Guidelines and Development Plans to protect alignments etc.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

* growth in population WILL occur (the para on pop forecasts – to help you I even subtracted the component of pop growth which is connected to the economy (migration). I even tried indicate where the growth will come from (aging population, people deferring having children, more single person households – all of these mean more households and are independent of the economy – as a by-the-by there is by all accounts another baby boom underway .

Any such baby boom will not have transport requirements for 20 plus years; the net in migration has turned to net out migration and with the IDA creating only 20,000 jobs per annum it would take 40 years for unemployment to disappear; net out migration is far more likely.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

* the additional households will need to be housed unless prices are to rise unsustainably and to create another property crash in 30 yrs time! The purpose of the graph was to demonstrate that the likely levels are nothing like those of the boom years, but that there would be additional housing, but more likely at a level seen at the start of the boom before housing went crazy. You do have a habit of reacting quite hysterically when the point being made is actually far closer to the one you were making than you realise..

I just see red when anyone talks about Swords having a population of 100,000; if Burke and his cronies hadn’t filled the first mile surrounding the town centre with Urban Sprawl and then maybe if development was made very difficult in the rest of the borough then a significant uplift would be possible. Sadly the sprawl exists and development patterns will be far more dispersed firstly in National terms and secondly within the greater Dublin region. Why interconnector is so superior is that it allows for development to be spread accross four existing rail corridors and the two Luas extensions which both contain a lot of zoned and serviced development land; Developing those areas first will cut the likely Luas operational losses on these two extensions; extensions which were clearly built prematurely in the cases of City West and Cherrywood.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I then made the point that I thought that planning policy should seek to concentrate future growth along a small number of corridors where infrastructure (not just transport) is being provided. MN corridor has more capacity than most and that is a positive – notwithstanding the financial case for the project – and I have to say the difficulty about someone such as yourself making such specific arguments about the viability of the MN scheme is that none of us have seen the Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and therefore none of us can say for sure – that suggests a slightly more conciliatory tone to any debate rather than an absolutist one. .

I have no desire to be absolutest but I am always concerned when CBA’s are withheld and when a scenario is run that is entirely dependent on very ambitous development targets; when GDP was growing at 6-10% a year and when housing completions were header ever higher I had was not talking about Metro. But the economic picture has utterly changed: look at the three articles below.

LONDON (Dow Jones)–Bank of England Governor Mervyn King warned Wednesday that the banking crisis has turned into a potential sovereign debt crisis and governments must tackle excessive fiscal deficits without delay.

In a press conference, King said he had seen the details of fiscal plans by the new U.K. Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, and that they provided a “very strong and powerful agreement to reduce [the U.K.] deficit.”

They include “a very clear and binding commitment to accelerate the reduction of the deficit in the lifetime of the parliament,” King said, adding: “I think it will diminish some of the downside risks because of the action that will be taken to deal with the deficit.”

Commenting on the lessons of the Greek debt crisis, King said it didn’t make sense to run the risk of an adverse market reaction, and lawmakers need to “get ahead of that.”

Spain to slash wages to cut deficit
Wednesday, 12 May 2010 11:29
Spain has said it will cut state employees’ wages and slash investment spending in a bid to reassure markets that it can get its budget deficit under control and halt the spread of the European debt crisis.

‘We need to make a singular, exceptional and extraordinary effort to cut our public deficit and we must do so now that the economy is beginning to recover,’ Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said.

Meanwhile, new figures show that the Spanish economy eased out of recession in the first quarter of 2010 as it recorded growth of just 0.1%.

In the toughest deficit cutting moves by far by the Socialist government, Zapatero said the government planned to save €15 billion in 2010 and 2011 with a series of cuts including a reduction of more than €6 billion in public investment.

Civil service salaries will be cut by 5% in 2010 and frozen in 2011, sparking immediate anger from unions, who have already put the brakes on a government move to raise the retirement age to 67 from 65.

The measures were announced after European Union and International Monetary Fund officials agreed at the weekend on a €750 billion emergency fund for weak euro zone countries that have been hit by a debt crisis.

Economists said that after the weekend EU meeting it became very clear Spain and Portugal, and particularly Spain, would have to go the extra mile in cutting the deficit. They said today’s actions were based on ‘the Irish model’.

The pressures on Zapatero to act rose during the week as US President Barack Obama called him on yesterday and urged him to be ‘resolute’ in efforts to implement economic reforms.

The measures will now reduce the budget deficit to 9.3% of gross domestic product this year, from 11.2% in 2009. It will fall to 6% in 2011 and be reduced to 3% of GDP by 2013, the government said.

Spain sees first quarter growth of 0.1%
Spain eased out of recession with 0.1% growth in the first quarter compared to the preceeding quarter, the government statistics’ office said in a preliminary report today.

The figures from the National Statistics Office confirmed a provisional report from the Bank of Spain released last week.

Spain, Europe’s fifth largest economy, entered its recession in the second quarter of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded a crisis in the Spanish property market, which had been a major driver for growth in the preceding years.

The economy continued to contract until the fourth quarter of 2009 when it shrank 0.1%. Year on year, the economy shrank 1.3% from the first quarter of 2009, it added.

Spain is the last major world economy to emerge from recession.

The parrelels with Spain are striking a property bust leading to a deep recession. Before people think we can go off balance sheet or wave two fingers to the Commission

EU plans better budget co-ordination
Wednesday, 12 May 2010 11:52
The European Commission has proposed that euro zone countries submit their national budgets to the EU for what it calls ‘peer review’ before they go to national parliaments.

The Commission also said it would call on national leaders to agree a permanent crisis resolution mechanism. The proposals come days after EU leaders backed a €750 billion rescue fund for euro zone countries.

The Commission said the recent crises surrounding euro zone debt had exposed the vulnerability of euro zone countries and underlined their interdependence. It said the time had come to draw ‘far-reaching lessons’ about the way economic policies were dealt with.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I envy your salary – a taxi from Paddington to the City would set you back about £20. Also, I’ve been on the Piccadilly line myself many times in general and specifically to the airport. There are a very significant number of passengers using the Underground, with the heathrow express/taxi combo most used by business travellers on expenses. Buses in the transport world are always considered less likely to achieve modal change (from private to public) that fixed rail connections. Dublin CC could be 15 mins from the airport – think what a competitive advantage that would be for Dublin CC as a city to do business and visit. The bus is entirely reliant on traffic, albeit that the Dublin Port tunnel has improved consistency..

I’ll let you in on a little secret; the heathrow connect service costs only £7.90 and takes 33 mins versus the £6 the tube costs and takes over an hour; the saving is less than minimum wage. A minicab costs about £15 to the city and a black cab about a tenner to the West End. Without getting off point; half an hour which is what the aircoach takes post port tunnel stands up well to any City; few cities have an airport less than 10 miles from their City Centre.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Well, hopefully at least one of the projects will get the go ahead! Failing that you could fall back on the other comment above which correctly stressed that there is no need for this to be paid from current spending, but rather the cost could be deferred over a longer period of time – we don’t need to repeat the interest on interest argument – I accept it’s a more expensive way of doing it in the long run, it is however less outlay on a year-by-year basis..

It still goes on the National debt and will show up in the national accounts as borrowing; I would favour the interconnector being paid for directly from borrowing and then the debt paid down over 20-30 years on a standard amortisation model.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

There are private operators in Sweden and Germany to name but two. I have no ideological beef with IE – they’re just rubbish at running a train system. I’m not saying you could ever directly privatise them – I was reacting to your arguments against PPP/Private Operators. .

I’ve not come across them as my time in Frankfurt displayed only Stadwerke Frankfurt on the ticketing; if it works it works but my view is clearly contaminated by the UK experience.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

This was my point. There’s no reason for the service not to continue onto Limerick Junction and make the connection. They’ve just not thought about it as a system – room for improvement over time isn’t the issue – they’ve designed it to be useless to the consumer – either to prove their point that they don’t believe in regional services, or because they couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery, let alone a well connected, integrated public transport offering..

;

Neither do I; without the GAA summer loadings to Croke Park; Irish Rail would have lines to Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Belfast at best. There is no way the demand exists to connect other cities unless the government gave the funding to build a line that was at least as quick as driving; the 2 hours plus from Limerick to Galway was clearly known to Dept of Transport before the project was sanctioned. A symbolic gesture and a waste of taxpayers cash.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Like I said the 500k figure excludes all migration (a very negative assumption over a 20yr period) and is based purely on demographic trends as explained above. We’ll just have to disagree on the relative merits of western sprawl versus intensification and some greenfield to the North – my central point is that whichever new housing is provided in the future, it should be far more concentrated and much more closely tied into existing and/or planned infrastructure, which improves the sustainability of the communities and also the viability of the schemes, although you’ll always have the chicken and the egg issue.

Sadly it is usually the young that leave because they can’t get graduate jobs; they then meet people from the host country, settle down and stay put. Unless the employment situation turns around dramatically the population will in my view stay static for decades to come; placing a higher tax burden on the population by building vanity projects will deter employment growth and make it more likely that more people have to leave; exacerbating the situation still further.

Well, I think we’ve exhausted most avenues of debate!

I would make two points on planning for the future:

1. We need to be careful not to conflate economic and demographic drivers of population change and hence future demand/requirements for housing provision, and the number of people is not the same as the number of households. The demographic ones are relatively robust and are not limited to whether we have a baby boom now, or not. Society is aging (more households), there are more single person households (same number of people but more households) and so on. Even if there is out-migration (in the next 1-5 years), there will be an increase in the number of households. The world has not ended.

2. My educational and professional background is both as an economist and planner. Yes, you’ve guessed it a jack of all trades, master of none. However, there is one economic consistency, which is that of cycles. We are going to have a very difficult time ahead – no question, but it will not last forever. Planning for things that are 20 years away and assuming pessimistically that today’s climate will continue, is a recipe to plan for failure. Yes, for the next few years we need to accept pain, but then we need to move to a pro-active investment policy which plans for success. This is a more sustainable way of planning for a sustainable future than the slightly hysterical and fatalistic discourse of boom and bust that so dominates the Irish media … to borrow a phrase from the UK – keep calm and carry on …

The World certainly hasn’t ended but the capacity to borrow endlessly has.

Yes household formation sizes are a relevant issue however; there is a cycle in the use of property;

1. Grow up at home – 3 bed semi 16 to the acre suburban town
2. Go to college – specialist student accom or damp pre 63 bed sit
3. Rent flat with mates – City Centre flash location e.g. Smithfield
4. Buy flat with girlfreind – Docklands or Parnell St depending on income
5. Buy house or large apartment with now wife – Anywhere once there is space

I am not advocating that we do not plan for future growth I am merely pointing out that with 4 Dart Routes that extend out 10-20 miles in 4 very different directions all with green field and brownfield development opportunites as well as 2 Luas lines both extended into green fields that a seventh line is simply not ‘critical’ there is an element of choice and it this point of the economic cycle where goverment is burdened with a lot of unforseen private sector debt that prudence is the key word particularly when you are dealing with multi-billion euro projects that will lose money operationally.

Luas link up plans being finalised
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0622/luas.html

Railway Order to be published 30th June and the RPA wish to proceed in advance of Metro North, cost 170 Million

Let’s hope the get the go-ahead…

The RPA guy was on Morning Irleand and they are saying it will be done along with the Metro works, arrrrrrrrr:mad:

new bridge – 10 points = 4am?
Surely that’s a typo?

@ac1976 wrote:

Luas link up plans being finalised
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0622/luas.html

Railway Order to be published 30th June and the RPA wish to proceed in advance of Metro North, cost 170 Million

Let’s hope the get the go-ahead…

This is a very prudent decision as it delivers an affordable link up of the existing and expanding Luas network; I would hope that in a large section of the application that the RPA would concentrate on the flexibility of Luas and the unique advantage it has over underground systems to be extended incrementally and regularly. A very positive move would be to grant the commercially minded Aircoach (& Dublin Bus if they were interested) an exemption from paying tolls on the Dublin Port Tunnel; no doubt a token DHL walker on each service could provide the freight to get around the toll contract.

Buses are already exempt from Dublin Port Tunnel tolls

Then it would make total sense for Aircoach and Luas to partner a new service from the end of the red line extension to the airport via the tunnel on a single ticket. When the Luas line link up is complete the options would be far more numerous. Should the lights at the airport be rigged to favour buses the journey time to the point would be 15 minutes to the point?

Aircoach’s Dalkey and Greystones routes stop at the O2/point depot a total of 63 times each day in each direction. Journey time 19 minutes. 8 euro single. 14 euro return.

So on that basis with a journey time of 7 minutes to Busaras and adding 2 minutes to Abbey then the City centre is already accessible in less than half an hour from the airport. One would imagine that once the link up is done it will be possible to route trams from the Point to Sandyford giving St Green in less than 35 mins from the airport. Not bad

There is no proposal to allow trams to transfer from the green line to the red line. They will intersect but there won’t be a junction.

@ac1976 wrote:

Luas link up plans being finalised
http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0622/luas.html

Railway Order to be published 30th June and the RPA wish to proceed in advance of Metro North, cost 170 Million

:

or approximately 17 million taxi fares for people too lazy to walk the relatively short distance from Stephen’s Green to Jervis. Uhis link is not necessary. Give the 170mil to the schools

The tram goes to grangegorman, phibsboro, cabra, broombridge. It’s expected to carry 7.5-10 million additional passengers per year.

@Frank Taylor wrote:

The tram goes to grangegorman, phibsboro, cabra, broombridge. It’s expected to carry 7.5-10 million additional passengers per year.

so walk to Jervis and get on it. God knows the population (of Ireland) is lazy and fat enough.

waste.

of.

money

@wearnicehats wrote:

so walk to Jervis and get on it. God knows the population (of Ireland) is lazy and fat enough.

waste.

of.

money

Oh ffs, would you kindly look at the rpa’s website? the line isn’t just a link up. It goes further into the northside and ads cabrs, phibsborough and granggorman. It also connects with the maynooth line at broombridge. I’d like to see you walk from stephen’s green to broombridge, it’d take well over an hour.

@cgcsb wrote:

Oh ffs, would you kindly look at the rpa’s website? the line isn’t just a link up. It goes further into the northside and ads cabrs, phibsborough and granggorman. It also connects with the maynooth line at broombridge. I’d like to see you walk from stephen’s green to broombridge, it’d take well over an hour.

so start and finish it on oconnell st then – FFS why do they need a new bridge across the liffey??

@Frank Taylor wrote:

There is no proposal to allow trams to transfer from the green line to the red line. They will intersect but there won’t be a junction.

That seems a little short-sighted. Even if the initial plans do not envisage use of such a junction by any particular service, it would be a mistake not to allow for such a service in the future, especially given the minimal cost involved.

Cost, of course, can’t be the factor, given that the plans include construction of an unnecessary bridge and a longer route than was the original plan for the link-up. And it would seem sensible to include a junction so as to minimise closures and disruption in the future, should a service using such a junction be desirable (if, indeed, it isn’t desirable already).

I’m racking my brains here to think of any tram system I’ve seen which includes a situation where lines intersect but there is no possibility for trams to travel from one line to the other. I wonder what the logic of not having a junction can be?:confused:

The two lines will intersect – twice – allowing for trams to transfer from Red to Green and vice versa. The RPA indicate that these ‘engineering links’ will be for occasional use by trams out of service. If they indicated they were for regular passenger services they would be required to complete a study on all the other new possible passenger movements for the EIS.

http://www.rpa.ie/en/news/Pages/RPAAppliesforLuasBroombridgeRailwayOrder.aspx

That appears very shortsighted; Dick Gleeson’s figure of eight idea always seemed like a good one to me. The Eastern end of the Red Line would considerably benefit from a link to Sandyford / Cherrywood allowing occupiers to front office in the IFSC/North Wall and use cheaper back offices in the business parks.

The proposed route is terrible (splitting the line and building an new Liffey bridge). Soon after this emerged as the preferred route (after a public consultation which didn’t include this route at all), the RPA published some cost estimates on their website (which I cannot find anymore). This preferred route was estimated to cost 70% more than the simple and direct route via Westmoreland St. and lower O’Connell St. The RPA should be forced to publish their evaluation of the routes; this route is worse than all the others in terms of cost, disruption during construction, operational efficiency or utility. Linking the Luas lines is a very worthwhile project but it’s hard to have enthusiasm for such an illogical and convoluted route.

That routing is clearly predicated on a scenario that Luas will not be extended in a northerly direction and provides the perfect loop removing the need for a turnback. As Luas will be extended further North albeit route unknown the removal of the turnback is no longer required; could one suggest The Black Church, Mounjoy St & Blessington Streetas the loop and ensure that Luas services Dublin Central/Cathal Brugha St in both directions from its extended northerly footprint.

@jimg wrote:

The proposed route is terrible (splitting the line and building an new Liffey bridge). Soon after this emerged as the preferred route (after a public consultation which didn’t include this route at all), the RPA published some cost estimates on their website (which I cannot find anymore). This preferred route was estimated to cost 70% more than the simple and direct route via Westmoreland St. and lower O’Connell St. The RPA should be forced to publish their evaluation of the routes; this route is worse than all the others in terms of cost, disruption during construction, operational efficiency or utility. Linking the Luas lines is a very worthwhile project but it’s hard to have enthusiasm for such an illogical and convoluted route.

I agree with jimg completely on this. Splitting the lines is always undesirable as it duplicates much of the infrastructure cost, and the disruption during construction phase and it makes the system less legible permanently, but to do it here on O’Connell St./Westmoreland St [or D’Olier St.], the one boulevard route in the city centre that could take a two-way tram system effortlessly, is just daft, pure and simple.

The motivation at the time seemed to about getting ourselves another fancy new bridge, rather than about solving any perceived route problems, but even then the resultant bridge looked like a bit of a plank if I recall and in no way did it make up for the stupidity of trying to squeeze one branch of the Luas down Marlborough St.

I also don’t see how a convoluted swing around at Parnell St. is any more efficient than the dead-end turn back that we’ve had on the other lines since day one.

People will get angry that we always seem to be negative on archiseek, but for christ sake can somebody not spot these howlers at draft design stage and stop at least some of the money going down the drain?

it all starts here…
It’s a shame metro north will reduce people crossing the bridge.

http://www.vrdublin.co.uk/dublin-ireland-tour/source/oconnorstbridge.html

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=6703&page=2

@gunter wrote:

I also don’t see how a convoluted swing around at Parnell St. is any more efficient than the dead-end turn back that we’ve had on the other lines since day one.

Loops are more efficient for 2 general reasons and in the case of O’Connell St another site specific reason. Firstly trains are automatically on the right platform and no crossing clearance needs to be built into the timetable; secondly the trams don’t stop for anything other than a setdown as the drivers stay at the front of the tram at all times.

The site specific reason for taking it further out is that you get construction disturbance out of the CC in one hit; just imagine if the three Luas lines were built as per the original plan then all of the construction disturbance would be behind the City now…

parnell square loop fesiable? guess we have to get the writers to write about that…
you would even wonder if you could do 180 in oconell st?

@PVC King wrote:

Loops are more efficient for 2 general reasons and in the case of O’Connell St another site specific reason. Firstly trains are automatically on the right platform and no crossing clearance needs to be built into the timetable; secondly the trams don’t stop for anything other than a setdown as the drivers stay at the front of the tram at all times.

Pretty marginal advantage though, especially when it’s fairly inevitable that the line will eventually be extended northwards, to Broombridge, or wherever.

@PVC King wrote:

The site specific reason for taking it further out is that you get construction disturbance out of the CC in one hit . . .

Sorry, I don’t understand that

@missarchi wrote:

parnell square loop fesiable? guess we have to get the writers to write about that…
you would even wonder if you could do 180 in oconell st?

But we just don’t need a loop at all, or a turn-table, or a swing-around, there are dead-end turn-backs at Tallaght, College Green, Connolly, the Point and wherever that Green Line ends, what’s the problem?

Pretty marginal advantage though, especially when it’s fairly inevitable that the line will eventually be extended northwards, to Broombridge, or wherever.

I wouldn’t call 2 mins per tram reversal marginal; the frequency difference would be 4 minute versus 2 minute headways. Twice the capacity due to elimination of a major health and safety concern of trams crossing.

The site specific reason for taking it further out is that you get construction disturbance out of the CC in one hit . . .

Sorry, I don’t understand that

Once the loop is built beyond Parnell Square and Dorset Street it ensures that the core City Centre has its current planned routes completed; if you go to OCS and stop then in a few years when Luas is extended to Ballymun etc then the disturbance takes place in a less public transport sensitive area; a extra little distance now has the capacity to dramatically reduce future negative externalities.

@PVC King wrote:

Once the loop is built beyond Parnell Square and Dorset Street it ensures that the core City Centre has its current planned routes completed; if you go to OCS and stop then in a few years when Luas is extended to Ballymun etc then the disturbance takes place in a less public transport sensitive area; a extra little distance now has the capacity to dramatically reduce future negative externalities.

Are you familliar with transport21? non of what you say is happening, The line BXD is a combination of the city centre link up and the Broombridge line. There will be no luas service to Dorset Street or Ballymun.

As you well know MN is unaffordable and will not happen; a line will be built going north but it will be on street. BXD’s route via Dominick Street makes no sense whatsoever given the straighter line up Parnell Sq….

@PVC King wrote:

As you well know MN is unaffordable and will not happen; a line will be built going north but it will be on street. BXD’s route via Dominick Street makes no sense whatsoever given the straighter line up Parnell Sq….

that may be your opinion, but that’s not what’s happening, the railway order application is for a line connecting Stephen’s Green to Broombridge. It may not make sense to you, but that is what’s happening.

It may not make sense to you, but that is what’s happening.

There is no railway order for BXD; it is for the flawed unnecessary bridge route of the simplistic Ciaran Cuffe inspired join the dots route which will be revised to make sense or simply conditioned by a higher authority; no doubt Dick Gleeson will present an opinion of urbanity involving full OCS exposure at DCC level extoling the virtues of redeploying the wasted bridge funds towards his figure of eight.

@PVC King wrote:

There is no railway order for BXD; it is for the flawed unnecessary bridge route of the simplistic Ciaran Cuffe inspired join the dots route which will be revised to make sense or simply conditioned by a higher authority; no doubt Dick Gleeson will present an opinion of urbanity involving full OCS exposure at DCC level extoling the virtues of redeploying the wasted bridge funds towards his figure of eight.

the railway application will be submitted on June 30th, as far as I know, the railway order application is for line BXD. A change of mind at this point is unlikely and would result in a whole new order and delay completion beyond 2020. The application is for the line displayed below:

Plans for Luas link-up being finalised
Tuesday, 22 June 2010 10:57
Plans are being finalised for the long-awaited link up between the two Luas lines in Dublin city centre. The cost is estimated at up to €170m.

The Rail Procurement Agency is due to make an application to An Bord Pleanála for the new line running from St Stephen’s Green to Parnell Street.

The Luas link line is planned to run from St Stephen’s Green by Trinity College and up O’Connell Street before doubling back down Marlborough Street and across a new bridge over the Liffey.

It would connect the Green line, which terminates at St Stephen’s Green, to the Red Line which runs along Abbey Street. It would also form part of a new Line D that will connect Luas services with a suburban rail station at Broombridge near Cabra.

However, business leaders in the city are anxious that work on the new line is completed at the same time as work on Metro North which is due to start in 2012.

It is understood that the RPA wants to build them separately but the Dublin Chamber of Commerce says this would add two years to construction and consequent disruption in the city centre.

The RPA advertised its plans in the national press this morning and is due to deliver its Railway Order on June 30.
http://www.rte.ie/business/2010/0622/luas.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%5EVIX

I’m a touch lost on this as the article claims it will go to Parnell Square on the one hand but to Broombridge on the other; clear as mud as they say; the cost to Broombridge is €170m yet the estimated cost to Lucan was €1bn; why can’t the route intersect with Maynooth Dart at Phibsboro and continue to Ballymun? Take out the pointless new bridge and cost falls further to certainly sub €100m if the route goes to Parnell Square prior to a proper northern route being devised.

The myth of Aircoach slow journey times from the airport to the outer CBD has been exposed……

@PVC King wrote:

[

The article is confusing.I take it to mean that the loop section(BX) will be completed first with the D part to be built later, though it never actually says that.Costs could be slashed if the line simply crossed O’Connell Bridge went straight up O’Connell street and stopped at Parnell Square.If the RPA still wanted their loop, they could send it around the square instead of having a traditional turnback.

Yes the 170 million was the original estimate is for the link up to Parnell Sq from what I recall (which was estimated to cost less than 100 million for the straight forward link up).

We’ve gone over all this before a number of times but there is no operational benefits to the loop, you are not going to get 30 trams an hour in an on-street system no matter how you terminate the lines. The extra cost of building a loops only make sense for systems which have older tram stock (with doors on one side only). Even if there was operational benefit, it is temporary as it becomes useless once the line is extended.

I don’t like being negative about public transport either but this is such a mess of a proposal: double the stops, double the disruption, double the utility diversion, an extra bridge at almost double the cost while delivering a confusing mess: Westmoreland, O’Connell St Lower, O’Connell St Upper (which has ZERO utility as a pick-up stop) are northbound only while Trinity, Marlborough and Parnell (a little over 150m from O’Connell St Upper – i.e. less than a 2 minute walk apart) southbound only.

@jimg wrote:

Yes the 170 million was the original estimate is for the link up to Parnell Sq from what I recall (which was estimated to cost less than 100 million for the straight forward link up).

Those costs are pre recession and given that the works excluding the bridge are virtually all labour intensive i.e. digging up roads and fixing overhead cables to buildings the proportionate saving on the direct logical route would be higher and therefore more likely to see cuts than for a bridge where concrete prices have not fallen as much as labour costs.

@jimg wrote:

We’ve gone over all this before a number of times but there is no operational benefits to the loop, you are not going to get 30 trams an hour in an on-street system no matter how you terminate the lines. The extra cost of building a loops only make sense for systems which have older tram stock (with doors on one side only). Even if there was operational benefit, it is temporary as it becomes useless once the line is extended.

You are probably right that 30 trams per hour is ambitious but once Luas goes down College Green that will be the end private car use at that location; post port tunnel the strategic value of the quays as a freight route is no longer a consideration and the North South car axis will be split into three versus the current ‘I feel like zipping accross town through the Main Street’ arrangement. Clearly journey times will be slower on the on-street section but with a clear priority given to Luas frequencies can be higher than on the Red Line where car traffic considerations are higher by virtue of crossing very busy routes such as Amiens St, Gardiner St, O’Connell St, Capel St, Church St, Parkgate St and at Hueston.

If College Green were substantially calmed Dorset Street would become busier as drivers use Capel Street as a substitute for O’Connell Street Southbound and either Gardner Street or North Kind St/Chuch Street Southbound.

What I would hate to see happen is that Luas would terminate at the North end of O’Connell Street and that in a few years when it is extended that a new programme of works would create disruption in Dublin 1 again. Regardless of which direction Luas is to be extended it will certainly clear Parnell Square and enter a North West Axis into Dublin 7. I would suggest that the current phase enter a point in Dublin 7 to get construction disturbance out of the City Centre and from where the network could be extended either to Grangegorman and or Ballymun/Finglas.

I don’t like being negative about public transport either but this is such a mess of a proposal: double the stops, double the disruption, double the utility diversion, an extra bridge at almost double the cost while delivering a confusing mess: Westmoreland, O’Connell St Lower, O’Connell St Upper (which has ZERO utility as a pick-up stop) are northbound only while Trinity, Marlborough and Parnell (a little over 150m from O’Connell St Upper – i.e. less than a 2 minute walk apart) southbound only.

I totally agree that the length of the line in comparison to the distance seperated makes no sense whatsoever; whilst favouring a turn back loop arrangement it needs to be girrafe (neck and head) proportioned if done to minimise costs; there are also a lot less utilities and traffic to divert once you leave the immediate core central area.

@missarchi wrote:

it all starts here…
It’s a shame metro north will reduce people crossing the bridge.

*snip*

http://www.vrdublin.co.uk/dublin-ireland-tour/source/oconnorstbridge.html

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=6703&page=2

Metro North =/= Luas BXD

Might be just a slip, but I’ve noticed on a lot of forums that people are confusing MN with BXD quite often.

Railway order documents are now available online: http://www.dublinluasbroombridge.ie/

What a mess this would be. There is absolutely no design input into how the heart of the city centre should look. Its seems to me that nearly every statue in the city centre will have to be relocated. There is no corresponding plan to redesign the streets in a more orderly fashion. O’Connell Street will be ruined in my view, trees removed, pavement removed, wirescape right in front of the GPO.

An absolute joke!

Although the issues have been explored in more detail it has a bus gate/metro north/dartu generic feel about it so much so these projects all look like they have been designed by the same person. Any of these stations stops would not look out of place anywhere in the world. Is there a DCC development plan? What does gehl have to say? I think the poles in the middle of the bridge should follow the centre line of spire street not the centre line of the bridge it looks odd.

@StephenC wrote:

What a mess this would be. There is absolutely no design input into how the heart of the city centre should look. Its seems to me that nearly every statue in the city centre will have to be relocated. There is no corresponding plan to redesign the streets in a more orderly fashion. O’Connell Street will be ruined in my view, trees removed, pavement removed, wirescape right in front of the GPO.

An absolute joke!

It doesn’t look like they’re narrowing the median or removing any trees and/or statues from OCS from this plan: http://www.dublinluasbroombridge.ie/Downloads/PlanofProposedWorks/02-STRUCTURES/07_BXD_ST_29_B-C1.pdf

Could be wrong, but to me it looks like they are just putting the track in the right lane (northbound)

@StephenC wrote:

What a mess this would be. There is absolutely no design input into how the heart of the city centre should look. Its seems to me that nearly every statue in the city centre will have to be relocated. There is no corresponding plan to redesign the streets in a more orderly fashion. O’Connell Street will be ruined in my view, trees removed, pavement removed, wirescape right in front of the GPO.

An absolute joke!

Stephen’s reaction is exactly what the RPA wanted, the RPA want Metro North built at all costs and never wanted to build the Luas link up; god knows they have had 10 years to do it and haven’t turned a screw. The esaiest way to prevent the link up from happening and so aid their supremely flawed MN case is to present a scheme for planning consideration with insensitive properties which will be thrown out on heritage grounds. I suggest the minister clear the deadwood from the RPA its not as if there aren’t enough unemployed planners to get it right first time.

@PVC King wrote:

Stephen’s reaction is exactly what the RPA wanted, the RPA want Metro North built at all costs and never wanted to build the Luas link up; god knows they have had 10 years to do it and haven’t turned a screw. The esaiest way to prevent the link up from happening and so aid their supremely flawed MN case is to present a scheme for planning consideration with insensitive properties which will be thrown out on heritage grounds. I suggest the minister clear the deadwood from the RPA its not as if there aren’t enough unemployed planners to get it right first time.

This may be not appropriate or possible, but I was wondering why they don’t build the BXD as planned, but change the Metro North so that it begins at Grangegorman and goes from there underground to Mater and follow the rest of the planned MN line.
Does that make sense? It would cut quite a bit off the price I’d imagine. They could presumably use the same tracks but the BXD trains would continue on to Boombridge and the MN would go to airport.

Getting the route to Phibsboro on surface is not a problem as there is the former canal bed which runs from basically Broadstone to the Royal Canal and is used as a linear park; the real problem is the section between Cross Guns Bridge and the start of Botanic Avenue from which point N2 has seperated and you are back to 3 bed semi densities and more critically traffic loadings should the bus network be tweaked to feed Luas vs An Lar.

The costings for a cut and cover tunnel from the end of the dried out canal bed to the start of Botanic Avenue would be interesting. Once the stations were located at either end of the tunnel there would be no expensive underground levels or concourses.

The railway order documents are complex and I havent even looked at the EIS yet but the urban design statement makes me seriously wonder what the fuck is going on in this banana republic (excuse my French). What an astonishingly poor document! This is meant to be the vision for the transformation of the city centre. It is meant to redefine all the great spaces of the city for ever! (or at least for many years to come). I challenge anyone to really consider this document and really consider how it will impact the quality of the city centre. What strikes me:

• Who are the architects who are “transforming” the city;
• Where is the input and direction of the many over paid officials of Dublin City Council who are paid and given responsibility to manage the city – I mean you John Tierney, Dick Gleeson, Michael Stubbs and Ali Grehan et al;
• How has this design been assessed in the context of the existing and new development plans;
• How has it been devised in the context of the soon to be published “Public Realm Strategy” for the city centre;
• How after all the “public consultations” which have taken place has this design been arrived.

Dontget me wrong: I completely support a Luas link. But not on these terms.

Interested parties have 5 weeks to consider this mess and make their views known to An Bord Pleanala. Do you care enough?

@StephenC wrote:

Interested parties have 5 weeks to consider this mess and make their views known to An Bord Pleanala. Do you care enough?

The question is will it make a difference.
Based on this it seems like full steam ahead.
If this is the case do we need anymore case numbers?

The railway order documents are complex and I havent even looked at the EIS yet but the urban design statement makes me seriously wonder what the fuck is going on in this banana republic (excuse my French). What an astonishingly poor document! This is meant to be the vision for the transformation of the city centre. It is meant to redefine all the great spaces of the city for ever! (or at least for many years to come). I challenge anyone to really consider this document and really consider how it will impact the quality of the city centre. What strikes me:

Who are the architects who are “transforming” the city;
Where is the input and direction of the many over paid officials of Dublin City Council who are paid and given responsibility to manage the city – I mean you John Tierney, Dick Gleeson, Michael Stubbs and Ali Grehan et al;
How has this design been assessed in the context of the existing and new development plans;
How has it been devised in the context of the soon to be published “Public Realm Strategy” for the city centre;
How after all the “public consultations” which have taken place has this design been arrived.

Dontget me wrong: I completely support a Luas link. But not on these terms.

Interested parties have 5 weeks to consider this mess and make their views known to An Bord Pleanala. Do you care enough?

If the route were ammended to a traffic calmed OCS and College Green with the wirescape done in a similar manner to Harcourt Street; what would your views be?

No it wouldn’t. Firstly, the plans will actually result in traffic calming on College Green and Westmoreland Street and OCS as he amount of space given over to traffic is reduced…for example from 5 lanes to 3 to 2 back to 3 again on Westmoreland.

The issue of wirescape is of much greater concern this time around as opposed to when the original lines were laid. This plan proposed wirescapes in front of some of the most iconic buildings in the city centre (indeed in the country). Mansion House, TCD and BoI, the GPO. It is proposing to shroud some of the most notable monuments in the city centre with wires. Check out whats planned for the Parnell statue. Tell me what type of postcard images you will achieve here!

One small item: BDX proposed using a different type of pylon to previous LUAS projects. They look better to be sure…more streamlined, black, less intrusive. But this will mean that there are now three different types of treatment for Luas wiring system around the city. Luas in Docklands for example has different lamps atop its pylons to other streets in the city. Its a small detail but where is the consistency to create a cohesive city centre design here?

I have heard the works proposed under T21 for Dublin described as as “a once in a lifetime chance” to define the city centre. The one big opportunity that will be available to DCC and others to realise a world class city centre environment. I heard that from John Tierney, the City Manager and I think its true. So dont you think that the plan that transpires for the city centre with Luas BDX should be a tad more visionary than what is put forward here? I mean just look at quality of the design statement. A child would do better. This crew simply think sticking some nice pictures into a document and using the word “axial” liberally translates as a vision for the city centre.

Take the treatment of the Henry Moore statue on College Street as an example. The document states it is going to resituate the statue to give it a greater axial relationship to the portico of the HofL. Great! Symmetry is a great element in creating aesthetic. However, then the design proposed to surround the statue with randomly placed trees. Hmm – what happened to symmetry? Any what is the justification for trees here? The unsightly and long redundant loos behind the statue will be removed at ground level I(the underground being reused for technical cabins). The documents states that the “memory of the Victorian WC” will be recognised with a brass outline of the former loo. Are they serious! Is that a joke! A memorial to a toilet! Put that on your tourist trail Pat Liddy.

Apparently the designs have taken cognizance of DCCs vision for the city centre. All I see is a small image of a sketch for the front of Mansion House. It looks like something done on the back of an envelope at a meeting. Maybe its part of the plans for the street being devised along with Grafton Street. These plans are due to be on display later this year with work to start next year. Again, I havent read the EIS and all documents but I cant say there seems to be much mention of this significant development in the Luas BDX design statement.

But I dont know…the urbanist in me tell me that what I should be seeing is a a visionary plan for the centre created by DCC which the RPA then feed into. Rather than that I see “here is what the RPA engineers want…and look, lots of nice chinese granite to show our commitment to urban design”

The design statement seems to think if it shows images of College Green etc in 1900 with poles and wirescapes etc when the old trams used this area, then this justifies wirescapes in 2010. But I wonder. If the trams has never been removed in the 1950s and were still in use….would we have kept the wirescapes up to the present day. Or would we now be looking at using third rail technology to remove wires and restore unimpeded views of some of the city’s iconic buildings. Think of the arguments regularly made about the Loop Line….sure it was a necessary engineering solution in the 19th C. But now we can tunnel. Would we do the same thing again in 2010?

This is all wrong. This will do to the city centre (in a more subtle fashion) what Gallagher and crew did in the 1970s with their speculative development.

I wonder what the costs of retro-fitting a battery system to store enough juice to get a tram from St Green to Parnell Sq would cost and what amount of passenger space would be lost to accomodate same. I’m not conviced on a third rail as if you leave accessible it will become a suicide magnet and if you sink it into the ground say 18 inches to prevent people touching it; then it would be lethal to cyclists who could get there wheels jammed. A very tough balancing act resolvable by the same technology in Nice but at a cost….

what does 2km of capacitors & 8m 3rd rails cost?

From today’s IT:

DUBLIN CITY Council is opposing a plan to use overhead power cables on the proposed cross-city Luas line because of their detrimental effect on the city’s “exceptional” and “exquisite” architecture.

The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) wants to use the same overhead power supply system on the new line, which will link the Sandyford and Tallaght lines before continuing on to Broombridge in Cabra, as it does on the existing lines.

However, the council said the proposal was not acceptable in the city centre. The route the Luas will take – from St Stephen’s Green, down Dawson Street, through College Green, across O’Connell Bridge, and up O’Connell Street to Parnell Square – passes the city’s most significant public buildings, it said.

College Green in particular consisted of a “progression of exceptional classical buildings”, including the “exquisite” portico of the Bank of Ireland, which should not be compromised by cables and wires. Comparisons made by the RPA in relation to the wiring used by early 20th century trams in the city centre were “not an argument of weight” in the context of best-practice building conservation, the council said.

The RPA should provide an alternative wire-free system, the council argued. It said it was in favour of the overall project but it urged An Bord Pleanála to make it a condition of the railway order that St Stephen’s Green to Parnell Square be a wire-free zone.

The council’s position is supported by the Dublin Civic Trust, which submitted that the overhead lines would have a damaging impact on “large swathes of the ceremonial core of the city”. The Irish Georgian Society is also against the use of overhead lines.

The RPA June applied to An Bord Pleanála last for a railway order to construct the new line. A date for a public hearing on the project is expected to be announced soon by the planning board.

The RPA said it investigated a wire-free option that has been used on trams in Bordeaux in France since 2003. The system uses a third rail embedded in the road between the tram tracks which becomes energised as it hits connectors underneath the tram, but switches off when the tram passes.

However, the RPA said the technology was still new and there were concerns over its robustness, reliability and safety; and it was “substantially” more expensive.

A second bone of contention for the council is that the RPA’s plans to run the Luas along the central plaza of O’Connell Street. The council had undertaken a major improvement scheme of the street in recent years and the widened median was the central element of the design. The proposed alignment would “detrimentally affect the integrity of the newly completed scheme,” the council said, and should not be permitted.

At last some comment from the City Council regarding Line BDX. However this goes to show that contrary to what the RPA say in their submission, they have not been in sufficient agreement with DCC on the design and layout of the tram line and its impact on the wider city streetscapes.

I reckon Dublin City Council should look at reducing the amount of signage clutter and shambolic public domain works it itself has smeared all over the historic core – that may give its complaints more legitimacy.

@Andrew Duffy wrote:

I reckon Dublin City Council should look at reducing the amount of signage clutter and shambolic public domain works it itself has smeared all over the historic core – that may give its complaints more legitimacy.

agreed… or perhaps there is a new found sense of civic pride in DCC;)

the amount of signage all over the historic core of the city pointint towards car parks is ridiculouse, as is signing national primary routes in the city centre. Most journeys are not cross country. If you were going anywhere long distance, you would plan your route in advance. Are streets are far to cluttered. I’d be happy if the RPA used a black cast Iron design similar to the original tram poer lines.

Westmoreland Street has at least three clarway signs no more than 20 feet apart… what sense does that make????

It makes no sense but one has to say that in the age of sat nav people are much better informed as to where they are going; (off topic) any news on the post code project?

Hard not to welcome their submission as the third rail is clearly the only way to limit the signficant visual clutter produced by a vital public transport project. Yes it costs more money however it preserves the architectural integrity of a number of important historical buildings and with a consolidation in signage this area could be restored to a traffic calmed and pristine heritage environment that adds greatly to the amenity of the CC.

PVC King who the hell are you really? Who do you really work for? What is your real interest in Line BXD/Metro North. Do you work for Dublin Bus or maybe those gimps at Carrols Gift Shop or some other city centre business. What? Cause all you have contributed on these forums to public transportation projects is just one pure negativity after another. I would call it trolling but this forum seems to have lacked any kind of moderating for years now letting trolls like you blab on and on and on and on. 😡

I am perplexed as to how you can equate the post below with what you have written

Hard not to welcome their submission as the third rail is clearly the only way to limit the signficant visual clutter produced by a vital public transport project. Yes it costs more money however it preserves the architectural integrity of a number of important historical buildings and with a consolidation in signage this area could be restored to a traffic calmed and pristine heritage environment that adds greatly to the amenity of the CC.

1. Traffic calmed = less busses
2. In previous posts I was the first person on this forum to use the phrase ‘shit goods’ which relates to guess what type of product?

You have ruined this thread so I will continue the post on the other one.

still in zone 1…
express train would take all of 15 minutes…
3 zones is that some kind of joke?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/property/2010/0916/1224278977692.html