Luas Central – Which Route?

woops

@Thomond Park wrote:

… If one of my clients sent me out to acquire a building and I had a budget for £40m and I came back having spent £83m I would rightly be replaced by someone who could do the job. …

In relation to the costs above the costs for excavation, relaying utilities and electricity had to be done anyway bearing in mind that phase 1 Luas was not intended to be horse drawn.

Again you have missed my point , so one final time. All the original costings were for tram grade. The final product is a combination of tram and metro grade.Your example should read: if one of my clients gave me a budet for 40 million and i came back and suggested that in the long run it might be better to spend 83 million.

With respect the to the point of having to divert utilities , you have completely shot through your previous suggestions of the “vitorian line” and only the taney bridge requiring a change of spec. By excavating the track , it meant there were no old foundations on which to build. No foundations, no track, no bridges. The only thing that was left was a right of way. You are wrong to complain that because the line previously coped with trains it was an easy job.

another thing to consider is that while other countries might appear to have much cheaper tram systems , the cost of diverting utilities is borne by each company involved , or diversion doesn’t occur. In ireland diversions are payed by the rpa. (economically it makes no difference , but on paper it does). This additional cost is also part of the metro price tag.

While it would be nice to be an expert in costing , it is simply not possible to do it to an accuracy that would satisfy you ! For example , the jubilee undeground ended up costing 425 million euros per kilometre due to tunnelling difficulties. The madrid extension that every paper talks about cost 50. the rpa are hoping that it will come in around 80 million per kilometre.They simply can’t and won’t be able to come up with a more accurate figure.

You just can’t get enough abuse can you ?

1 excavation: the foundations for the tracks , would have to cope with hundreds of tonnes. (Compare foundation for a ten story appartment block to a bungalow and you get the picture).
2.utilities diversion , this requires digging up everything up, leaving you to start from scratch , not with an old rail line, that has just had it’s tracks taken up.
3. In the same way as a winding road in the wicklow hills will occasionally have gravel spread over it’s length as surfacing , while a motorway has purpose designed tarmacadam to a high spec in order to cope with lorries. The same thing applies to the metals tracks and everything below : two grades , one cheaper , one not so cheap.
4.The electric system. : why did they need change the dart electric system using your logic ? (the dart upgrade cost 170 million). I will tell you why. if there are metros comming every 90 seconds at peak time, and each metro weight 10 to 20 times a tram , then you have to be able to deliver a whole lot more electricity safely. So you wouldn’t suggest that the wiring in a home was sufficient for a factory , would you ?.
5. Bridges: deciding you need a bridge that can cope with a lorry instead of pedestrians is NOT simply changing the specs.
6. between sandyford and the canal there are 2 at grade junctions. They will simply be closed. total cost : no euros!
7. a large part of additional expense went into blasting the rock cutting between stillorgan and ballaly stops, so that it could accomodate the much wider metro.

as someone with an ego the size of robert maxwell , i know how hard it is to be wrong, but it is ok thomond.honestly

WH,

on the money as always;

now time to take the handbag, why am I thinking a 1989 film about advertising?:

@a boyle wrote:

You just can’t get enough abuse can you ?

1 excavation: the foundations for the tracks , would have to cope with hundreds of tonnes. (Compare foundation for a ten story appartment block to a bungalow and you get the picture).

What does a fully laden Luas weigh, what does a proposed and promised fully laden 50m Luas weigh? We are not talking about a Nissan Micra here.

@a boyle wrote:

2.utilities diversion , this requires digging up everything up, leaving you to start from scratch , not with an old rail line, that has just had it’s tracks taken up.

Are you trying to say that if this were Luas alone that the utilities could have stayed in-situ?

@a boyle wrote:

3. In the same way as a winding road in the wicklow hills will occasionally have gravel spread over it’s length as surfacing , while a motorway has purpose designed tarmacadam to a high spec in order to cope with lorries. The same thing applies to the metals tracks and everything below : two grades , one cheaper , one not so cheap.

What are you talking about the same width of trackbed had to be accomodated]4.The electric system. : why did they need change the dart electric system using your logic ? (the dart upgrade cost 170 million). I will tell you why. if there are metros comming every 90 seconds at peak time, and each metro weight 10 to 20 times a tram , then you have to be able to deliver a whole lot more electricity safely. So you wouldn’t suggest that the wiring in a home was sufficient for a factory , would you ?. [/QUOTE]

The power units run at Luas spec; the poles are the same regardless of voltage what is your point or more to the point where is the Dart spec equipment on the Luas network, is it on planet RPA?

@a boyle wrote:

5. Bridges: deciding you need a bridge that can cope with a lorry instead of pedestrians is NOT simply changing the specs.

There is little civil engineering spec difference between a Luas and a Dart in terms of load bearing capacity as stated ad naseum the rail safety rules are the same and the number of bridges low.

@a boyle wrote:

6. between sandyford and the canal there are 2 at grade junctions. They will simply be closed. total cost : no euros!

Then why have additional at grade crossing been proposed on the extension? Either the RPA are as stupid as they look or Cullen is telling lies about an upgrade to metro on this route.

@a boyle wrote:

7. a large part of additional expense went into blasting the rock cutting between stillorgan and ballaly stops, so that it could accomodate the much wider metro.

as someone with an ego the size of robert maxwell , i know how hard it is to be wrong, but it is ok thomond.honestly

The expenditure at this point was flagged in the original EIS it was a known cost; your nit picking has led you to forget that your theory relies on a hypothesis that the Red line was delivered on budget i.e. €225m and that the Green line came in at €600m or 3.5 times its original budget.

You certainly have Maxwells capacity for figures and I think that Seamus Breananns admission that the sums over the past 5 years have been done on the back of a cigerette box are equally valid.

Why are you an apologist for this type of group?

The correct answer to which route, may be ‘none of the above’. The original intention was to connect the airport metro to the southside luas line and this is now mysteriously not even an option. We are to have instead two separate lines running at the same gauge that terminate in the same place in the city centre but are not connected. The capacity of the southside luas line will continue to be crippled by its on-street section. The tunnel boring machine for the northside metro will be abandoned under Stephen’s Green rather than finishing the job by tunneling on to surface at Ranelagh and join the existing line

So there is a consultation process but the public was not consulted about the most important decision of all.

City centre roadspace is precious. A north-south underground link would free up the road section along harcourt street and stephens green and the unbuilt section between Stephen’s Green and O’Connell Street to be used by pedestrians, buses or bikes whichever makes most sense.

Does anyone know why the north-south metro was abandoned in favour of building this nonsensical on-street link?

I read an article in the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday that says that due to objections raised by Dublin Bus, Route A is now dropped in favour of Route B..anyone else see this?

Frank Allen made his by now biannual PR appearance on Today with Pat Kenny last week – you can hear it below at 1:44:44:

http://www.rte.ie/rams/radio/latest/Thu/rte-todaywithpatkenny-tpk.smil (12 mins)

So only Route A and this new route ‘Route F’ are on the table at this stage. It’s now a matter of consultation with the ‘stakeholders’ to see which gets the green light according to Allen – traders who shout the loudest from the sound of things.
It is the opinion of the RPA that an adequate DART connection will happen via the Interconnector at St. Stephen’s Green – I wonder could some trams travel direct to Connolly (DART) by switching lines at the Marlborough St-Abbey St junction too?

Whatever about the transport implications, I have to say I find this proposed interconnector is getting more and more ludicrous by the second as regards its impact on the urban environment. With this Route F not only is the jewel of College Green affected by cables and poles, as well as O’Connell Bridge, but now we have cables passing by the entire frontage of the GPO – inches in front of the portico! Not to mention cutting across the upper street at Cathal Brugha St, and the new bridge over the Liffey, itself laden with poles and overhead cables, in addition to the same on O’Connell Bridge (also passing O’Connell Monument), and the Loop Line already further down the river. The sole redeeming factor of this new route is that it limits the impact on Westmoreland Street, O’Connell Street, Bridge and Monument by one line – even if it just transposes the other elsewhere.

This just reeks of the very worst kind of impact on the urban environment – intrusive, untidy, cluttered and fundamentally ugly. For the scheme to be suddenly extended on this scale at such a late stage, significantly impacting on newly included heritage areas, when the potential for investigating powering the system in an alternative fashion is redundant, appears almost devious, as it is disrespectful to the built environment of the city.

From day one back in the 1990s there has been a constant underlying current of ‘sure this is only Dublin, a dirty provincial west Brit city – it’s not Venice you know, huh huh huh’. Essentially nobody cares about this issue at all – rather this link is being dealt with purely as a series of lines on a map and the investigation of technicalities of the project. It seems aesthetics don’t even enter the equation. Why aren’t renderings being drawn up, and the impact on the appearance of the city being given equal, or indeed any weight at all, relative to the logistics of getting passengers from A to B? Why were no visual impact boards on display at any of the public ‘consultations’, even just to allay concerns?

This is not just about choosing a convenient route for a tram, it’s also about a hugely important matter of respecting existing environments within the ‘monumental’ city core. What purpose does College Green serve only to provide an architectural heart for the entire city – it is the very essence of this space, as with most western cities in the 21st century with similar public areas. It has little other role – and in the context of removing vehicular traffic and horrendous levels of municipal clutter from the space, including large trees, it’s nothing short of baffling that a relatively minor public transport link is allowed hold such sway in its impact on this area with absolutely NO visual impact statement in public consultations.

Yes lines passed through here before blah blah, yes O’Connell Bridge was rebuilt as is to cater for trams, yes they ran right past the GPO blah blah, but this is irrelevant. As mentioned before, if it was proposed to run telephone cables through the city to the same extent, right past the principal buildings and urban spaces in the capital, there’d be absolute uproar. But because shiny silvery trams are being catered for, suddenly nobody gives a toss. In a modern, technologically advanced capital, it is simply not acceptable for the cityscape to be strung with cables – it’s one thing if a legacy issue, but to start afresh in the 21st century is nothing short of embarrassing. It is this above all that really frustrates me about this interconnector (which otherwise I do see the
full logic of implementing).

It is ironic that this link attempts to cater to a large, if minority extent, for tourists travelling from transport hubs to city centre hotels – the very people the city is being marketed at through its streetscapes and set-piece buildings that will be affected by these lines. Views of the Spire from Westmoreland Street would also be intruded on, as with the entire walk along western O’Connell Street and Bridge, and vastly worsened if Route A is chosen. Likewise regarding all the famous views of the BoI, Trinity and the House of Lords portico – all the points rasied before.

In a way it’s quite startling the difference between here and Bordeaux, where uproar was raised at the prospect of cables passing the h

Red Line Luas passengers up 25%

December 28, 2006 11:33
Luas passenger numbers increased this year from 22 million to 26 million, a jump of around 17%.

The Red Line, which runs from Tallaght to Connelly train station, saw passenger numbers rise 25% this year.

Public consultation has commenced on the proposed extension of the Green Line from Cherrywood to the Bray area, and the possible connection of the Green and Red lines is under consideration.

I agree with sentiments above and feel that there are other compelling arguments to take this process back to the drawing board. Firstly the effect of unjoined systems the two routes under consideration will probably have a common halt but from what I have seen will do nothing to further the figure of eight model that would allow interchangeability between routings and could if done right assist the creation of a flexible expandible system.

@Morlan wrote:

Double-decker buses can travel under it… I don’t see why the LUAS can’t. Probably a safety issue for minimum clearance. I would’t like to see Westland Row lowered, I think it would spoil the street somewhat.

Luas and its pantograph, and of course the overheads, would not fit safely underneath this bridge methinks.