Luas Central – Which Route?

RPA selects the worst option (IMO!)

Agency recommends Luas lines be linked at O’Connell Street

The Sunday Business Post

The two Luas lines should be linked in a single loop that would run up O’Connell Street and down Marlborough Street, according to the agency that runs the Dublin tram system. The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) is in favour of a route linking the Sandyford and Tallaght lines along O’Connell Street in a loop that would run east along Cathal Brugha Street and south along Marlborough Street before crossing the Liffey over a new bridge. The agency wants a single track along the west side of O’Connell Street past the GPO, in a bid to reduce disruption in the city centre. A decision on the preferred route was taken at a meeting of the RPA board last week. Consultations are expected between the agency and the Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, in light of the board’s decision.

The RPA have opted for an elaborate loop that will run the green line up o’connell street, turn right on to cathal brugha, back down marlborough street & across a new bridge over the liffey.

So now Dawson, Grafton, College Green, Westmoreland, O’Connell & Marlborough streets are to be plouged up while a new one way bridge across the liffey is also to be constructed which given its impact on the river & the vista from o’connell bridge, could only be justified, in my view, if it saved the disruption to o’connell st & college green.

The benefits of this link up are questionable on so many levels, clearly no consideration has been given to the impact on the cities streetscapes or how effectively luas can function passing through the major arteries of this city.

This is the wrong decision.

Couldn’t believe it when I read it on Sunday – a very strange route indeed – its like they decided “lets use the Luas to regenerate some streets – which ones?”

Nothing more to add. What a disasterous decision, especially on the environmental front 😡

My biggest concern is the proposed bridge across An Life. A cheapo Luas bridge will destroy the breezy view down the river from O’C bridge, and believe me, the bridge will be cheapo (see the Grand Canal bridge).

It’d be a damn shame to squander so much money on a bridge that will wreck part of the boardwalk when O’C bridge has plenty space for two tram tracks.

One step closer to line BX being scrapped altogether?

€100m Luas link derailed

Friday September 28 2007

THE long overdue link-up between the two existing Luas lines has been further delayed to avoid digging up Dublin streets and crippling motorists and businesses for longer than absolutely necessary.

The €100m project to connect the Tallaght and Sandyford lines at O’Connell St, Dublin, will not start now until 2009 at the earliest , the same time as the €5bn Metro.

The link-up from St Stephen’s Green to O’Connell Street will involve digging up much of the city centre around TCD and Westmoreland Street, while the Metro will roughly follow the same route underground.

Instead of digging up the streets for the Luas link-up, and later digging them up again for the Metro it is now expected that both projects will get underway at the same time.

The Railway Procurement Agency and Transport Minister Noel Dempsey yesterday unveiled two proposed routes for the new Luas line from Lucan to the the city centre.

The line will serve Ballyfermot, Liffey Valley and Lucan and is scheduled to be completed by 2013. It will carry up to 25m passengers every year, with a journey time of 42 minutes from Lucan to the city centre.

It will connect to the two existing lines, as well as the Irish Rail network and the proposed metro between the airport and the city centre.

The public is being asked to give its opinion on which route should be chosen, one of which is closer to Ballyfermot.

At a press conference to launch the Luas line, Frank Allen, chief executive of the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA), expressed disappointment that there had not been speedier progress on the city centre link-up.

“We had hoped to have achieved consensus on the route more quickly but that has not happened,” he said.

A new Luas bridge across the River Liffey is being designed to carry trams as part of the new agreed route which runs up O’Connell St and back down Marlborough St before crossing the river.

It is now expected that the link-up and the Metro will start together to avoid digging up streets for one project and then repeating the exercise later.

Mr Dempsey said it was more important to get the project right than doing it fast.

“There is no point in having to dig up the city centre for five or seven years if you can do this in a shorter timescale,” he added.

Oh sweet Jesus Christ.

You’re talking little more than a mile from the centre of the housing sprawl above to either adamstown or fonthill.

I hope the board will forgive me a bit of hubris in quoting one of my own posts.:o

It’s simply that, in the light of recent discussions (here and elsewhere) about the possibility of the city centre LUAS link-up being scrapped, I see this as a way of solving potential conflicts between buses and trams in the area south of College Green.

@Seamus O’G wrote:

Perhaps someone could help out here, as I can’t seem to copy the picture illustrating option E.

It’s just that a thought occurred to me over the weekend about this possibility, which is comfortably the least favoured option on this forum.

And it’s this. If the trams were to go South instead of North along Dawson Street, and North instead of South along Kildare Street, it might help to reduce the conflicts between the trams and buses in and around TCD. There could be a tram stop on the East side of Dawson Street (perhaps doubling with a station around the corner on the South side of Nassau Street), the West side of Kildare Street and the East side of Westmoreland Street; and bus stops on the West side of Dawson Street, the East side of Kildare Street, the North side of Nassau Street, Suffolk Street, the West side of Westmoreland Street, and College Street. In other words, all the bus stops which we currently have would remain, with the exception of the ones outside TCD on the bottom of Grafton Street.

What I’m trying to get at, this would reduce the amount of road space where buses and trams are actually sharing road space and also travelling in the same direction to perhaps a couple of hundred metres (between the bottom of Dawson Street and the stretch around the front of TCD), with the loss only of the stops at the front of TCD, the potential conflicts could be seriously reduced.

The same kind of thing could also be achieved by reversing the bus flows along Dawson Street and Kildare Street. With the current arrangements around St. Stephen’s Green, that might even be more favourable.

Anybody get what I’m on about?

It does not, I fully agree, deal with the issue of College Green itself, or Westmoreland Street or O`Connell Street.

I see no alternative to banning private vehicles from College Green if buses and trams are to live together efficiently in this area. With the current arrangement where so many buses pass through College Green, this would simply have to happen.

However, with four lanes of traffic currently passing between TCD and the BOI at College Green, it should be possible to convert this little stretch into two lanes for trams and two lanes for buses. (Even if TCD had to cede a couple of feet).

I don’t think the above arrangement would impinge on the plan to have the trams travel along Marlborough Street in one direction. I think that is a weird plan, but I don’t think the above proposal would impinge on it to any great extent.

(And apologies to GrahamH as, if implemented, it would in all likelihood involve overhead wires being present in College Green).

College Green does seem to be the real snag point. And there’s really only one solution for that, albeit one which users of private vehicles may see as a Domesday scenario. But if such a decision were to be taken, I’d suggest that the above solution about a variation on option E might be one which could make the link-up run quite efficiently as a whole.

Or is there some very obvious problem that I’ve missed?

Please help, as I quite like this one.:)

The solution is, of course, to reverse the direction that traffic goes around tcd.