Luas Central – Which Route?

Agreed 100% – Plan B

On balance, having another bridge across the Liffey is less visually damaging than having lower Grafton Street and College Green poled and cabled, and Lower O’Connell Street and Bridge destroyed with poles, cables, platforms and attendant features.

Or why not go Plan D and have the best of both worlds? :rolleyes:

B is perfect for serving Pearse Station which is also set to become a hub of sorts under Transport 21. A bit of a roundabout route all right having to double round the Trinity site, but something has to give. A pity it couldn’t join the red line further west – suppose the RPA want it as close to O’Connell Street as possible…

I was surprised by your choice, Graham, you having such an affinity for O’Connell Bridge.

As it stands, the bridge has an equal, balanced amount of river space either side of it, as it deserves. Ripping up College Green would only be temporary. A bridge would be permanent, a bridge that would be designed and built under a very tight budget. We could end up with an awful concrete heap of shite, further spoiling the view down the river – the loop line is bad enough.

The proposed LUAS bridge will also be a tram stop, cluttered with ticket machines, shelters and other paraphernalia, and would further obstruct the view of the Custom House.

Route A would be constructed in the least amount of time. It would provide the fastest connection for people travelling between Line A and B. Makes sense to me…

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Agreed 100% – Plan B

On balance, having another bridge across the Liffey is less visually damaging than having lower Grafton Street and College Green poled and cabled, and Lower O’Connell Street and Bridge destroyed with poles, cables, platforms and attendant features.

Or why not go Plan D and have the best of both worlds? :rolleyes:

B is perfect for serving Pearse Station which is also set to become a hub of sorts under Transport 21. A bit of a roundabout route all right having to double round the Trinity site, but something has to give. A pity it couldn’t join the red line further west – suppose the RPA want it as close to O’Connell Street as possible…

It also duplicates the route of de proposed metro which makes the route selections outlined in this process farcical.

Routes A; D & E follow almost the exact route of de metro

Route B after taking an unnecessary jaunt to O’Donaghues then almost replicates the existing Loopline alignment

Only route C offers any additional coverage but then returns to the metro alignment

None of the above should be built

@Morlan wrote:

Luas down Grafton is NEVER going to happen. It’s the most important retail street/public space in Ireland. The affect on businesses there would be disastrous.

I’m sure anyone living in Dublin would agree.

I agree that it simply couldn’t be allowed to happen if it were an on-street arrangement.

Though I’ve never understood why it could not be built down Grafton Street under the street.
i.e.
Step 1: Dig up 50-100 metres of the street, moving the utilities to the side.
Step 2: Cover over this section so that work on track preparation can continue along this section under the street.
Step 3: repeat step 1 on the next 50-100 metre section of the street;
Step 4: repeat step 2.

Repeat these steps as long as is necessary.

The advantage of this would be that it would give the most direct route – no need for awkward corners at the top and bottom of Dawson Street or conflicts with buses and other traffic in this area. No more than 50-100 metres of Grafton Street need be affected at any one time. However, it would be more expensive.

@LOB wrote:

where would you start the cutting? Harcourt street?
I think it would be a disaster for St Stephens Green & I’m not sure where it would link up with the other line as it is so close to the Liffey.

I don’t think it would be necessary to start cutting as early as Harcourt Street, and if you did have to then the whole idea would be a non-starter (Harcourt Street itself and the Cuffe Street-St. Stephen’s Green South corridor would be finished as a route for private traffic).

So parallel to the current LUAS tracks on the Green is the only option. The road space there is practically unused now that traffic does not/cannot go around the Green along that side. That side of the Green is somewhere between 250 and 300 metres long – plenty long enough to lower the track by 4-5 metres.

There would also be plenty of distance to surface the line before crossing O’Connell Bridge (or even a new bridge across the river).

But I’d agree with you, it would be pretty unsightly in an area as nice as St. Stephen’s Green.

The more you look at the bigger picture on the likes of P11, the more you realise the extent to which all of the above, as has been said, replicate other planned infrastructures – to the degree that unless you are fully in the know about the intricacies of Dublin transport, the city’s needs, the capacities of various modes, and interconnectivity, you really cannot make an informed call on the proposed routes (me included), save what your general preference would be.

Hence it merely seems to me :), that all of these proposals, some of them quite different, and some if not all in one way or another replicating other planned or existing routes, reinforce the notion that this link is only being built for the sake of building a link. It doesn’t seem to matter where it ends up, what route it takes or what it serves along the way – just ‘as along as a link is built’, at an astronimical cost, then all will be well with Luas at last.

Especially regarding Plan B which I voted for on architectural/urban design grounds. If this route is taken it will probably take longer as jimg says than to walk to the Northside. Even with the most direct Plan A, it will probably save you about two/three minutes. So unless the linking of the lines offers real advantages in interconnectivity, the transference of rolling stock, and the opening up of the Northside for Luas extension, there really is not point in doing this.

Morlan I voted for B as it avoids College Green, i.e. saves College Green from wires and poles, as it does with O’Connell Bridge and Street.
Even if the cables have ‘minimal’ impact on College Green as will be spouted, personally I couldn’t care less – cables are cables: wires that will clutter the views of our finest buildings. Admittedly it’s more than a bit ironic objecting to such features on O’Connell Brdge considering it was for these very reasons it was built in the first place, but I firmly believe that had Dublin trams survived 1949, efforts would have been made long ago to rid the city centre of unsightly cables especially College Green.

Likweise having a major platform and all the ancillary crap that goes along with it will destroy Lower O’Connell Street; the very introductory stretch of the thoroughfare that requires the most coherence to establish the nature of the street. And as for the possible cable junction at Abbey Street 😮 – it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Route B avoids these issues, and although cables running by Government Buildings is a price that has to be paid, as is an undesirable additional bridge on the Liffey (even if well-designed), they are not as serious as the clutter that would be generated on our principal city streets – at the very time efforts are being made to declutter Dublin’s streetscapes.

@paddyinthehouse wrote:

St Stephens Green North, where part of the over-generous footpath.

This is a joke yes? Since when has any pavement in Dublin, let alone on the Green of all places been considered generous?!
If you refer to the paving that encircles the Green, this is the only element left that holds the place together as some form of a square. It cannot be touched.

Good points about congestion]That this route also meets with aesthetic approval is merely an added bonus.[/QUOTE]

– the merely. It’s an important consideration 🙂

I have heard that the RPA are holding an open day this Friday at the Fitzwilliam Hotel about the Luas link options. RPA Staff will be there to answer questions and take comments. Its on all day as far as I know.
jj

I looked briefly, Feargal. First of all your motivating assumption I think is wrong. Westmoreland St. and O’Connell St. are the widest in the city. A two track tram line uses the road width of one and a half traffic lanes. Westmoreland St. has six traffic lanes in parts, so claiming that running a tram line down it would take up all the road space is not even an exageration – at most it would lose 25%. Secondly I don’t agree with your priorities; your objections to the use of various streets seems to be on the basis that the street is required for cars and you propose instead to take entire streets from pedestrians along the Fleet St. axis (these are genuinely narrow streets, you’ll barely have room for a footpath).

Agreed Devin. Its much the same on Zurich’s car-free Bahnhofstrasse, the main shopping street in the city.

Admittedly, its a bit wider than Grafton Street. It would be interesting to get a response to this from the RPA at Friday’s clinic.