Luas, Metro and DART – Drawings and Photomontages

@wearnicehats wrote:

Letter in today’s IT

Solving our water problems
Madam, – The executive manager of Dublin City Council is quoted (Home News, December 30th) as saying that funds are currently not available to deal with the risk of losing water supply to north Wicklow and south Dublin should the tunnel from the Vartry reservoir collapse. How can this be?

There appear to be funds for ministerial pensions and projects such as Metro North. Are these more important? It beggars belief that the supply of water in Ireland has been given such low priority by the Government for such a long time.

Has this to do with incompetence, economic treason or stupidity? All three, I believe. – Yours, etc

I reiterate my objection to this vanity project at the expense of our health, education and general wellbeing.

That’s a total false dichotomy which I notice was made by a few other people too. We can have a good water infrastructure and a good public transport infrastructure. We just have to pay for it. Dublin City Council is constrained because it has a limited ability to raise its own funds. What we need are water rates and a property tax to fund local government so that they have the resources to upgrade our antiquated water infrastructure.

The focus on Metro North is infuriating. The cost of Irish Nationwide Building Society is twice what Metro North will cost, Anglo is 15 times the cost and similar multiples on other failed banks. If we really want to restore balance to the nation’s finances we have to do a debt for equity swap with these banks and a proper resolution of debts. That will wipe out billions in liabilities for the Irish state and restore confidence to Ireland as a sovereign debtor. The problem for Ireland is that we have attached a ton weight of debts from a failed banking system around the neck of a state and forced Irish taxpayers to pay for the decade long spiral of greed, speculation and venality in our property, banking and political circles. It is only when we stop this madness that any confidence will be restored to Ireland as a nation. Doing away with Metro North will not change this. Even spending nothing on capital expenditure over the next 10 years won’t resolve the mess we’re in. In fact it will make it a whole lot worse because thousands of jobs will be lost in construction, our infrastructure will suffer and become less competitive and we’ll be left streets behind our international counterparts.

It’s Metro North or nothing, you have to understand. If it’s cancelled after going through such a long process then there is next to no chance of any other major project in Ireland proceeding. Nobody involved in infrastructure will want to deal with us if we’re shown to be flakey on Metro North. It could also open us up to being sued by the PPP consortia for making them enter a tendering process on false premises.

This year we will see the final Railway Order granted, the best and final offers of the PPP bidders made, a final business case with an updated cost-benefit analysis drafted and then the decision will be with the Cabinet on whether to proceed with the project. Fine Gael and Labour look likely to form the next government and their decision on MN will be on the basis of the final cost-benefit analysis and business case. Given that Metro North already has a 1.55:1 benefit to cost ratio in the outline business case, it’s likely that the final cost-benefit ratio will also be positive and therefore final approval will be given by an FG/Labour govt to Metro North.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

resources to upgrade our antiquated water infrastructure.

The focus on Metro North is infuriating. The cost of Irish Nationwide Building Society is twice what Metro North will cost, Anglo is 15 times the cost and similar multiples on other failed banks.

Take a step back and ask why the banks failed?

It was very simple as an industry they consistently factored in unrealistic demand targets, ignored the potential for cost over-runs; relied upon the availibility of cheap credit for ever and did no detailed due diligence of any of the projects they were lending to. The taxpayer is being asked to lend Metro North €3bn and the latest I can deduce is this: The RPA estimate in their 2010 CBA that intra-journey maximum hourly demand would peak in the moderate growth scenario at 3,640 at Northwood stop; this includes 666 passengers that would have boarded at two stations (Bellinstown & Lissenhall) that have been axed from the route by ABP; in addition the Seatown stop has been axed which contributed over 700 of these passengers; this station has a section of its catchment that is equidistant to DART at Malahide; so one wonders how much further leakage would occur from passengers who probably use dart anyway but would certainly find DART easier than using one of the other Swords stops on Luas North. The true capacity required is less than 3,000 people per hour maximum.

Luas can carry 6,000 an hour or future proof the project for 15 – 20 years. As Keynes said in the long term we are all dead!

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

It’s Metro North or nothing, you have to understand. If it’s cancelled after going through such a long process then there is next to no chance of any other major project in Ireland proceeding. Nobody involved in infrastructure will want to deal with us if we’re shown to be flakey on Metro North. It could also open us up to being sued by the PPP consortia for making them enter a tendering process on false premises.

Until the contract gets signed its a business risk; once Lenihan Bros depart the new government will do exactly what the last government did in 1997 and review everything; remember the last government was to build three Luas lines that actually joined up. But Mammy had other ideas……

actually it’s about money being available for essential services

I agree that until the new government has actually seen the books and can say with all certainty what the true costs of the number of ‘off balance sheet’ PPPs that have been entered into on the basis of rolling up interest into the long term then no decisions can be made. From there a hierarchy of services needs to be drawn up in areas such as health, education, policing, IDA, Enterprise Ireland etc and then look at transport; if there is no tax base there is no way to pay back the loans.

If one project is to be built it must be Dublin Underground so that NAMA can break ground on the maximum number of sites with toxic loans such as Adamstown with 9,000 undeveloped plots, the four DART lines have infinitely more penetration.

@PVC King wrote:

Take a step back and ask why the banks failed?

It was very simple as an industry they consistently factored in unrealistic demand targets, ignored the potential for cost over-runs; relied upon the availibility of cheap credit for ever and did no detailed due diligence of any of the projects they were lending to. The taxpayer is being asked to lend Metro North €3bn and the latest I can deduce is this: The RPA estimate in their 2010 CBA that intra-journey maximum hourly demand would peak in the moderate growth scenario at 3,640 at Northwood stop; this includes 666 passengers that would have boarded at two stations (Bellinstown & Lissenhall) that have been axed from the route by ABP; in addition the Seatown stop has been axed which contributed over 700 of these passengers; this station has a section of its catchment that is equidistant to DART at Malahide; so one wonders how much further leakage would occur from passengers who probably use dart anyway but would certainly find DART easier than using one of the other Swords stops on Luas North. The true capacity required is less than 3,000 people per hour maximum.

Luas can carry 6,000 an hour or future proof the project for 15 – 20 years. As Keynes said in the long term we are all dead!

The RPA consistently under-estimates the true passenger numbers of the projects they develop, Metro is basically a Luas north of Northwood, it doesn’t stop at Northwood and has significant trip generators around each of its stops and the Luas isn’t future-proofed for 15-20 years. It’s at capacity now 6 years after opening and that’s with longer trams than originally anticipated at the launch of service. Building a Luas line like you’re always saying is a total non-solution as it doesn’t have the capacity nor roadspace.

Until the contract gets signed its a business risk; once Lenihan Bros depart the new government will do exactly what the last government did in 1997 and review everything; remember the last government was to build three Luas lines that actually joined up. But Mammy had other ideas……

Luas was lines on a map when the FF/PD government came to power in 1997. Metro North is a fully realised project with active bidders, budget for enabling works and a railway order. Luas was nowhere near as shovel-ready as Metro is now in 1997. On top of that, the original idea was for a Luas line to the airport, but that idea was junked by the DTO’s Platform for Change document in 2001 as it was realised it wouldn’t have the capacity, roadspace and speed required. Your fantasy Luas line was therefore abandoned by the experts back in 2001. Moreover, the projections used to justify this stepchange have already been exceeded so there is no doubt that a market exists for the Metro.

I agree that until the new government has actually seen the books and can say with all certainty what the true costs of the number of ‘off balance sheet’ PPPs that have been entered into on the basis of rolling up interest into the long term then no decisions can be made. From there a hierarchy of services needs to be drawn up in areas such as health, education, policing, IDA, Enterprise Ireland etc and then look at transport; if there is no tax base there is no way to pay back the loans.

If one project is to be built it must be Dublin Underground so that NAMA can break ground on the maximum number of sites with toxic loans such as Adamstown with 9,000 undeveloped plots, the four DART lines have infinitely more penetration.

Well until it has a railway order, finalised the bidding process and finished all the other related works DART Underground cannot proceed. All the preliminary work for MN will have been finished by the end of this year, DART Underground will only be halfway through it by then.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

Well until it has a railway order, finalised the bidding process and finished all the other related works DART Underground cannot proceed. All the preliminary work for MN will have been finished by the end of this year, DART Underground will only be halfway through it by then.

DART Underground is dependent on the Metro to build St Stephens Green Underground.
No Metro = No DU St Stephens and the Draft RO as it stands would be nonsense as all the figures would have to be revised.
Maybe CIE/IE would try to add another of its infamous “Corrigenda” to the draft DU RO EIS but I cannot see An Bord Pleanala agreeing. Of course the DU RO EIS is so rushed that another “error” would hardly be noticed.
Someone mentioned four DART lines, but the DU RO as drafted halves the current successful DART service at Pearse without any figures to support the financial sanity of same. The aims of Transport21 it seems has been forgotten even tho’ the DU RO has that logo on every page.

@PVC King wrote:

The demand numbers at peak in the 2010 CBA were 3,640 maximum at any time in any direction and this allowed for 2% yoy growth from 2010 to 2015; take out the 666 passengers using Bellinstown and Lissenhall stops which are no longer part of the project and the route has less than 3,000 maximum intra journey deamnd at peak time; remove even 25% of the 700 people at Seatown stop which was deemed unneccessary and you are in the order of 2,800 maximum hourly demand in 5 years time.

Luas has a capacity of 6,000 peak demand; take growth at 2% and it is future proofed for over 38 years; take it at a much more optimistic 5% and it is future proofed for 15 years. If after 10 years the 5% is hit then plans can be made to build an alternative underground route from Northwood into the City Centre plugging in the Eastern Route option that was rejected as the original Luas destination of Ballymun was endorsed.

As I said to you before, the RPA under-estimates demand all the time. They had to lengthen the trams on the Luas to meet the demand the RPA didn’t foresee along the routes of the Red and Green Line. The same will happen with Metro North as people flock to a high-capacity, very reliable and rapid rail transport. Luas isn’t future-proofed, it’s jampacked at the minute and has very little spare capacity just 6 years after being completed. If we were to build your fantasy Luas line then it too would be packed in less than a decade and then we’d have to build Metro North anyway because the trams would be too full. What you’re proposing is the rail equivalent of the two-lane M50. Build a lukewarm shadow of what’s needed and then build what is needed 10 years later at twice the cost.

If Metro North is dropped, as you so crazily hope, then that is the end of any plans for any rail line of any kind connecting the city centre to the airport and city centre for the next 20 years. They will not suddenly adopt Luas as an alternative to Metro North like you suggest, it will be completely dropped and the only discussion about rail links to the airport will be in transport engineering lectures in DIT. Even if it does come back on the agenda 20 years’ hence, it will take more than 10 years to build due to our byzantine planning process. This means that Dublin, unique amongst European capital cities, will not have a rail link between its airport and the city centre. It would also mean that, again, the people of Ballymun would be denied the rail link they have been promised since the 1960s. It would also mean that Swords continues to suffer with a sub-standard bus service which breaks down at the first signs of snow.

It doesn’t have to be this way and, hopefully, by the end of this year, it won’t be as Metro North will have cleared all obstacles and be set for boring in 2012.

I was under the impression both Barclays and HSBC had hit the exits and with AIB being within weeks of almost total nationalisation this leaves only a single bidder; is this not correct? Can you please list the consortia left in the process.

2, Celtic Metro Group and Metro Express.

The DTO platform for change listed 4 seperate metro lines

1. Tallaght via Kimmage
2. Lucan via Bluebell
3. Tara St to Tallaght via Finglas
4. Shanngannagh to the Airport

3 of these lines have been scrapped and the fourth can be taken in three sections

1. Shanngannagh to Cherrywood – defered due to a suspect cost benefit basis
2. Cherrywood to Stephens Green – built as Luas and with by far the highest population density on the route
3. Stephens Green to Airport – Clearly Luas loadings in terms of population density.

Lucan via Bluebell was actually going to be Luas, not Metro actually, and the RPA has fleshed this out with the Luas Line F proposal. The certainly do call for a Metro line from Shangannah to the Airport and Swords, but the map clearly indicates that what they were proposing was a lot heavier than a Luas line. If they were proposing a Luas line then it would be indicated on the map as other Luas lines are charted there too. This illustrates that the DTO abandoned any Luas line to the airport proposal and upgraded this to a Metro. Therefore these transport exports disagree with you and your fantasy Luas line.

There is no question that delivering Luas will upset motorists and require rerouting of bus routes in the city centre; I would however ask why would someone take the 16 bus all the way from Rathfarnham to Dublin Airport when they could get off in Camden Street and interchange to Luas at Harcourt?

If people had a cross city Luas it would change journey behaviour dramatically.

The only roadspace I see on the entire route as being highly problematic is Phibsboro; the area around Cross Guns Bridge is already a significant pinch point; that area would require a tunnel from the disused canal bank to St Mobhi Road where a football pich exists for a tunnel site; this would require a tunnel of just over 1kms in length.

You also need to consider Ballymun. The local residents have expressed a clear preference for an underground rail line through their area. You would also need to go underground at the airport because you couldn’t have trams criss-crossing the apron. You also need to consider the need for grade separation around Swords which requires sections of elevated rail and cut-and-cover tunnels. This is all manageable when we’re building a railway line with 17,000 maximum capacity, another story when we’re doing it for your low capacity fantasy Luas line. And don’t tell me that the demand doesn’t exist there for a Metro line. The way you go on you’d swear it’d just be one man and his dog on the metros going from Stephen’s Green to Swords. The fact is that cities with lower populations and lower population densities than Dublin also have underground Metro lines which are well-patronised. Another fact is that DART and Commuter rail services are in huge demand in the same Dublin through which metros will travel. They had to double capacity on the DART service to keep pace with demand as people responded to its high-speed, high capacity nature. Add to this that the 90m metros will have only 2/3rds the capacity of a DART train and there is no doubt that metros will be packed once they start running.

That Martin Cullen and Noel Dempsey slowed up the DART underground project deliberately should have no bearing on the delivery of that project. This is clearly now an either or situation the money is not there for both. Dempsey got his white elephant M3, Cullen his White Elephant M9, Bertie his head in a cupboard. For Swords Luas would be a great result given even the vastly overscaled DTO document didn’t grant anything.

Martin Cullen and Noel Dempsey did not slow down the DART Underground project, it’s due to CIÉ incompetence that it’s taking so long. They originally proposed starting the tunnel at Heuston and boring from both ends. This changed when they added in Inchicore and decided to only bore from that end. They themselves imposed the delay when they changed the plans for DART Underground. Noel Dempsey only found out about the delay through the media. The point remains that DART Underground has only begun the railway order process, Metro North has one, CIÉ has only begun the tendering process, Metro North will have finished that by the Summer. MN is shovel ready, DART Underground is not and therefore should get the priority over the next year. Once DART Underground is finished its preliminary work by 2013, we should proceed with it too.

@PVC King wrote:

According to the proponents of the scheme in their most recent cost benefit analysis the true demand is less than 3,000 allowing for moderate growth; why would you develop a system with a 20,000 capacity when growth is predicted at 2% p.a. Forget 2004 a set of initial demand figures when the eastern European floodgate opened; the migration is now in the opposite direction. Whatever way you spin it a maximum demand figure of 3,000 intrajourney per hour cannot justify a €3bn capital spend.

I see you’ve invented another canard to perpetuate your opposition to Metro North. However, if you are willing to use the business case of MN to justify your position, you have to accept all of it in order to be consistent. The business case, even with your “half-Luas capacity” patronage, finds a BCR of 1.55:1 for the project in narrow terms and 2:1 in broad terms. So regardless of how many people get on at what stop the project as a whole makes sense and will reap us significant economic return ergo we should proceed with it.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

If Metro North is dropped, as you so crazily hope, then that is the end of any plans for any rail line of any kind connecting the city centre to the airport and city centre for the next 20 years. They will not suddenly adopt Luas as an alternative to Metro North like you suggest, it will be completely dropped and the only discussion about rail links to the airport will be in transport engineering lectures in DIT. Even if it does come back on the agenda 20 years’ hence, it will take more than 10 years to build due to our byzantine planning process. This means that Dublin, unique amongst European capital cities, will not have a rail link between its airport and the city centre. It would also mean that, again, the people of Ballymun would be denied the rail link they have been promised since the 1960s. It would also mean that Swords continues to suffer with a sub-standard bus service which breaks down at the first signs of snow.

It doesn’t have to be this way and, hopefully, by the end of this year, it won’t be as Metro North will have cleared all obstacles and be set for boring in 2012.

Dublin City Centre is 25 minutes by Aircoach from the airport; Heathrow to Oxford Circus cannot be done in less than 40 mins and that assumes you hit everything on the nail. The passenger loadings are Luas so should the specification be.

It’s not just an airport link! It’s a completely new public transport corridor which will get people to and from the airport quicker and cheaper than Aircoach and a lot more besides. On top of that, don’t be so Anglocentric – Metro North will bring us into line with what Copenhagen, Vienna and Amsterdam enjoy in terms of time taken to get from the city centre to the airport. That’s the standard we should be aiming for.

I also see you completely ignored my point about what will inevitably occur if we drop Metro North. It’ll go the same way as the 3-line DART proposed in the DRRTS in 1975. There will not be an immediate search for a Luas alternative. People will be condemned to our slow and inefficient bus service which keeps commuters car bound in our city. The €3 billion we’ll “save” will quickly be eaten up by the costs of congestion across the northside of the city.

That is not what the map says; it also lists unsegregated light rail. The Luas proposal for Ballymun was government policy until 1997 it is therefore credible.

Oh yes it is, the map clearly shows a METRO line running through Ballymun to the airport, not a Luas line. Luas to Ballymun was government policy until it was realised that it was insufficient. This was around 2000 and this change of thinking is reflected in the PfC ergo your fantasy Luas line died back in 1999.

Ask anyone what their preference is between an on street tram or an underground and unless they intend to use it will say underground;

Utter rubbish. The RPA has conducted extensive consultation on Metro North with the residents of Ballymun. They originally proposed elevated rail through Ballymun as this was seen to be the cheapest means of building the line through the area. However the locals objected on the basis that the rail line would create an area where anti-social behaviour would develop. Similar concerns were expressed about an on-street line. It was therefore decided to create a cut-and-cover tunnel through that area for Metro North to address these concerns. If we were to go with your fantasy Luas line then they’d be on to An Bord Pleanála like a flash and their objections would force you to put the Luas underground. However we’d then be putting a low capacity line underground, not a high capacity Metro. It’s things like this which make me feel your proposed Luas line would fail a CBA and therefore be rejected by Cabinet.

@Cathal Dunne wrote:

The way you go on you’d swear it’d just be one man and his dog on the metros going from Stephen’s Green to Swords. The fact is that cities with lower populations and lower population densities than Dublin also have underground Metro lines which are well-patronised. Another fact is that DART and Commuter rail services are in huge demand in the same Dublin through which metros will travel. They had to double capacity on the DART service to keep pace with demand as people responded to its high-speed, high capacity nature. Add to this that the 90m metros will have only 2/3rds the capacity of a DART train and there is no doubt that metros will be packed once they start running.

When the RPA can’t get demand above half that of a Luas line capacity then what other conclusion can you draw other than nice idea but unaffordable when the IMF are running the country.

Well since Metro North is included in the four year plan which was agreed with the EU and IMF, then they mustn’t have had any problems with proceeding with this project which has a positive CBA.

It is well known the CIE were not given the resources to design the DART underground project on demand; the project had a finalised route in 2004 but took many years to receive the resources. For the entire period until the IMF’s arrival the public were completely misled into believing both projects were fully funded; when it mattered DART underground was not funded and a route with a demand of 3,000 maximum hourly intra journey demand was funded to a capacity of almost 7 times what is required.

They had a finalised route in 2004 but decided to change it as you well know to include a stop at Inchicore and only tunnel from there. That was a self-imposed delay by CIÉ and it results in their project being significantly behind that of Metro North. The way it’s looking, it could be 2013 before we have to think about the boring of DART underground which would almost be outside the bounds of the four-year plan. In any case, the track works around the tunnel are expected to continue so we can start on Metro North now and do DART underground later.

A lot of Spanish names in there; I can’t see Spanish banks doing anything other than defending their balance sheets in the context of Portugal looking like it will be IMF’d within the next 2 weeks and Spain then being lined up for the CDS tug of war that will define the Euro’s future. Barclays private equity probably won’t do it; leaving Mitsui as the only credible player; will they still build it for nothing?

Well given that the consortium has spent millions on bidding for this project and will be looking to sign the contract to build the line this year, it is highly likely that yes, all parties to the consortium would like to build it.

Celtic Metro Group

MetroExpress (Global via Infraestructuras S.A., Macquarie Capital Group Ltd, Allied Irish Banks p.l.c. and Bombardier Transportation (Holdings) UK Ltd). Contacts for the consortia listed on RPA website.

So it is actually funded by a nationalised bank; the more you look at this project the more it is a complete fiction.

Oh yes, a complete fiction which has its railway order, a complete fiction whose enabling works budget has been granted, a complete fiction which, after a few procedures will get the go-ahead in the Summer of this year. What’s a complete fiction is your fantasy Luas line.

anti social behaviour…

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The entry from Pearse street is through the TCD building for the Pearse mainline station mostly … for DART Underground it will be quicker to walk around to Sandwich Street

You’d know there was an election…..

That money is still being wasted on this fantasy shows just how out of control certain semi states have become under this lame duck administration of spivvs

OC Street

OC Monuments will be moved to Collins Barracks!

Parnell

SSG