Luas-Metro Connectivity on O’Connell St
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Apologies if this has been discussed in another thread.
3 rail lines will eventually intersect at O’Connell St, according to the current govt ‘masterplan’
– The existing Luas Red Line
– the planned Luas Green Line Link up
– and planned Metro North.What I can’t get my head around is the fact that each line appears to stop at a different place on/around O’Connell St
– the Red Luas stops on Abbey St
– the nutty Green loop stops ‘up the road a bit’ on O’Connell St
– and the Metro stops under the Liffey!Now to me the stations seem too far from eachother to link via underground passageways (I could be wrong), and there is no mention of Metro North linking with Luas at this point. Here’s a crazy idea – link up all 3 lines in one station on O’Connell St/Abbey St. Ya know, being the very heart of the city and all, and since the lines are crossing each other anyway! Why don’t they link these lines up PROPERLY?? The mind boggles
It’s likely that the metor stop will have multiple exits a la a major tube stop. Any of the northerly exits could well emerge above ground a fair distance up the street , not too far from the other stops.
That seems an extremely small area to me. There are Metro/Tube stations in Paris/London where you could be walking for fifteen minutes between different platforms. A 100m distance seems absolutely ideal.
What you are probably looking at is Metro entrance/exits on the Eastern corners of the bridge and then an overground walk up to the other Luas lines. Simply no necessity for underground tunnels linking the three platforms/stations.yep there’s an obsession in Dublin at the moment about us poor people havin to walk 50 yards to change modes while in other cities you can walk up to a kilometre from one platform to another. How many times have you come into a city off the airport train and hopped straight onto a connecting bus or train without any walk whatsoever. I fear for the letters editor of the IT wading through complaint after complaint about Metro/LUAS/POrt Tunnel/INterconnector for the next decade.
I believe the northside Metro entrance will emerge on the corner of Bachelors Walk and O’Connell Street, wihtin spittin distance of the LUASes (LUAÃ?). Add in the fact that there’ll be next to no cars on this stretch (hoping Arnotts ramp is rejected) and you’ll see that the interchange penalty is minimal
But interchanging tourists with loads of luggage, for example, will have to disembark on the busiest street in Ireland and wade through floods of shoppers before reaching their next platform.
Why not shunt the Metro station a few 10s of metres further up O’Connell St directly under the Luas lines (see below). You get off the Metro, take an escalator and BAM you’re on the Red/Green platform. Thats a proper interchange.
OK so you’d have to cross the river from the south to get to the entrance, is that really a problem? Why is it so necesary to build a Metro station at great expense under the Liffey so there’ll be entrances on both sides? I just don’t see why that’s so important.
@Andy O wrote:
according to the current govt ‘masterplan’
@Andy O wrote:
the nutty Green loop
@Andy O wrote:
the Metro stops under the Liffey!
@Andy O wrote:
Why don’t they link these lines up PROPERLY?? The mind boggles
@Andy O wrote:
But interchanging tourists with loads of luggage, for example, will have to disembark on the busiest street in Ireland and wade through floods of shoppers before reaching their next platform.
You forgot to add “what about the children!!!!”
You seem to have become lost. The Joe Duffy Show is over on RTE.
Distances between modes seem fair to me. More important is ease of interchange for mobility impaired passengers.
Probably not. I don’t understand what’s wrong with the idea of not making people struggle from one mode to the next.
100metres might seem fair if you are young, fit, and unencumbered by wheelchair, crutches, heavy bags, prams, kiddies etc (exactly: what about the children?).
Would travelators from the metro to the Luas stops, with lifts up be too expensive?I assume that metro stations will all be wheelchair accessible. I mean IE didn’t upgrade DART stations for the craic. It had to be done.
What i was trying to say was that the distances involved are not great. They compare well with similar interchanges all over europe.
Are the new metro stations not legally obliged to be wheelchair accessible, as is the Luas in its entirety. There will, I presume, be lifts from the underground platforms to street level.
@Seanselon wrote:
Distances between modes seem fair to me. More important is ease of interchange for mobility impaired passengers.
Yes, ease of interchange is the point I’m trying to highlight here. A wee bit of efficiency in the centre of Dublin. And seeing the location of the future metro station under An Life, I gravely doubt it will include direct underground links to either luas line, as fairly long connecting tunnels would be required and they probably won’t bother with the extra expense.
So why not bring the mountain to mohammed and move the metro station itself further north? On current plans the only means of interchange would be to leave the rail network and traverse a coupla blocks of Lower O’Connell St overground – not your dictionary definition for ‘ease of interchange’. Not an interchange at all in fact. Merely 3 stations close by one other. What if someone transferring from O’Connell Bridge station to Abbey St station gets hit by a car crossing O’Connell St? Many of these commuters will be coming from/going to the airport. Endless luggage trundling across O’Connell St. It seems pretty perverse and half-baked for what should be one of Dublin’s core light rail junctions. Instead Lower O’Connell St will perform the task of a connecting commuter tunnel. And let’s not forget the lucan luas pencilled in to arrive in the middle of all this, somewhere.
Stephen’s Green station on the other hand, will connect 3 modes – luas, metro and dart – in a single unified structure. Connecting passengers will be within the rail network at all times. It will be one dot on the map and not 3 or 4. Compared to Stephen’s Green, O’Connell looks like a dog’s dinner. A good rail network should be idiot proof and minimally disruptive to the rest of the public.
@kefu wrote:
Are the new metro stations not legally obliged to be wheelchair accessible, as is the Luas in its entirety. There will, I presume, be lifts from the underground platforms to street level.
Yes. Exactly.
Andy O-
- Lucan Luas is likely to come in on the south side of the city, not the north side- alignment yet to be decided.
- Luas is on the surface, so your concerns re ‘leaving the rail network’ are a bit of a red herring as the ‘network’ would have to be left anyway to get to Luas, regardless of whether the connection is underground or overground.
- Do you really think there’s a greater likelihood of an interchanging passenger being hit by a car on O’Connell Street than a regular pedestrian?** The illogical conclusion of that line of thinking is to put all O’Connell Street pedeetrians underground. Or to remove all the cars from O’Connell Street. Oh hang on…
- Also, there are advantages to having Metro straddling the river, not least of which is the accessibility of the station from both sides of the city/river- it helps spread the load.
- And there’s every chance that the footprint of the St Stephen’s Green station will be as extensive as the proposal for O’Connell Street- Interconnector station boxes will be in the region of 200m long, with escalators at each end increasing that length well beyond 200m.
** Your argument could equally be turned on its head to say that passengers leaving the Metro at your proposed location and heading for, say, Westmoreland Street would be vulnerable when crossing the quays. Also, you ignore the fact that Metro stops will have multiple entrances / exits, probably on both sides of a street, rendering this point somewhat redundant.
ctesiphon-
Lucan Luas is likely to come in on the south side of the city, not the north side- alignment yet to be decided.
fair enough. good.Luas is on the surface, so your concerns re ‘leaving the rail network’ are a bit of a red herring as the ‘network’ would have to be left anyway to get to Luas, regardless of whether the connection is underground or overground.
its not a red herring. the design for stephen’s green shows exits emerging from below directly onto the luas platform. so you are within the rail net at all times. maybe linking red and green by passage isn’t necessary, but certainly its preferable and possible to link both directly to the metro.
Do you really think there’s a greater likelihood of an interchanging passenger being hit by a car on O’Connell Street than a regular pedestrian?** The illogical conclusion of that line of thinking is to put all O’Connell Street pedeetrians underground. Or to remove all the cars from O’Connell Street. Oh hang on…
the point is that connecting travellers will be forced onto lower o’connell street unnecessarily, whereas in Stephen’s Green this will all be managed internally. its a design flaw.Also, there are advantages to having Metro straddling the river, not least of which is the accessibility of the station from both sides of the city/river- it helps spread the load.
again, I think better integration with other modes supercedes this in importance.And there’s every chance that the footprint of the St Stephen’s Green station will be as extensive as the proposal for O’Connell Street- Interconnector station boxes will be in the region of 200m long, with escalators at each end increasing that length well beyond 200m.
but only the exits will be above ground, one connecting directly to luas with virtually zero public highway in between. an underground station obviously takes up very little surface space.
Your argument could equally be turned on its head to say that passengers leaving the Metro at your proposed location and heading for, say, Westmoreland Street would be vulnerable when crossing the quays.
My point is that connecting passengers shouldn’t have to tread public highway. The people you are talking about are not connecting to another mode. Westmoreland luas station would be the previous stop to O’Connell on the green line so nobody needs to cross the river for a connection.Also, you ignore the fact that Metro stops will have multiple entrances / exits, probably on both sides of a street, rendering this point somewhat redundant.
i’m aware of that, still will they really be that close to the luas?Andy O – if the design for the station at Stephen’s Green shows Metro exits emerging on to Luas platforms, that will not happen. There would be serious concerns there regarding safety and congestion. A gap of say fifty metres is actually necessary. Nobody wants non Luas passengers traversing Luas platforms with luggage etc.
Andy you have to leave the rail network to get on LUAS everywhere – at Connolly and Heuston the stops are in the public domain outside the stations. And they walk further from their mainline rail to the LUAS than is being proposed here. The whole point of LUAS, is that it’s totally accessible and it forms part of the urban domain, and does not merely connect parts of it.
I’d just like to ask one other question – who are all these connecting passengers. Apart from the IFSC and Docklands, there aren’t any major employment nodes along Line A. And if you think a 2 or 3 minute walk between rail services at 3 minute frequencies isn’t good enough for us, then I don’t know what is. No-one will have to cross O’Connell St, as there’ll be exits on both sides i assume. (isn’t the idea for 4 stops, 2 on each side of the river, 1 on each side of the street?) Also given the width of the pavement and the future absence of private traffic, it’s hardly gonna be a nightmare walk – far more attractive than through a crowded station concourse – ‘cept when it’s rainin i s’pose, but that hardly ever happens!
And this notion of tourists dragging luggage from Metro to LUAS at O’Connell street is a new one. Where are they going exactly? Rialto? Naas Road? I just don’t see it as the massive issue you do.
As for the Green, there’s no way metro passengers will alight directly onto the LUAS platform. they will emerge at the top of Grafton street where the sculpture is now I believe, and on St Stephens Green North.
I just think you’re overplaying the issue here
A significant factor is that, like the Luas, the metro will be barrierless (no ticket turnstyles or checking) which means you’re not really “leaving” anything when you emerge from a Luas or from a metro entrance on O’Connell Street. It’d be very different if there were barriers involved like the London Underground but this means a warren of LU style subway tunnels is not required or appropriate. Given that the distances are more than reasonable by the standards of public transport interchanges in other countries, the only potential issue for passengers with using O’Connell St. itself as a sort of “connecting hall” is the lack of protection from the elements.
I’m normally happy to stick the boot into the RPA but they really can’t be faulted here especially if they go with option A for the green line extension to Liffey Junction (see this thread for discussion) instead of the ludicrous option F. The latter option, I believe, was thrown together to appease the DCC’s long term and misguided desire for another bridge across the Liffey at that point and to be seen to be responsive to the capricious positions taken by DCC regarding transport planning for the city. However on the RPA website where they compare the two options, they estimate F will cost 70% more than option A; I don’t think the RPA have or had any intension of it being a serious option. The extra 70% would pay for green line extension to reach Phibsboro.
@alonso wrote:
I just think you’re overplaying the issue here
yeah you’re probably right. but still, I don’t quite get the logic of the planners. I mean you’re given a blank page to come up with something good and this is the result. Hmm. Oh well says I.
I think we should wait until the full scheme is published and the EIS is released to consultation. It might end up better or worse than what we’re assuming here. I wouldn’t regard O’Connell Street as a “blank page” Andy. There may be other factors we don’t know about that is determining this arrangement. If the EIS is proper and comprehensive it will outline the procedures and options for us all to see and judge.
Andy O, wouldn’t your suggestion leave too big a gap between the O’Connell station and the Green?
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