Luas-Metro Connectivity on O’Connell St

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 (LUAÍ?). 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.

Will Metro provide disabled access?

The tube doesn’t which is I suppose a reflection on its age

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?

@alonso wrote:

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.

These things do morph as they develop yeah, will wait for more news. Also, blank page as in drawing board, y’know.

Notjim, I only moved the station 50 metres further in my picture, that’s practically nothing.

@Andy O wrote:

50 metres … that’s practically nothing.

Indeed. 😉

@Andy O wrote:

Notjim, I only moved the station 50 metres further in my picture, that’s practically nothing.

But what about all those many many poor passangers hauling their many many heavy bags through the driving rain, across the bridge and all the way to the Bloom Hotel?

why not just have multiple entrances to the metro stop e.g.

• 1 at Abbey street serving Luas Red line
• 1 at Central median O’Connell Street for Luas green
• 4 corner entrances serving general population

and run tunnels to each from the metro stop – as with any metro/underground you have multiple entrances and tunnels – this makes sense from a pedestrian traffic management sense as well as an interconnectivity sense. To make it an interchange it doesn’t matter how far you actually are from the platform just as long as you feel you are in the actual station. As this is an interchange and on the main throughfare of Dublin we should spend a few quid on getting it right.

@notjim wrote:

But what about all those many many poor passangers hauling their many many heavy bags through the driving rain, across the bridge and all the way to the Bloom Hotel?

They should hire fiddlers to line the route and keep them entertained.

@Rory W wrote:

why not just have multiple entrances to the metro stop e.g.

* 1 at Abbey street serving Luas Red line
* 1 at Central median O’Connell Street for Luas green
* 4 corner entrances serving general population

and run tunnels to each from the metro stop – as with any metro/underground you have multiple entrances and tunnels – this makes sense from a pedestrian traffic management sense as well as an interconnectivity sense. To make it an interchange it doesn’t matter how far you actually are from the platform just as long as you feel you are in the actual station. As this is an interchange and on the main throughfare of Dublin we should spend a few quid on getting it right.

Yes that would be ideal, a few quid that would save a lot of hassle in the long run. Exits both side of the river would be great IF combined with good luas connectivity.

but as jimg points out above, the metro and the luas are both barrierless, the tunnels are not needed, the street can serve as a concourse.

I was in copenhagen recently, and they have a new metro system with one maybe two lines connecting to the rail net. A fairly important interchange is a few stops down from the Central rail station. the metro entrance is right there by the rail platform, no fuss, no hassle, no round the corner or up the road malarky. I understand there may be examples of ‘nearby’ stations in Europe but OC will be one of our main junctions in the very centre of Dublin.

IMO, using Lr O’Connell St as a concourse is not ideal usage of our historical main street, which is abused enough as it is. This rail junction should be condensed into a small area, not spread out. All customers changing modes should be able to do so with ease, convenience and no unnecessary complication. In my mind, having to walk down a busy commercial street to change modes is not the easiest, most convenient thing, and it is an unnecessary complication (with the elderly and disabled in particular). The fact that the modes are barrierless doesn’t change the issue of integration.

posted this elsewhere tonight:

Half decent article by Frank in today’s IT on the transformation of Bordeaux led by investment in a tram system.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2007/0717/1184196589878.html

Key points for those without the password to someone else’s subscription!!

-it has no overhead power lines in the city centre; trams are energised by a third rail on the track bed as they pass over it.

-From the outset, all of the city’s bus routes were reorganised to integrate with the tramway

-Ticketing is also integrated, with a cheap flat fare of €1.30 that’s valid for any journey within an hour of purchase.

-The tramway was also treated as a “complete urban project”. Before its introduction, Bordeaux had just one pedestrianised shopping street (rue St Catherine) and the city’s cathedral was marooned on a traffic island. Now, cars are banned from the historic core, and the Place Bey in front of the cathedral is a pedestrian plaza.

-There is access for delivery vehicles and cars with permits. Barriers such as those used in multi-storey car parks prevent access at key points. If motorists want to get in, they have to use an intercom to get permission from the police; only trams and cyclists enjoy free passage into the heart of the city.

-Traffic on the quays has been reduced to four lanes, to make room for a wide promenade along the Garonne

-Traffic in the heart of the city is down by 35 per cent, we have seen an explosion in the use of bicycles and there are now 30,000 more inhabitants in the city

-Shopkeepers were “the most aggressive” in opposing it, believing that they would lose business if cars were not let in, but in the end more shops moved back to the city centre.

-The city also bought 4,000 bicycles to promote more cycling.

The article is a bit of a downer on Dublin, and idealises the Bordeaux situation. eg they didn’t buy bikes, they did exactly as what DCC are proposing re ads in the public space. Also he compares it too much to LUAS, which is unfair. LUAS, as far as operation is concerned, is world class.

But the main thrust of the piece is excellent. With Line BX coming on stream we will be gifted the opportunity to revolutionise urban space in Dublin, most notably College Green. Eventually the civic spine will be car-less, and we should follow Bordeaux’s example.