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@ppjjobrien wrote:

I wouldn’t see a modal shift as a problem and interchanges will go both ways. The key is the overall number of city centre stops, and the overall catchment feeding into them and into interchange stations. The current arrangement is a bunch of lines. I remember reading (can’t source it) that the RPA were taken aback by the level of traffic from Heuston to city centre/Connolly and vice versa – it’s the power of interchange! I wouldn’t see this as the killer for MN per se, and would reiterate the point of how important it is for the airport to be connected to the system.

Most of the Luas traffic from Heuston will switch to interconnector; but you are right it was real progress finally providing a link from the busiest mainline rail station in the country to the city centre. I just don’t see the passenger numbers to interchange from beyond Drumcoundra in the first place other than from the Airport; most of whom will take any connection to the city centre and take a taxi from there to their end destination. Whether it is Stephens Green or well Stephens Green would make no option but you would feel that Pearse and Heuston with no change would be preferable to O’Connell Street for most visitors

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I’ll take this at face value, but if PPP projects cannot be left of the PBR balance sheet, then I would wonder if DU can be afforded. If we take media estimates (Arup quoted €1.5bn after a study, media reports €2bn for the tunnel) – my suspicion is that the wider electrification is seperate to this, as is the additional rolling stock.

So, let’s be generous – say, they don’t need all the stock right away and prices are good – let’s put€1.25bn for the tunnel, €1bn for further electrification, and only €450mn for stock – that gives us a project total of €2.7bn. Let’s say that’s spread over 6 yrs 2012-18 – or €450mn per annum.

Imagine for comparison (or totalling) that a cost in the current climate of €3bn could be achieved for MN on a similar timeframe or €500mn per annum over the same period. Also take into account political emphasis on green/sustainable modes of travel over roads and the completion of the national moterway project – spending on capital projects this year was almost €2.8bn – suddenly you start to see that with a slightly slowed down project timeframe it could become possible to finance this investment from Government resources. I suspect this won’t happen, because of the quite public commitment to the PPP process – especially in the case of MN.

Irish GDP is roughly €210bn with the deficit being truely horrific for the next three years and about 2.9% in 2014 when it starts to go back to normal levels; €500m would result in a deficit figure being above 3% as each €500m equates to 0.23% of GDP and then there is the annual subvention to the line which would be substantial rasing the cost further.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

I think Jo-Public doesn’t care how it’s run, organisationally, as long as it’s run well – in fact they’d rather not be exposed constantly to the internal politics of the providers – this has been happening for my whole life and the travelling public has been held to randsom over and over again. I’d rather not stick with something that’s clearly broken, just because of a political standpoint. I’m not in favour of privatisation per se, but Veolia do an excellent job running Luas, and I think most people would rate the performance of Luas favourably in comparison to DB/IE. Incidentally, it’s not just the unions – I’m sure they haven’t placed a veto on integrated ticketing/information/putting the customer first …

There are some great people in both IE and Veolia but I would point to London where underground rail is run by Transport for London and where there have been some spectacular failures with PPP’s not least of which were National Express on the East Coast Mainline who unilaterally withdrew and the tubelines project bought back from Bectel and Ferrovial last Friday. The job of Government is to govern and in relation to NBRU/SIPTU at all CIE group companies a succession of ministers have failed abjectly.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

As for the lesser used lines, I use them as an example to show how IE has never tried to make them work and provides an awful, awful service. Go to their journey planner and try to make any sensible connection on the network – Clonmel-Dublin – Gort-Dublin – Clonmel-Cork – just examples and you’ll see that the timetable has been created to make switching as unviable as possible – for barely used lines, I am sure this is not due to traffic jams on the railway! But rather a deliberate attempt to run down the lines, or even worse a reflection of inept transport planning/timetabling within the organisation.

You list Gort with a population of 3,000 and Clonmel with a population of 15,000 but both are within 30 minutes drive of stations with good service to Dublin; Derry and Letterkenny trade very effectively between each other and don’t have a rail link as is the case with Enniskillen with a similar population to Clonmel of just under 14,000 which has no rail link. It is about using taxpayers money in a manner that delivers services only where the population density merits it.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Well, a fascinating task and with time one I’d love to look into! Your point is of course valid that the existing railway lines are a focal point for much existing development, and the planning system has encouraged significantly high densities along these routes – that is an example of planning reacting to provision. My ‘planning’ argument in favour of MN (not at the expense of DU) is that we need to move to an infrastructure led approach – there is much more scope for intensification along that route (an axis far more preferable to the patchwork sprawl to the west and one which is more intimately connected with key economic drivers such as the airport/DCU etc).

The airport can be connected in a short Dart spur for a fraction of the cost.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Fingal, for example, has plan to grow Swords to 100,000 – the MN corridor is Dublin key growth and capacity axis for the 21st century – it represents an opportunity to put in place a more sustainable series of medium-high density mixed-use neighbourhoods along a flexible piece of infrastructure which can be scaled up to meet demand as it arises.

Swords was never going to reach anywhere close to 100,000 population; too much of it is already built on with 16 to the acre 3 bed semi’s so it is what you would describe as a highly dispersed and nimby rich development pattern; I’d be all in favour of a Dart link from Swords to the Northern line directly extending DART services that currently terminate in Malahide; but if Swords grows at an average even 3,000 people per decade for the next 20 years I will be very surprised. A town of this scale should be connected but claims of 100,000 population projected simply exemplify the flawed predictions that MN relies upon.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Again, this is not a question of MN instead of DU to my mind, but if you pushed me I would accept your argument that DU should happen first. I would also say that fatalism isn’t necessary – it may just be a case of MN, yes, but not quite now – delivering to a plan which takes longer to deliver is better than delivering to no plan at all – it’s the funny thing about strategic spatial planning – we, as people, are in-built to think in current situation terms – they will not last and we need to think beyond the now and plan positively for the future. Impassioned plea over!

I agree with your reasoning of putting MN off; if the airport Dart link fails and if the Northern line post interconnector can’t accomodate Swords then clearly it is back to the drawing board. But building an underground under Drumcoundra, Glasnevan and Ballymun will I fear always be doomed to cost more than the loadings that the population density can provide.

If you could get around the public liability insurance issue then I think this would be a really positive way forward; this is far from the only plot in the City having this issue. Money will be tight going forward but if a critical mass of locals were prepared to get involved it would give Councillors great photo opps at a very modest cost.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

PVC I think you’re factually incorrect when you say that the stock are in place – DART Underground will have to be fully electrified and Iarnród Éireann (IÉ) have advertised for the stock they’ll need to provide an urban/suburban network … so a direct cost there, comparable with Metro North (MN).

I said the majority of stock is in situ; which I believe it is; journey times will be quicker as the timetable would be less padded due to the number of trains crossing being reduced so much of the existing stock will at least in the early years by usable. MN does not enjoy that luxury as a complete new fleet would be required to run a 5 minute headway timetable regardless of the loadings.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

You’re argument vis-a-vis tickets moving to time-based (rather than journey-based) tickets also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Any component of a network will suffer from the same ‘problem’, but each component of a network adds to the potential consumer/traveller base and thus to the viability of the whole system. MN also has the distinction of connecting the Airport to the network – surely of all the stops, the Airport is the most likely to generate additional revenue from journey-based tickets (both infrequent public transport users and tourists/business travellers alike).

I have never said that the Airport won’t generate an independent load but the forecasts for the airport are outdated and out by I’d say 40% as the base passenger level for this year is c20m versus the 25m predicted and growth rates are likely to be 3% at best versus the 8% growth predicted when the proposal was put together. 40% is a lot of revenue to be missing.

@ppjjobrien wrote:

Both DART Underground and MN are critical pieces of infrastructure and do very different things as part of a network. Both achieve critical objectives for turning public transport in Dublin into a coherent system and not just an assemblage of lines and routes with different operators – let’s pray that the National Transport Authority hurries up and becomes useful (no early signs of that happening – very disappointing).

You refer to it being critical but can you name one element of the transport network that would fail to function without this line?

@ppjjobrien wrote:

On financing, both are proposed as Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP). I am personally against this model of financing, with perhaps the exception of right now. They have the very attractive feature of involving private finance during the construction phase, then accruing payments once operational. This allows the Government to introduce a stimulus into the economy at a time when it really, really needs it, but without adding to the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PBR). This is very appealing though the lifetime cost to the state would be higher. I think the Government should progress both of these asap .

You mean rolling up interest and a profit margin of 200 to 300 basis points so that when it comes due the exchequer has to pay a significant amount of interest upon interest. There is nothing attractive about paying an extra €20m – €60m a year in interest

@ppjjobrien wrote:

As an aside, let’s not forget that DART is a very inferior version of urban transit (in terms of frequency, integration etc) – personally, I have little confidence that IÉ will run the system well – look at Western Rail Corridor (WRC) – renewed infrastructure and they’ve put in a completely uncompetitive timetable that makes no effort to integrate into their other existing services – it would make you cry. Meanwhile, the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) with Veolia (the operators of Luas) appear to have been very customer oriented, with rapid capacity enhancements and a very frequent level of service. In the same time DART has ‘regularised’ services to 15 min frequency all day (the clockface element is to be welcomed), but a significant reduction in peak time services – a 15-min frequency is as far as you can push a ‘turn-up-and-go’ system.

You have just made the perfect argument for the interconnector; when DART launched in 1984 it involved 5m frequencies; due to significant growth in out commuter services to Maynooth and Drogheda and the funnel effect of the Loopline section frequencies have needed to be cut back. You can knock the WRC but be clear IE never wanted this project it was foisted on them by the Government in a political decision; a bit like Metro North purely political and completly unviable in financial terms.

@Pete wrote:

You misunderstand, my point was that, today, you dismiss extending transport routes to Terenure while you champion increasing routes to Malahide and other such areas which already have adequate transport links. Why?

On the contrary you ignore the physical; there is an existing rail line to Malahide; if one did not exist and if land take didn’t exist you wouldn’t build an underground there; same with Howth, Bray etc. But lines do exist and because of the loopline the interconnector is required to accomodate the development that has sprung up over the past 50 years in most cases at densities of much higher than 16 to the acre.

@Pete wrote:

I cant understand this campaign to improve public transport for those who already use it, instead of offering it to new customers. Many people who live in Kildare or North County Dublin use the current Dart line to get to work in the city centre regardless of they change to another intercity/luas line. Just because they can get to work without having to change post interconnector does not mean 3 times as many people with use the line.Just because the capacity is increases does not mean the number of passengers will automatically increase accordingly also.

The problem is that a lot of people can’t get onto existing services because they are crush loaded a few stops from their departure point. There is proven demand; the routes to Ballymun and Swords have buses whilst the Airport has the aircoach. In time appropriate solutions can be found but at this stage in the fiscal cycle the metro makes no sense on financial grounds.

@Pete wrote:

The luas lines we have now were not “proven existing transport corridors” but yet people are using them. The fact that the metro does not go through existing transport corridors is the beauty of it. It opens up the rail network to new commuters. This will have knock-on effects as people will not only use it to get from metro stop to metro stop, they will also use it to access other rail lines increasing numbers on luas/dart/intercity rail also.

The Green line was proven as it was built on the Harcourt to Bray rail line; as such it provided a cheap trackbed and densities had increased since the line closed. The Red line is crushloaded as far as Heuston at peak times, highly successful as far as Fatima after that it is far from viable. Also both Luas lines cost about €800m the price tag for Metro is €2bn plus much higher operating costs as the stations are more complex.

@Pete wrote:

I was not merely referring to Ballymun as a shopping destination. I was talking about the new regenerated town which is developing which is projected to have a population of 40,000. This will require a transport link. You constantly dismiss these individual places but it is the combination of 6 or 7 popular stops along the route which will ensure high passenger numbers on the metro.

Ballymun has a current population of about 20,000 and please don’t take this the wrong way but with housing more affordable than anytime in a decade in areas with stronger demographics; expanding that population will be a very hard sell.

@Pete wrote:

No development land, just existing settled, relatively affluent residential communities with limited public transport links. The kind of people who will use public transport if provided and the kind of people we should be targeting with these projects, not some guy in Malahide who doesnt have enough options already, lets route three rail lines past his house and open the entire city to him while neglecting everyone else… There is development potential at Ballymun on MN route though.

The big sell on the Transport 21 projects was the significant contribution that the private sector was going to make in the form of development levies of about €10,000 per residential unit built along the catchment. Given that NAMA owns virtually all the development land or will within a few months what were perfectly legitimate deductions in the financial maths no longer exist as it would be one government body paying another. Across each of the 4 interconnector corridors and Metro North you could have banked on 4,000 units per route yielding about €40m per route which would have made a decent dent in the interest bill. Sadly the market has moved to incentives and not taxes as the market needs help. If development levies were gradually re-introduced to the interconnector routes; the absence of development levies may assist the Metro North route to increase to more viable densities for a reassessment in 5 years time. But with an Airport runway right beside the only unbuilt area it is not exactly the ideal location to build unless it is affordable housing.

@Pete wrote:

You talk a lot about how PPPs will turn Ireland into the next Greece. Just wondering how you would fund the interconnector, which will at least cost as much if not more due to the fact that the tunnel would have to be a double decker as stated in the Dublin Rail Plan you love so much in order to handle the “additional 65m p.a.x.“, which is another issue you fail to address.

Government paper for the sums not extended by the EIB to fund a standard construction tender based on the plans and particulars verified by An Bord Pleannala. Given that capacity that is already past breaking point on 3 rail lines can be doubled in one investment and the fourth grow significantly as the route no longer ends at Heuston makes the cost worth the benefit.

@Pete wrote:

Metro North not only opens public transport to new users, it also links up most of the existing network. The interconnector is the final piece of the puzzle and would link up everything nicely, but has to be built when everything else is in place. Otherwise it only benefits people in Balbriggan and Kildare. Extending Green Line to Abbey Street, as you suggested on another thread, could be built at the same time providing greater links at a reduced cost.

You miss the point; the rest of the network links up without Metro North; it serves a very low density suburban catchment and the airport and would operationally would be very expensive to run given the complexity of its subterranean concourse elements.

@Pete wrote:

Of course, Terenure is a greying low desity suburb when compared with the thriving, cosmopolitan and dynamic urban quarter that is, err, Malahide!

You can’t compare the constructions costs between the Victorian period Dublin and Drogheda railway with the costs of building a modern underground railway. For starters it passed through farmland and wasn’t underground; in addition labour costs were lower and as there were no cars in the Victorian Era ; so rail acheived a much higher modal split.

@Pete wrote:

All current Dart and commuter services will exist in the absence of the Interconnector. You will still be able to get from Howth to city centre. The current Dart system isn’t that over crowded that we need to spend €3 – 4bn trebling its capacity, which is what the interconnector intends. The direct link from the Docklands to Heuston is not going to attract that many new commuters.

What the €2bn interconnector does is triple capacity by removing the previously explained loopline capacity constraint; it also makes the routes out of Heuston a lot more attractive as they no longer require a change onto Luas Red Line which without the link up to the Green Line misses most of the office district which is located in Dublin 2. There is a lot of redundant industrial property in D8 and D10 which is ripe for regeneration; no such development land with adequate power and water supplies exists on the route of Metro North. Only legions of nimbies; it is simply not suitable for redevelopment because the plots are too small to make site assembly feasible.

@Pete wrote:

At least the metro incorporates new areas into the Dublin rail system and serves a number of popular destinations, St Stephens Green (with enabling work done to allow delivery of interconnector in the future), O’Connell Street (with enabling work done to allow delivery of BXD in the near future), Mater Hospital and National Childrens Hospital (with station alread built as part of Mater redevelopment), DCU (with 20,000 students and staff), regenerated Ballymun with projected population of 40,000 (stop integrated into Theasury Holdings Ballymun Town Centre development) the airport (with capacity for 35m passengers p.a.) and park and ride facilities further north for 2,600 cars.

The park n ride listed by the RPA as delivering about 30% of the passenger numbers can be built to service the Northern line as it is barely a mile from same and none of the other destinations would in combination hit anywhere near the passenger loadings on the Luas Green Line. Ballymun Town Centre will prosper with out of town visitors going to Ikea; other than Dundrum Town Centre I am unaware of any major suburban shopping centre that relies heavily on public transport; certainly people are not going to go into Central Dublin and change to Metro North to visit a 50,000 sq m shopping centre when there are millions of square feet in the City Centre; same goes for Swords with phase 2 of the Pavillions and between Ballymun and Pavillions they will cannibalise each other to the point that traffic would be non-existant. Pavillions however is a great play on a weak Euro as being the first major shopping centre for northerners to leverage the strong pound when the currency goes back to equilibrium; Metro North or Spur to Northern line to attract shoppers from Belfast?

@Pete wrote:

You propose building a Luas out to Ballymun/Finglas as an alternative. So thats a double decker Interconnector, new rail line from Malahide to airport, with extra tracks to allow for greater frequency and a 7km luas serving what you describe as “a very low density catchment beyond Drumcoundra and for all of its route beyond Ballymun“. There is not the population there for this luas but with the airport on the line along with everything else I have mentioned, the metro becomes viable. The metro provides most of the benefits of these three projects and would be cheaper then them combined. Granted Dart capacity will be a lot lower then if interconnector was built but we can live with that for the reasons outlined above.

The system is trippled in capacity with single decker trains; this is not Paris the population base is slightly over 1m not 8m and unlike Paris where the area inside the Periphique is predominently made up of 5-6 storey multi-occupied buildings the metro North catchment is predominently 16 to the acre 3 bed semi’s.

@Pete wrote:

MN will cost nothing to the exchequer until 2016/7. Any payments needed before then will be more than covered by tax and vat revenue, social security savings etc

MN will cost nothing while employing up to 9,000 with other fillup benefits for the economy.I have to agree with shytalk on this.

Rolled up interest results in interest being paid on interest; note Marmajam/Shytalk no longer talks about off balance sheet accounting; the proposal for Metro North is debt funded whatever way you look at it and Ireland can no longer raise debt at an attractive cost.

More tough budgets needed – Sutherland
Sunday, 9 May 2010 23:17
Former EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland has said Ireland had successfully differentiated its economic situation from that of Greece, having shown a real intent to deal with the deficit.

Speaking on RTE’s This Week programme to be broadcast tonight, Mr Sutherland said the public finances will have to be continually reviewed over the next three years.

He said the Government will need to introduce even more difficult budget measures over the next three years in light of the Greek debt crisis.

However, Minister for Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs Pat Carey said the Government does not plan to bring forward the budget but will continue to implement spending cuts.

Fish farms can do significant habitat damage; they do however provide quite a few jobs as they are quite labour intensive. I look forward to commision being satisfied that a balance has been struck; but I don’t want to see natural spawning grounds destroyed for short term gain. I have made clients a lot of money suggesting retail changes of use; none of which harmed the environment.

Net gain means proceeds less costs. Now are you prepared to defend the points that you made?

MADRID Amey PLC and Bechtel Group Inc. have agreed to sell Tube Lines Ltd. for GBP310.2 million, Amey parent Grupo Ferrovial SA (FER.MC) said late Friday.

In a Spanish regulatory filing, Ferrovial said TLL, which is tasked with the maintenance of three London Underground lines, will be purchased by the U.K. state-owned Transport for London.

Company website: http://www.ferrovial.es

Metro North will go ; then it will be dead as it was predicted on a PPP model that did for Argentina in 2001 and Greece in 2010.

If Luas completed to Abbey Street at least they could terminus the trams at the point Depot whilst they work out how much further North it goes. No better symbol for 2016 than a Luas going down O’Connell Street from College Green; symbol of progress and all that.

You see pvcking, your whole contrived argument is demolished by just a few salient but key issues that you continually either try to obscure or as has benn pointed out a few times you blatantly invent data to defy.

Report 1 for abusive posting; your already on thin ice for your antics under the previous user id of marmajam

Firstly MN is not primarily a link to the airport. It is firstly a key spine in a comprehensive public transport netwiork that is essential for the success of the Dublin city region into the future. You might live in a declining former colonial power but the world moves on fast and Dublin has to compete globally with very dynamic global regions. Poor public transport is consistently marked at the top of the list for drawbacks to inward investment for Dublin by multi nationals.

All the other lines will exist in the absence of Metro North; it is therefore a stand alone line that for the vast majority of its route serves a very low density catchment beyond Drumcoundra and for all of its route beyond Ballymun; excluding Dublin Airport and Swords which can be served by faster Dart options. The interconnector will provide a viable transport system. Name one major muti-national employer on the route; IBM, Intel, Citibank, HSBC, they are all a lot closer to interconnector locations.
There’s no getting away from this.

Secondly, MN will last for 150 yrs at least. You build your infrastructure first then greater development is facilitated.

No scheme is planned on a timeframe of more than 20-30 years; ; except maybe the railway junction I visited in the Bolivian altiplano added in 1870 and shut in 1996. The level of housing and commercial space to be that will require require locations adjacent to a transport corridor can be adequately serviced by the 4 interconnector assisted lines; not to mention that development is unlikely to be as regionally unbalanced as it was over the past decade. i.e. more development for Cork, Galway, Limerick etc is likely to ensure that Dublin doesn’t suffer from over-development again for a very long time.

Not the other way round as you with your estate agent mind seems to imagine.
MN opens up the whole NW sector of Dublin, already enhanced by a major airport with a huge future.
Thirdly is it not light rail as you keep trying to assert. It would be defined as light metro.
And the real point is that it will have 4 times the capacity of the Luas, fully grade separated.

North West Dublin is Blanchardstown it is served by Commuter rail which will be upgraded to Dart; you are talking about MN serving a very narrow corridor comprising of 3 bed semis built between 1920 and 1970. The passenger numbers or multinationals are elsewhere. There is not one bus route between Ballymun and the Airport which indicates that there is no demand to connect these two centres.

And finally the tenders for MN are way below 2 billion and the interest repayments will be in the region of 75m a year.

The EIB funding is for 8.33% of a €6bn package; even taking your €2bn figure which you have never backed up €1,833m would need to borrowed on the open market where yields exceed 5.50% for gilts; that is €100.83m plus €8.3m to the EIB or €109.13m p.a. there would be a risk premium attached to all further deficit sums.

But I don’t believe this can be built for €2bn without some form of inflated service contract being manditory. Compare this project to the interconnector and it offers little, very little. The passenger predictions for the Airport are back to about 28m for 2020 for starters on the demand side; the operational losses on this system would crippling; unless there is seperate ticketing and then commuters have to pay both MN and IE to make journeys involving 2 modes on the system .

Leaving aside 9,000 employed over 6 years, VAT and tax receipts etc etc
There will be a net gain of approx 200m p.a. for the exchequer during construction.
What’s the issue about cash shortage?

So it costs €2bn but the exchequer will receive €2.2bn; are you serious? Then the ongoing operational contract must be crippling; isn’t this how Greece became bankraupt?

I ignore your posts because you supply no sources for anything you say and have difficulty with basic arithmetic.

More tough budgets needed – Sutherland
Sunday, 9 May 2010 23:17
Former EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland has said Ireland had successfully differentiated its economic situation from that of Greece, having shown a real intent to deal with the deficit.

Speaking on RTE’s This Week programme to be broadcast tonight, Mr Sutherland said the public finances will have to be continually reviewed over the next three years.

He said the Government will need to introduce even more difficult budget measures over the next three years in light of the Greek debt crisis.

However, Minister for Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs Pat Carey said the Government does not plan to bring forward the budget but will continue to implement spending cuts.

@Pete wrote:

Interconnector is grand and yes it will increase capacity on the Dart line, but your ignoring my main points. The interconnector, as envisaged under the Dublin Rail Plan would have to be double decker to handle all the traffic that would go through it (two Dart lines). The double decker tunnel would cost considerably more than the €2bn for the single tunnel. Why spend €3 – 4bn on a 7.5km tunnel to create an improved Dart line that would only bring people from Pearse Street to Inchicore? Dart users have coped with the current system for long enough so can stick with it for another few years. You would also have to add cost of building rail line from Malahide to airport and provide extra tracks from Malahide into Docklands on top of that. Capacity may be increased to 100m journeys but I dont think it would get 100m passengers going from Malahide to Heuston or visa versa.

The interconnector will cost about €2bn to build in isolation. Not all passengers will use the tunnel but it will greatly enhance service levels on the three existing routes into Connolly from Greystones, Maynooth and Northern line (branching to Howth). By allowing Darts to run more frequently on the Bray and Maynooth routes it provides capacity purely on the basis of removing about 50% of the traffic currently using the ‘loopline’ In essence it doubles capacity.

@Pete wrote:

How does it make any sense to have three rail lines (2 Dart 1 Commuter) running alone the East coast northside all serving the same stops? The only difference in these two Dart lines is one would go from the airport and one from Drogheda and then both from Malahide to Hueston, both serving 13 out of 16 stops along the airport route. The airport Dart in this case would have three extra stops, and with all other stops served by the other Dart, you are effectively creating a new rail link to the airport only. If the figures dont stack up for the metro how can they for this? At least the metro would introduce new areas to the public transport system. The metro would link with both Luas lines and Drumcondra station and serve St. Stephens Green, Mater hospital, DCU and airport.

The Luas Route from O’Connell Bridge to Ballymun is less than 7kms; A Luas service would be more than adequate to serve all the locations above that you have listed. In terms of the Northern Line not all trains need to stop at all stations; if trains ran every 3 mins at peak times and stations beyond the City Centre were grouped into bundles then you could seperate the more important destinations such as the Airport and Swords/Malahide with fewer services to Drogheda and Howth.

@Pete wrote:

The metro will cost €2bn not €6bn, as has been pointed out by almost every other poster here so would appreciate if you didnt quote that figure again.

The key word is almost as the cost has never actually been clarified by anyone; but it is strange that you would apply to the EIB for €6bn and only list the Metro. In any event it is a PPP so it would be very easy to quote a low headline figure and increase the cost by locking in excesively priced operational and maintenance contracts. Such as the one below which has just been bought out by Transport for London because it was an unmitigated disaster.

Amey PLC and Bechtel Group Inc. have agreed to sell Tube Lines Ltd. for GBP310.2 million, Amey parent Grupo Ferrovial SA (FER.MC) said late Friday.

In a Spanish regulatory filing, Ferrovial said TLL, which is tasked with the maintenance of three London Underground lines, will be purchased by the U.K. state-owned Transport for London.

Company website: http://www.ferrovial.es

@Pete wrote:

I would suggest extending the metro south (at some time in the future and not now) through Harolds Cross, Terenure and Rathfarnham, doing away with the need for Luas Line E. Again I know metro will be more expensive than luas but a metro line running from Rathfarnham to airport via city centre and connecting with every other rail line in Dublin would be extremely popular. The main point is the metro allows for future expansion of the rail network, unlike overloading the North East coast line of County Dublin.

I am very surprised that a DIT student would overlook the housing density issues; do you not have Terry Prendergast as a lecturer? As Ciaran Cuffe said to us the best way to assess any planning decision is from the air. All of the areas you have listed are predominently greying suburbs with very low population density and high levels of protected structures making redevlopment extremely challenging even if the site assembly works out.

@Pete wrote:

Transport 21 plans (over next 20 years) will create;

• Dart from Maynooth to Greystones via Connelly
• Dart from Balbriggan to Hazelhatch via Interconnector
• Metro from Rathfarnham to north of the airport via city centre
• Luas (green) from Cherrywood to Finglas (green line plus BXD plus finglas extension) via city centre
• Luas (red) from Tallaght to Docklands via city centre

Nice and simple with no over lapping yet all major population centres are catered for and all lines connect at least two other rail lines.

Its a nice wish list but do not forget that up to recently the Dept for Transport could rely on massive development levies on the basis of all predictions being very favourable demographics delivering 100,00 housing units a year up to 2006; that figure is now about 10,000 per year and with the overhang on Nama’s books this won’t change anytime soon.

Have a look at the Frankfurt system on this link what Frankfurt does very well is have a number of rail lines that operate at high frequency i.e. 2 – 3 minute intervals with grade seperated spurs ensuring that capacity can be maintained at peak times.

Sadly neither BXD or Lucan Luas will be built as will be the case for Metro North; once the ratings agencies realised what Greece were up to with off balance sheet PPP’s that source of finance is closed and there isn’t the money from general budget. Mitsui’s proposal 15 years should have been built but development was funnelled elsewhere during the boom years and won’t be back anytime soon.