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Duplex flats are the City West / Saggart idea of high density and as the majority of housing is 3-bed semi even if the whole area is developed it is unlikely to attract large scale development levies.

To attract developers to deliver viable densities in the context of development levies that don’t exist elsewhere you need journey times to the City Centre where most employment is located of c 30 minutes maximum. You also need sites that are capable of development i.e. undeveloped land or commercial land where economics and not emotions are the driving force. On the basis of existing density Metro North fails and on the grounds of deliverable development land it fails again.

In contrast the entire route of the Interconnector from North Docklands to Kilmainham passes the existing density test and from there to Clondalkin and most of Metro West would pass one of the ability to develop at sufficient density due to existing land use and sub 30 minute journey times to the City Centre to create demand from young professionals. Having a Dart/Luas interchange at Belgard would greatly assist City West taking journey times down dramatically, what would Metro North do for the good people of Tallaght?

Construction has according to the link below;

http://www.transport21.ie/MEDIA/Press_Releases/Construction_begins_on_Citywest_Luas_Extension.html

Not that much will be built on the route based on Luas as journey times of an hour to IFSC are hardly attractive; a lot quicker to drive or take a feeder bus to Hazelhatch and take a Dart

As someone who works in real estate you get a nose for unlocking value and looking at Metro North it goes through the wrong types of area once you leave the canal.

Drumcoundra is a heritage area which makes high density development difficult, Glasnevan is residential at 15-20 units per acre which makes site assembly a nightmare. Ballymun has opportunites but would be a mere 10 minutes by feeder bus to the Metro West alignment.

Contrast that with the Docklands which is either developed at sustainable levels or is a series of cleared sites. Pearse Station to Christchurch and Hueston Station/Clancy Barracks is already at sustainable densities. Kilmainham towards Ballyfermot is perfect development land as it has all the services such as roads, power, gas etc and the building types of almost redundant 1970’s and 1980’s industrial sheds that continues to Park West which is there in terms of density before going back to a route almost all the way to the airport that it is either redundant industrial areas or modern large scale shopping centres. The only way to get cranes in is to provide a land bank that is actually realisable. All you need is one householder who decides they don’t want to move and a scheme doesn’t happen. Thankfully industrial amenity is not a valid concept and the sites tend to be a lot bigger.

Having looked at the City West Luas extension it has been built and they haven’t come to do anything taller than 3 stories high.

@marmajam wrote:

The simple minded faith that the world must conform to any so-called economist’s strictures, in reality, is a type of flat earthism. Particularly when the same strictures are liberally littered with schoolboy howlers.

Which you lack the gravitas to point out and statistics to expose as what you assert

Typical of you to throw the mud without even attempting to disprove what has been said. Are you saying that

1. That Metro stands up on financial grounds and won’t cost hundreds of millions for pounds a year for a 30 year period?

2. The Government has the money?

3. That capital markets are giving indications that the Capital expenditure programme is the way forward?

4. That the direct route is the best one?

5. Where are the redevelopment opportunities are on the Metro North Line?

6. That the RPA have shown good adherance to their budgets over the years?

Far from living in a fantasy world I am merely pointing out the obvious; the project is not viable, there is no money to pay for it and promotors have no track record on delivering projects on time and on budget. Put simply the RPA handing the Metro West project to CIE is the only way forward the airport would be connected to Stephens Green with a 30 minute Journey which is shorter than train times from Gatwick, Hong Kong or Charles De Gaulle. It would cost a fraction of the price. Answer the 6 questions above or walk.

@marmajam wrote:

Getting a bit desperate PVC? 😀

The patient remains quite ill suffering from a twin condition of soveriegn bond spread bloating brought on by a severe case of political dithering with the public purse. Whether the Government follows the Anglo Irish Bank strategy of ignoring ratings agencies or whether it believes it will wake up from the current situation which isn’t a dream doesn’t make me desperate. It makes me sad that there aren’t people around this time to make the hard decisions on behalf of what is a hard working and creative tax base who will pay for this lack of action for decades to come.

This project never stacked up on cost benefit analysis and as the tide has gone out this project must now pass financial tests it should have faced a very long time ago. Dublin needs a proper public transport and not a metro that is over-priced, doesn’t enjoy the population densities required to make it even operationally viable or pass through areas that are capable of largescale redevelopment.

Compare this scenario to building the interconnector and building Metro West not as a direct route from Tallaght to the airport but as two branch lines from the rest of the Dart network. In one move you deliver

1. Intergration of all existing lines providing single mode interchange
2. Metro North to the Airport
3. Metro South West to Tallaght
4. Metro West linking Tallaght to the Airport.
5. You have an underground that acts as a spine to deliver a miriad of routings all of which make a contribution

What you don’t want is the preservation of an agency that made no effort to intergrate public transport or ticketing and spent according to WNH €30m on an objection that probably could have been solved over a pint of beer and not squandering millions as a result of acting in a fashion that could only be described as being drunk with power.

@wearnicehats wrote:

according to rte news tonight no decision on the metro until “December at least”

December 2019?

It will interesting to see the NTMA bond spread come close of play Thursday when markets have digested the fine print in the budget.

@wearnicehats wrote:

here’s a headline – “minister seeks to suggest government are great shortly before election campaign begins shocker”

metro north is dead in the water. Just look at the way the RPA behave – spend 30 odd million on “consultants” to decide whether it’s a good idea and send one of the biggest regeneration schemes around (ballymun) to ABP because they don’t like the link to the possible future Metro North stop? The RPA haven’t a clue and it ain’t happening any time soon

get a bus get a taxi get over it

Sounds like so much consultancy you would have needed a bus as opposed to a taxi to move it.

€30m would pay for 500 students to qualify on a 3 year degree course producing €1.5m a year in tax receipts in the early stages of their careers or 1,500 redundant people to go back to do a 1 year masters which assuming the course is relevant and they secure employment would produce €4.5m p.a. in tax revenue in the early stages of their new careers.

€30m for a planning submission and or resulting process regarding someone else’s (fellow public sector) application if correct is just plain wrong and symtomatic of how naked people get found out when the tide goes out.

@marmajam wrote:

Mr Dempsey accused economic commentators of making ill-informed and ignorant statements, he said he would be recommending to cabinet colleagues that the project be approved, despite the downturn.

He was also quoted as saying if the figures are acruate it should go ahead.

450,000 is optomistic
-7.5% is optimistic

What part of patience do you not understand?

@Fergal wrote:

Y our assumptions are a little off. The terms of the PPP are that the Metro will be payed for as a series of availability payments over 30 years. The first such payment will be due when the Metro carries it’s first passengers. There will be penalties for operational outages. The operator will carry the risk that construction will run over cost, and sort out the finance until the thing is in operation.

I’ve always found you to have a good take on things; I am therefore at a loss as to how you overlook the fact that however you package a finance agreement a rate of return has to be generated to compensate risk.

You can structure monthly payments and have very little compounding or you can pay every five years and generate large amounts of interest on interest. Whatever way you break the finance down this is going to cost a minimum €200m per year just to clear the interest.

I can also say I have yet to see real compensation paid in the event of outages it might add up to lost turnover and operational subvention and when you sue the consortium they blame a named sub-contractor who surprise surprise was liquidated as soon as the project completed and left a performance bond that works for 1 outage.

@Fergal wrote:

€6.82 per passenger is a lot to start of at, but that will be eroded swiftly by inflation and passenger growth as the route corridor densifies. The route already serves a longer, more heavily populated corridor than either of the two existing lines, which are above capacity at peak times.

With fairly modest passenger growth, to say 50 milion per annum, and a fairly modest estimate of an average inflation of 5% average over the next 30 years, that subvention will be down to €1 in todays money. And we’ll have a piece of transport infrastructure that will last a lot longer than 30 years..

Firstly the 34m was based on a demand side equation that is now distant history; I would say that 25m is a sustainable base to project from and that assumes unemployment stops at 450,000 people.

I don’t agree with your take on inflation; the pricing matrix will be pitched quite high to begin with and inflation of 5% per year in past years was not only unsustainable it was a disgrace, it was twice the Eurozone average indicating that policy makers got it very badly wrong.

If Ireland is to recover it will be on the basis of significant consumer deflation bringing prices back into line with the rest of Europe. Estimate 2% per year and it may if you are lucky keep pace with the operational subvention required to light, heat, clean, ticket and move the system.

Passenger growth is not likely to be anything like that forecast; the love affair with phrases such as demographics, location will be dormant for a long time and development will never be as profitable as it was during the early part of this decade. Put simply developers will develop what is mosty profitable i.e. where there are less development levies or none at all because the banks and sovent land bankers have a glut of development land that will take them more than a decade to develop at 50,000 units a year or what was developed in say 1998 when economic growth was c8%.

@Fergal wrote:

Aircoach is not an adequate bus service for the airport. It is fine for occasional use for travellers, but is cost-prohibitive for the 13,000 people commuting to work there every day. And it is only a single destination for this line -very much not the be-all and end all of the line..

The airport has always been a reasonably closed shop and commuting patterns are just as likely to come from Portmarnock or rural North County Dublin as along the metro route. In any event you can’t justify a €200m per year interest bill to serve a workforce who at most would generate 13,000 round trips per day.

@Fergal wrote:

It would be hard to draw a straight line through Dublin and connect more large trip generators and residential areas than the Metro.

You may not be too far wrong on this but you are talking about European scale expenditure and trying to treat Dublin as though it has the density of Lyon. Dublin had a choice in development pattern and chose Portarlington Garden City as its model of development; Dublin could just about justify a tunnel from Hueston to the Point Depot or Ballsbridge to Phibsborough. You need non stop 5-6 storey buildings for 5 minutes walking distance on each side to justify the costs.

Settle your government finances and then when there is money to effect change on a wider scale assess priorities.