Niall
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Christ,
this is going all horribly wrong I have a gut feeling there has been a balls up. I would be very surprised if Ritchie, wanted that ‘thing at the base’ It looks very unprofessional. Bit like the Corpo really
As for the ‘opening’ thinking about it, I’d say it’s tied up with the Special Olympics, which are due to open on June 21, which also incidently is the longest day of the year.
A fitting time to illuminate the Spire or the beginning of the end for another corpo architectual fiasco…?? I’m beginning to think it will go the way of the flozzie and the time in the slime!
CIE says it is too narow, which is laughable, it is double-track! If it is too narrow, then why not widen it, so it can be used? If they don’t want to use it, like their freight business, give it to somebody else.
I have a sneaky suspicion that the mandarins want the interconnector built as it will tie in with the Metro, whenever that gets built, also I beleive it will run south of the liffey before curving up to Connolly and Docklands, as Luas runs north of the Liffey, wirh stations like Guiness Christchurch and College Green tagged on. I think it is worth doing but not at the prices suggested!!
However I still think the Phoenix Park tunnel would compliment it and also help the poor travelling public.
An excellent website at http://www.platform11.org
and also check out Irish railway news, it comes up on Google.
Does anyone know what the reason is? Or is it just a case of chronic mismanagement at the Corpo, sorry City Council.
This whole thing has been handled appallingly and does NOT bode well for the development of Main Street Ireland in the long run.
Yes I agree, the money goes into the hands of a greedy golden circle, who live in some of the most expensive real estate in Europe and drive some of the most expensive cars and have the most expensive tastes! This sheer robbery is leaving nothing for future generations and adding to theis misery of this one! The profiteering and corruption has got to stop! The country will grind to a halt and we will have very little to show for the good times!!
I thought the logic is to get value for money. Nobody disputes the need for spending, just how we pay for it and at what price.
Radical decisions, need to be made, no more reports are needed and money has to be accounted for. I would have thought the first priorities would be high speed links to the cities and an interconnecter in Dublin, as well as new rolling stock.
I hadn’t realised about the bollards. I dispair. This is some bloody country, can anything be done properly and even remotely on time or budget?
Jesus, this one surely runs and runs.. like Blackhall Bridge and Grattan Bridge and the Halfpenny bridge refurbishment, months and months and months behind schedule. I’d say September.. Take yer time lads! The tourist season’ll be over by then.. oops forgot the builders holidays, maybe October!
How are these deals negotiated. PPP, more like taken for a ride! Read in papers today, that Kilcock to Kinnegad Bypass will cost EUR320 and government will fork out 170 million plus 100 million in land costs and the Private sector get to keep all the tolls for 30 years……..Nice work if you can get it!
What I cant understand is why not insist the same company build the bloody road all the way to Galway, talk about starting and stopping. Land costs must be controlled. A special court should be set up to settle them quickly;. Better accountability has to be enshrined in all these deals, or I fear more bloody tribunals
Interesting? From Sunday Indo, 23/03/03
Two port tunnels is still a cheaper option than a metro system
MARTIN FITZPATRICK
THE shocking thing about the cost of large infrastructural projects in Ireland is that the public isn’t shocked anymore.
No one seems to want to call a halt to the dramatic and steady escalation in project prices that has left the biggest and most essential pieces of national infrastructure at the mercy of developers and construction consultants, and unprotected from exploitation by plainly opportunist property owners who are determined to squeeze the last million every chance they get.
The trend has been pretty obvious in Dublin’s Luas light rail system, which, at the start, was expected to cost a relatively modest €400m, but, by the time it’s due to be finished, will set the taxpayer back more than double the amount originally thought.
Rather than deal with the problem head-on, the city’s newest project, the proposed half-underground metro that will link Dublin city centre to Dublin airport, has opted instead to turn the policy of project underestimation on its head.
Its promoters, the Rail Procurement Agency (RPA), headed by ex-IDA boss Padraic White, appear to have taken the Luas experience to heart and have pitched estimated costs so high so that if and when the project ever gets finished, it won’t – or shouldn’t – disappoint.
If there is any logic to this position, it reflects the quite bizarre unpredictability of large-scale construction in Dublin. Mr White told his story to Pat Kenny on an RTE radio programme and it bears
repetition. Setting out his position, Padraic White identified the “big difference” between a large project in Dublin and elsewhere in the world is “the property costs and the huge uncertainty”.
If you are going to estimate costs in Dublin, he argued, you have to take on board the fact everything will be more expensive than you think.
He also claimed that in other places around the world it “suits” many cities to underprice a project.
“We did the opposite,” he declared. Mr White and his RPA colleagues presented the projected ‘cost’ of the metro a month or so back to a Cabinet transport sub-committee chaired by the Taoiseach himself. Mr Ahern and the other sub-committee members were given a price of €4.8bn.
What’s not generally known is whether the Taoiseach was told the detail that Pat Kenny was? If he was, it must have been a fascinating meeting because the construction costs of the metro, we now discover, were not €4.8bn, they are nearer €1.7bn.
And this latter figure even includes property acquisition as well as design and management and project management fees.
The balance of €3.1bn – two-thirds the total project cost – are accounted for by “insurance and risk costs and VAT”, Mr White told RTE. Insurance and prudential risk, he reckoned, accounts for a staggering €1bn of the total costs.
“Construction in Ireland is more expensive,” the chairman of the RPA said.
But it’s clearly nothing like as expensive as the cost of insurance for a venture that will take up to nine years to build, and during which time, only four or five years will be spent actually building or tunnelling.
Insisting that the “record of major urban transport projects is that they come in at twice the original cost”, Padraic White went on to say that the €4.8bn figure which he showed the Taoiseach includes massive cost escalation. If the metro was being paid for today it would cost only €3.3bn.
That being so, the escalation costs alone of the metro project are an astonishing €1.5bn – which seems hard to justify.
So it would appear that the real beneficiaries of the metro will be the construction consultants (who, contrary to international experience, are going to be employed several years before actual work gets under way) and the companies who carry the insurance risk. Moreover, if Padraic White’s estimate of €1.7bn for the cost of actually building the system is close to the mark, it bears unflattering comparison with the cost of the Port Tunnel which is now nearing completion and, even escalated as it is, is only costing €625m.
In other words it would be possible to build two port tunnels for less than it would cost to build the metro. And the cost of the port tunnel comes with the ‘risk’ costs attached.
I heard a better story, when the ‘IRA’ (one-two man band) blew up the pillar, not one window in O’Connell Street was damaged, when the Army went in to clear up the stump several adjacent windows were blown out…….. Now that’s Irish officaldom for you!!!!!!
Is it true the same SIAC guys have been labouring at the site since?…
Right simple enough, surely no VAT should be charged by the state and no acquisition costs for tunnels and all contracts are fixed price! That should save a billion or two…..
