Council seeks 'wire free' city centre for new Luas line

DUBLIN CITY Council has urged Bord Pleanála not to permit the use of overhead power cables on the proposed Luas Broombridge line through Dublin city centre.

In its submission to the hearing on the plan to link the existing red and green Luas lines, the council said the area from St Stephen’s Green to Parnell Square should be a “wire free” zone.

The council is also opposing plans to run the Luas on the central median of O’Connell Street from the Spire, which would necessitate the removal of the Fr Matthew statue.

The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) wants to use the same overhead power supply system on the new line, which will link the Sandyford and Tallaght lines before continuing on to Broombridge in Cabra, as it does on the existing lines.

Dublin city planner Dick Gleeson yesterday told the hearing the proposed use of overhead cables would be “visually intrusive” on the sensitive streetscape of the historic core of the city which included the Mansion House, St Ann’s Church, Trinity College, the Bank of Ireland at College Green, O’Connell Bridge, the GPO and the Rotunda Hospital.

The council was particularly concerned about the effect such a cable system would have on College Green, Mr Gleeson said. The buildings, including Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland, were of such architectural quality and rarity that they should not be compromised, he said.

“While College Green currently suffers from an excess of hostile traffic and from various aspects of clutter including over-scaled planting, the relationship of buildings and space constitutes a dramatic urban composition and is the city’s most important urban space.”

The RPA plans to run the line on the road until it reaches the Spire on O’Connell Street where it would be moved on to the paved central median of the road until Parnell Square.

This plan is unacceptable to the council.

The proposed alignment would “detrimentally affect the integrity” of the street which was redeveloped over a four-year period by the council from 2001.

“The erosion of the median to the degree proposed will radically undermine the visual legibility and symmetry of the street,” Mr Gleeson said.

The RPA should instead keep the line on the road until after the Fr Matthew statue, which sits opposite the former Carlton cinema, where it could then join the median in order to enable it to turn on to Parnell Square, said Mr Gleeson.

The council had initially wanted to attach 109 conditions to the granting of permission for the line, he said, but following discussions with the RPA it had reached an agreed position on all but the two matters above.

If Bord Pleanála attached conditions which would order the use of an alternative power source for the line in the city centre, and change the alignment of the route through O’Connell Street, the council would be “fully supportive” of the Luas Broombridge, Mr Gleeson said.