Luas and Paddy's Day.

Victor

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Patrick's Day parade gets green light as Luas snag is banished
From:The Irish Independent
Thursday, 5th February, 2004
Bill Corcoran

THIS year's St Patrick's Day festival parade in Dublin, which had been under threat from the Luas works, has been granted a reprieve - though it may be the last time it will travel up O'Connell Street.

It is understood the organisers and Dublin City Council have come up with a solution which will allow the parade to wind its way through the areas of O'Connell Street that are not presently being regenerated.

The local authority was able to solve the problem because it provides the right of access to the capital's main thoroughfare in relation to the staging of parades.

But in recent months further problems have arisen between the festival's organisers and the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) which appear to be threatening the use of the street for future parades.

From next year, when the Luas is up and running, the overhead cables on O'Connell Street will stop at least half of the floats from participating because they exceed the cables' minimum safety clearance height of 5.5 metres.

Festival organisers and representatives of the RPA have been locked in talks for a number of months in an effort to resolve the clearance height issue as well as other problems that would materialise, if the Luas cables were to be taken down for the parade.

Taking down the cables and then putting them up again could cost up to €80,000, it is estimated.

But Chief Executive of the St Patrick's Day festival office, Maria Moynihan, said yesterday that to date neither group has been able to come up with a compromise that would be acceptable to both parties.

"The problems relating to running the St Patrick's Day parade up O'Connell Street once the Luas is running have not been resolved. As far as we are concerned the bigger the parade the better it is. The scale of it must be relative to the length and width of the street," she said.

A spokesman for the RPA confirmed that if the Luas had to close down then the State agency would bear the brunt of the financial cost, but he said this would be an unsatisfactory outcome for the company.

"We are currently looking at all sorts of solutions and we will continue to meet with all the relevant parties," he said.

Cllr Kevin Humphreys (Lab) said: "We are spending millions on regenerating O'Connell Street, so it would be inconceivable that we would not have the chance to show the capital's main street off when the rest of the world is watching the St Patrick's Day parade."

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/breaking/2489468?view=Eircomnet

St Patrick's day organisers deny parade re-route
From:ireland.com
Friday, 6th February, 2004

Rumours that Dublin's St Patrick's Day parade will be winding its way along the traditional route for the last time this year have been dismissed by officials.

The parade traditionally begins at St Patrick's Cathedral and snakes along Dame Street and O'Connell Street before ending up in Parnell Square.

But the construction of tram lines and overhead cables on O'Connell Street have cast doubt over the future of the parade.

The first of the city's Luas lines is due to open in June and there were fears that the cables would force the parade to be re-routed next year.

However this prospect has been dismissed by the festival organisers as well as the Rail Procurement Agency and Dublin Tourism.

Mr Frank Magee, chief executive of Dublin Tourism and a director of the St Patrick's Day festival, said there were no fears that the colourful parade was in jeopardy.

"We are having ongoing talks with all parties involved and there are a number of ways and plenty of time to get around the problem before the 2005 parade," he said.

Mr Ger Hannon, a director of the Rail Procurement Agency, said there was no question the Luas would stop the street from witnessing the event.

"The most obvious solution is to turn the power off for a few hours which is a relatively simple operation," he said.

"This would allow almost all floats to pass under the cables with only a handful exceeding the six metre limit."

Mr Hannon added that the cables could be taken down although it would take a few days and be an expensive operation.

"There are certainly solutions and we are optimistic there will be no problems," he said.

Ms Marie Moynihan, chief executive of the St Patrick's Day festival office, is concerned about having to scale down the size of the extravagant parade but the company confirmed talks were ongoing and they were confident of a resolution.

Construction work in O'Connell Street has been scheduled around this year's parade so it will not be affected.

The event has already been given the green light by Dublin City Council and a license is expected to be signed next week.

Capt'n Midnight

Maybe they could re-route it through the port tunnel ..
Is it too late to reuse the red cow stilts ?

BrianD

The simple solution is that the Paddy's day organisers ask for the cabling to be switched off for the parade as a risk reduction and place a 5.5m height limit on the float. The average truck body is about 4metres so the floats still have plenty of space to be creative. To be honest putting a structure that is over 6 m including the vehicle or truck trailer is unsafe a the width of a truck trailer is 2.55m. The base of a structure should never be less than 1/3 of the height.

Bee

A further example of the lack of joined up thinking by the multiple bodies involved with transport in Dublin!

Taxpayers will be screwed on an incremental basis as funds will be sought and given for the Luas down time. I shudder to think what else they have forgotten about if they forgot about St. Paddy's day

Bee

BrianD

This is not an example of lack of joined up thinking by multiple bodies as you say. The Paddy's day is a one of event and you would hardly expect the Luas project to be modified to tak account of it nor should it be included in their planning. The odd float - do they still have floats? - may exceed the 6m height but not that many and at that height the float would probably be unstable! The Paddy's day organisers need to adjust their parade to take account of the new infrastructure. It is really their problem. There are cities all round the world with tram lines that have public parades without problem. Biggest challenge facing Paddy's day is the fact that O'Connell st is a building site.

The Luas line is being built to international standards so what else do you think they might have forgotten? Granted the project is late and over budget but that seems to be de facto in most Irish projects. Most of the problems with Luas are caused by badly informed public preception or interference. Public pressure has stopped both lines joining up - doubling the cost of maintenance facilities on the lines. Public pressure stopped the logical extension from Connolly to the Point. There is even a preception that both lines are built to different standards. Irish people hate any change or new ideas and then can't understand how they did without it once they get used to it.

Tommy Vercetti

I predict a Drumcree-style stand-off between the parade and the RPA officials.

No talking = no walking:p

Bee

Most of the problems with Luas are caused by badly informed public preception

Nope! The problem with the Luas is its a waste of money and effort. The design is a total screw up. Remember, as all other traffic in Dublin including buses must give way to Luas the only way the Luas will be more ‘reliable’ is by inconveniencing other transport users including other public transport users. Can you imagine our Suicide Squad Cyclists giving way? Already they are suffering injuries even before Luas is up and running! But of course unelected civil servants e.g. The Mis-Director of Traffic Keego & Co in cahoots with Luas will probably be happy to bring in even more stringent restrictions for the people who pay his wages (profit earning Taxpayers) just to make the Luas even slightly reliable!

There is no real achievement if your reliability comes at the expense of the reliability of other forms of transport. Also Luas ‘reliability’ is being achieved by additional funding such as the proposed multi millions to run the Luas at the Red Cow roundabout.

Did the mis designers and other prats not realise how the Luas was going to further mess up the traffic at the roundabout?

This just shows that the Luas is a black hole sucking up more and more of taxpayers’ money. It makes sense to stop the Luas now, as it is a sunk cost. Designers with proven track records in other European cities should be brought in to plan and construct a genuine integrated public/private transport system.

Who was the Einstein that decided to run the LUAS along side the lorries, cars, busses and most of the East-South Traffic in the country system for Dublin which should include a metro. This is a project conceived, implemented and operated by FF and their construction industry cronies. It was is and always will be a symbol of the Mitterandesque delusions of immortality through the edifice of Mary O'Rourkes, Bertie, Brennan and the rest of the illiteraty that comprise FF and their rump supporters.

Dublin needed a overground tram system like Venice needs new canals. Underground was and is the answer.

But then who would look at the underground as it silently and speedily shifts Dublin's hard pressed commuter efficiently from one strategically located station to the next and say "WOW - FF gave us that!!!" No-one - instead FF give us the Luas and the people of Dublin will stand and stare at the even more traffic clogged streets of Dublin in which marooned like silver snails will sit Luas trams and they will say "WOW - FF gave us that???".

On second thoughts let it proceed - then the people of Dublin will have a permanent reminder of FF's inability to carry out anything that involves complex reasoning - and they will turn on FF and throw them out of office for ever. Luas - the prettiest and costliest lame duck that ever was.

Sad that it will continue to rob taxpayers money in the process

Bee

Andrew Duffy

You drive regularly in the city centre then, yes?

The above post should sit proudly as the best example of the type of crap spewed out by anti-public transport commentators, usually confined to the pages of the Irish Independent.

A few questions for you:

- Have you ever travelled on a tram?
- Have you ever travelled on a bus?
- Have you ever travelled on an underground train?

Until you can answer "yes" to all of the above, you should try keeping your level of vitriol low.

To answer the inevitable questions in advance, I have done all the above, and I hold a full driver's licence. I don't think cars have any place in our city centres. I don't think the severely uncomfortable conditions provided by underground trains will encourage commuters to use them unless they absolutely have to, as is the case in London and New York.

BrianD

Rant on Bee but you are seem to be odds with the success of trams elsewhere in the world. The fact is that new tram systems are being installed in cities all over the world. Trams are the backbone of the Melbourne transit system and they have a population over 3 million. Look around Europe and trams are busily working in most cities.

Apart from the budget over runs and delay of completeing the project the only other screw up I am aware of is the fact that our politicans backed down in joining up both lines hence we have the stephens green - O'connell st. gap. The controversy over the Red Cow roundabout is typical example of how politicans can be influenced by badly informed public opinion to come up with crazy ideas.


Bottom line is that population density of Dublin will never justify the investment in a metro. The future is in upgrading existing rail lines to Dart standard, the coinstruction of a new line possibly north-south to connect to the airport and the construction of more tram lines.

BrianD

I am a bit mystified by the article in the Irish Times today about the differences between the Tallaght and Sandyford lines. Apparently the median between the tracks is wider on the Sandyford line. The rationale is to allow it carry wider units should it be upgraded to a metro line. It then goes on to say that this is not possible on the Tallaght line because the median is narrow. The whole article is confusing as it suggests that both lines will be upgraded to metro standard.

As I understand it, the trams on both lines are currently interchangeable and if both were linked could operate on either line. There are currently no compatability issues.

Because The sandyford line is built largely on an old railway line it is suitable for upgrading to a metro style service.

As the tallaght line is largely on street it can not be upgraded to a "metro" line.

In my mind, a metro line is a heavy rail line similar to the DART that either runs above or below ground. I am also informed that if the Sandyford line was upgraded to metro standard and other lines were built the track guage is still different to the standard railway guage used on the existing suburban lines.

Therefore, our future metro system is likely to be made up of a heavy railway system with two different guages and a light rail system.

Bee

Originally posted by Andrew Duffy

A few questions for you:

- Have you ever travelled on a tram?
- Have you ever travelled on a bus?
- Have you ever travelled on an underground train?

[/B]

Yes I have in Europe, The Far East and the States. Oh! I also have flown,sailed,skateboarded as well.

The above post should sit proudly as the best example of the type of crap spewed out by anti-public transport commentators, usually confined to the pages of the Irish Independent

Oh Dear I will have to repeat myself, !

"Designers with proven track records in other European cities should be brought in to plan and construct a genuine integrated public/private transport system." I would like to see an integrated system but anyone with any sense can see that is not what we are getting.

With the ongoing Luas fiascos and mind boggling cost over runs due to the nice people I mentioned in my previous post I don't see what you have to defend?

Bee

West Briton

Originally posted by Bee
It makes sense to stop the Luas now, as it is a sunk cost.

Go down to Dundrum and canvass that option, I'd love to see the response you'd get!

"Sorry, you were promised the reuse of the Harcourt Street line from June, but I want to take it away until an underground gets finished in eight years time. In the meantime, stay stuck in traffic so I don't get offended as a taxpayer"

Perhaps we should all develop iron butts and get on motorbikes?

BrianD

Bee, I would suggest that there are very few cities where the transport was built and planned from scratch. Most have evolved over time into their current form.

The only lack of intergration I can see in Dublin transport is ticketing an overall marketing body that is responsible for promoting public transport. And of course we don't have the money to build the white elephant metro system that is being proposed.

Furthermore, bringing in planners will be a waste of time while our politicians randomly rezone land for development in the most inappropriate of places where there is no possibility to provide cost effective public transport. Corruption in our planning has meant that it is difficult and expensive for public transport to service sprawling and low density suburbs.

Victor

Originally posted by BrianD
I am a bit mystified by the article in the Irish Times today about the differences between the Tallaght and Sandyford lines. Apparently the median between the tracks is wider on the Sandyford line. The rationale is to allow it carry wider units should it be upgraded to a metro line. It then goes on to say that this is not possible on the Tallaght line because the median is narrow. The whole article is confusing as it suggests that both lines will be upgraded to metro standard.

.... Therefore, our future metro system is likely to be made up of a heavy railway system with two different guages and a light rail system.

The difference between the Tallaght and Sandyford lines is that Sandyford will eventually be able to take larger (i.e. wider) vehicles, with greater capacity per car. This won't be able to happen on the Tallaght line. However, Sandyford cannot be considered heavy rail as the track loading won't be able to take the axle loading of conventional trains, especially locomotives. It will be more like system 1, 2a and 2b thatn system 1,2 and 3.

Bee

Originally posted by BrianD
Furthermore, bringing in planners will be a waste of time while our politicians randomly rezone land for development in the most inappropriate of places where there is no possibility to provide cost effective public transport.

Good Grief Mr.D! Surely you are not hinting that there might be brown paper bag's involved!!!

"Sorry, you were promised the reuse of the Harcourt Street line from June, but I want to take it away until an underground gets finished in eight years time. In the meantime, stay stuck in traffic so I don't get offended as a taxpayer"

Are you one of the Westie's? Mr West Briton man? You need not answer!;)

As a stakeholder and tax payer in Dublin I don't think my tax dollar is being well spent. The Luas is a mis-spend for all of the reasons I posted think of the following,

LUAS is the biggest single public transport project in the history of the state. It will cost somewhere between €700m and €800m depending which government staement you believe slightly more than the original quote that came in well under €300m. This is a massive rip off by any standards.

Public transport is all about capacity. The LUAS is rubbish a la terms of capacity for the money spent. The project secured government approval on the basis that each line would be able to carry approx. 7,000 passengers per direction per hour.

Recent statements from the Rail Procurement Agency said that the carrying capacity of each line would be only around 3,000 per hour. Any increase in that capacity could only be achieved if the trams were run at a frequency so high that would cause huge disruption to road traffic flows in the city even including cyclists!.

It is important to put that carrying capacity of 3,000 passengers in context. The same level of capacity can be achieved by a high-frequency Quality Bus Corridor.

The cost of a QBC is about one twentieth of that of a LUAS line. It seems clear to me, therefore, that LUAS does not represent good value for money for the taxpayers of the country or the people of Dublin.

And we must also be cognisant of the impact which LUAS will have on traffic movements in the city generally.

You don't have to be a transport engineer (better still don't be a Dublin Transport engineer as it appears to be an oxymoron!) to see that the junction of the M-50 and the N-7 is a mess. Even nice Mr.Brennan accepts that.

Oh My! The Mad Cow roundabout, don't get me started.... The junction was under-engineered from the start and we are now paying a huge price for that in terms of appalling traffic congestion. A few years from now we will have the same screw up on the Dublin Port Tunnel if the height is not adjusted. but back to the Luas/etc

The Mad Cow roundabout is about to get even madder. Because - and some people might find this unbelievable - we are going to put two level crossings across two of the slip roads on one of the busiest roundabouts in the country.

I sincerely hope that this particular piece of,I don't want to call it "engineering" does not cause massive traffic congestion in the whole West Dublin area. But I find it hard to see how this will not happen. Screw the computer simulations, the impact on traffic flow will be chaotic.

And it is not just cars that will be affected by LUAS. Dublin Bus estimates that the light-rail system is already causing serious disruption to their services even before it is formally commissioned.

The company has recently stated that running time on the number 51 route had doubled because of the LUAS works, while journey times on routes 39, 68 and 69 had been seriously impacted.

And it's worth pointing out that the people who use these routes live in parts of the city - Clondalkin, Rathcoole, Newcastle, Castleknock and Blanchardstown - will not be able to switch from bus to LUAS because LUAS does not serve their areas at all.

Obviously we have to complete the two LUAS lines that are currently under construction. But I think we should draw a line at that stage. Extending the Tallaght line from Connolly the short distance down to the Docklands makes sense. But I do not think that we should embark on any new LUAS ventures.

And I would disagree strongly with the DTO's joke strategy document, Platform for Change, which envisages a huge network of LUAS lines covering the city.

I believe that Dublin's future public transport needs will be best met by a combination of private buses and metro.

Provided they are given proper priority buses can deliver a fast and flexible service in return for a very modest investment of capital. And each QBC can carry as many people as a LUAS line. Clearly, the bus running on a QBC is a very efficient and a very economic option for Dublin.!

The way forward surely is to develop more QBCs, to eliminate all the bottlenecks on existing QBCs so that buses can move quickly and easily, and to invest in a major expansion of the city bus fleet public and private.

I believe that that is a sensible policy for the future. What is not sensible is to follow the DTO strategy and invest several more billions of euros in building more LUAS lines around the city.

No major city can solve its problems with on-street solutions only - whether it be buses or trams.

Dublin is the only capital city in the entire European Union - apart from little Luxembourg - which does not have a metro system.

I firmly believe that traffic will not begin to move freely in Dublin until we have a comprehensive metro system in place, one that is fully integrated with buses, DART and suburban rail. That's how it's done elsewhere and that's how it should be done here.

People say metros are too expensive. They take too long to plan. They take too long to build. I would like to give an example of how a metro system can be built quickly and efficiently when a city has the determination to do it.

There were regional elections in Madrid in May of 1999. One party - the Partido Popular - put forward the idea of a new circular metro line linking five satellite towns to the south of the city. The line was to be called Metrosur and it would be delivered in time for the next regional elections in 2003.

That would seem to us to be a very big political promise. But the promise had credibility because a major programme of metro developments had been completed on time and on budget in the previous four years

The Metrosur would be fully underground. It would be 25 miles long and it would have 40 stations. And it would have interchange points with other rail lines at several locations.

This was an ambitious project by any standards. A metro project of this size, for instance, would be sufficient to provide a comprehensive service for the entire city of Dublin, north and south.

Planning and design of the project began on September 10th, 1999. Actual construction work began on May 23rd, 2000 - eight months later. And the full Metrosur system opened to passengers on April 11th, 2003.

In other words the whole project was taken from conception to completion in less than four years - a remarkable achievement when you think how we do our business here in this country.

And the cost ? Metrosur came in at €46m per kilometre, inclusive of all costs - tunnels, stations, trains, maintenance yards - everything. That means that for about a billion-and-a-half euros we could have an excellent metro system for Dublin, linking the north, south and west of the city.

And yet we were told that a short seven-mile line from the city centre to Dublin Airport would cost five thousand million euros. I didn't accept that and neither did nice Mr. Brennan. It's time we started to learn how things are done in other countries.

The head of the Madrid Metro, Mr Manuel Melis, recently wrote about the huge cost estimates and long time schedules put forward for planning and building metro systems.

He said, and I quote: `In Madrid we believe that any metro can be built and commissioned within 40 months at a cost of no more than €50m per kilometre'.

If we had that kind of attitude in Dublin we could solve the transport problems of our capital city completely and comprehensively within the lifetime of this government.

And let's get away from this argument that metro is unaffordable compared to LUAS. In fact, I would argue that the opposite is the case.

On the basis of the Madrid figures metro is about 50% more expensive than LUAS to build. But a metro system can carry anything up to 24,000 passengers per direction per hour - almost eight times the capacity of LUAS.

This means that in terms of money invested in hourly passenger capacity LUAS is four or five times more expensive than metro.

The present minister inherited LUAS and he has no choice but to complete what was started. But I would strongly suggest to make the move to a metro. It's been shown to be the best option all over Europe and it is the best option for Dublin too.

Have a nice weekend MrD and Mr WestB!

Bee

West Briton

You too Mr. Bee! I don't doubt that you have the best interests of Dublin at heart but my skepticism has been informed by my following of the results of the Luas "debate" over the last ten years. Cost is always going to be the bugbear of getting any infrastructural development up and running, and the following points appear to be truisms to me. Perhaps you might comment after the weekend or whenever.

1. Far more stringent criteria are applied to rail infrastructure projects than the construction of motorways and dual carriageway improvements. The more expensive a rail project is, the more likely it will be deferred ad infinitum until the costs for it have increased further and ultimately never constructed. See the fate of the original DART proposals and the campaign against DART during its construction.

2. The closure of the Harcourt Street line in 1958 was undertaken in the context of a declining population in an affluent area who were taking to the motor car. Ultimately the resulting congestion and a lack of suitable routes for a QBC type solution led to the busway proposal in the early 1970s which led to Luas.

3. A QBC solution to the Dundrum - Milltown - Ranelagh corridor is impractical given the narrowness of the roads in the area, unless substantial land purchase was undertaken, at a cost far greater than Luas.

4. Using the Harcourt Street line as a busway would have resulted in substantially the same capital costs, as Taney would still have to be crossed, and the Milltown Viaduct and the Ranelagh Embankment are too narrow for two buses to pass each other. Overbridges would still have to be rebuilt and all the compensation claims by residents would still have to be met.

5. The capacity of a Harcourt Street tram (40 metres) is around 300, and that of a bus is around 90. A tram every five minutes carries 3600 in an hour, being 12 trams heading to the Green at peak. The number of buses needed to carry that amount is therefore around 40.

6. I am in favour of the metro system being built, but I do not believe that Finance will sanction it. I believe that if the decision had been taken to go ahead with metro as an alternative then there would be no sod turned on the HS line at all. The parallel that I draw is tnat the go ahead was given in principle in 1991 to construct a busway from Grand Parade to Taney Cross, but the decision was held off until a cost benefit analysis was undertaken. Ultimately the busway was held not to have the same cost benefit scoring as a tramway. Sources provided on request.

Victor

Not gonna even read that until at least tomorrow, if there is a problem report it.