[Not an Article] Luas damned for 'making no financial or commuter sense'

Andrew Duffy

Ridiculous, poorly researched article from, typically, the Irish Independent. Comparing a single track built across a desert to a double track electrified line built through a city is what makes no sense, as does pulling a figure of a 1% transfer to public transport out of, I can only assume, his arse.

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1140222&issue_id=10548

Luas damned for 'making no financial or commuter sense'

LUAS, which will cost more than €1bn, makes no economic sense at all and is unlikely to shift more then 1pc more of Dublin's commuters on to public transport, a leading economist warned yesterday.

Colm McCarthy, managing director of DKM Economic Consultants, pointed out that the latest figure for the cost of the 23-kilometre Luas line was about the same as the cost of a 3,000-kilometre rail line in Australia.

He delivered his damning assessment of the Luas at the Border Midlands and West Regional Assembly in Galway yesterday. Mr McCarthy has previously worked at the Central Bank and the ESRI and was one of the authors of the recent mid-term evaluation of the Government's National Development Plan.

Mr McCarthy said he wanted to talk about the Luas because the "benefits" of the project were sometimes put forward as justification of the cost. The latest projected cost of the project was €806m and this figure did not include interest, he said.

"They have been spending money on this in serious amounts. We don't know what the interest is because this cost in the parallel universe of the civil service is not included.

"If you got this in the real world, you would put a mark on the personnel file of the person responsible and mark it 'Do not promote'. The interest has to be a couple of hundred million, but they haven't bothered to compute it.

"It is stunning that no computation of the disruption costs has been made, either. I believe the real disruption costs of an on-street project like Luas are up to half of the construction costs."

Mr McCarthy said the Luas was unlikely to result in a shift of more than 1pc to public transport and he seriously questioned the economic logic of the plan.

He had been looking at the Adelaide to Darwin railway line, which had just been completed. It consisted of 3,000 kilometres, including 1,000km of old track which had to be upgraded, while the remaining 2,000km had to have new track laid.

"The total cost here is 1.3bn Australian dollars, or €800m, which is now the price of the tram to Tallaght and Sandyford. The project makes no sense at all."

Mr McCarthy pointed to census figures showing that the population of Dublin and Cork cities had fallen in the period 1986 to 2002. The area of real growth had been in the Meath, Kildare, Wicklow area.

Census figures also revealed that the numbers driving to work had risen very significantly. Those making commuting trips of 15 miles and more had risen steeply, while those making car trips of one to two miles had dropped.

Brian McDonald

Genghis

Given that he makes reference at the end of the article to growing commuter populations in Meath, Kildare and Wicklow, my guess is that he took the capacity for Luas and divided into the total commuting population for all points 40 miles or so from the GPO. The resulting figure is proabably in the region of 1%.

Just as a desert line across no mans land is a world apart from an urban light rail project, so too is this calculation. The appropriate comparison would be how many passengers along the routes where Luas run who currently use other means of transport will convert to the Luas.

As we are playing meaningless guesstimates, my conclusion is that the €1.3bn spent in Australia will do nothing to shift commuters in either Darwin or Adelaide, and therefore is a bigger waste of money than even Luas.

BrianD

How can you compare the construction of a city centre tram line with building a train track in a straight line through land that nobody owns. Look how long it took to get the Darwin-Adelaide line rebuilt! While it may be useful for freight movements, this line will only ever carry tourists on the Ghan train.

Brian McDonald might also look at the tram systems in Australian cities such as Melbourne and the growth of such transit systems in the UK and mainland Europe. Quite clearly the guy in uninformed!

Tommy Vercetti

Who the hell would want to sit on a sweaty Aussie train for a 3000km journey through a desert??? Luas rules!

Victor

Originally posted by BrianD
While it may be useful for freight movements, this line will only ever carry tourists on the Ghan train.

Tickets for the Ghan train cost a fortune (A$2,500-12,000 for the first trip, current fares are A$292-2,190), Luas will start at about €1. To arrive for a Monday 10am meeting in Darwin from Sydney, you need to leave Sydney 10 days earlier.

http://www.gsr.com.au/fares/ghan%20to%20darwin.htm

Andrew next time you post a non-article like that you're banned.

Bee

Think logically folks!

Australia is not directly comparable but highlighting the correct use of tax payers money is no bad thing. The Madrid Metro would have been a much better comparision.

McCarthy is correct in stating that the Luas makes zero financial or commuter sense. It's a fantastic waste of taxpayers money and a lost opportunity for Dublin. The only people That appear to automatically think its a good idea are people paid by the state i.e civil servants protected from the real world, the buliders of the Luas paid by taxpayers DCC trafiic engineers. E,G. anyone who is living in a wage protected environment or on the gravy train of building alongside the inept "traffic engineers" whose total failure to alleviate traffic congestion for all road users should have them firewd int the morning.


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.


Bee

Victor

Originally posted by Bee
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.

Luas may not serve their door step but does interconnect with their local services. The Red Cow Park and Ride would ideally suit people from Clondalkin, Rathcoole, Newcastle and I understand specific measures for bus intergration are planned.

You should really note that Clondalkin and the Red Cow are right next to each other (admittedly Clondalkin is a big place).

bubbles

Ahh Victor, clueless as usual and posting complete tripe.

To get to the red cow car park - or anything on that side of the nass road coming from the clondalkin/newcastle/rathcoole direction have to drive up to the long mile road junction - which is fairly jamed, u-turn, and then go back down the road where 90% of the conjestion is.

As for Clondalkin - the only housing area within walking distance is woodford - which is a very small part of clondalkin - so people would still be dependant on a bus to the red cow.

Also, people walking from Clondalkin, when they get onto the nass road from the Monastery road will also actually have to walk down the nass road in the oppoisite direction to the red cow in order to cross the nass road to be able to get accross the m50 on a footpath.

When they built the added on side feeder road to the m50 on the inbound side - they built the road accross the path - and have metal crash barriers in place which means to cross there you actually have to walk on the road. Its hard to decribe - but I'm sure people know what I'm talking about and have gambled their life there.

Pointless. Visit the real world Victor - its a great place.

ishmael whale

Originally posted by Bee
Think logically folks!

Recent statements from the Rail Procurement Agency said that the carrying capacity of each line would be only around 3,000 per hour..... 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.
......
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.

Bee

I feel these are the key points. Its a question of what bang we get for our buck. From the above, we'd have been better off either investing the Luas resources in QBCs or by using them as a first tranche of the cost of a Metro. We seem to be ending up with the worst of both worlds - moving the same amount of people as a QBC at a multiple of the cost.

Victor

Originally posted by bubbles
Ahh Victor, clueless as usual and posting complete tripe.

Banned.

Originally posted by bubbles
To get to the red cow car park - or anything on that side of the nass road coming from the clondalkin/newcastle/rathcoole direction have to drive up to the long mile road junction - which is fairly jamed, u-turn, and then go back down the road where 90% of the conjestion is.

Why would you do the yellow (see attachment) journey extra when you only have to do the pink section?

I realise the situation isn't great, hence I'm doing something about it.

bubbles

I thought you ment the Red cow roundabout, in the actual red cow complex - aplologies