[Article] Metro North documents to be lodged

Victor

D.L.R. wrote: »

is this reliable? or just bull crap?

It is healthy for the government (at whatever level) to say "Should it really cost that much? Can the same thing be done cheaper?". It is unhealthy if this process unduly delays the project.

There are some places where savings might be achieveable. Its all down to a cost engineering exercise of balancing quality, time and money.

BluntGuy

The underground sections of the route should be maintained. They are the best long-term solution and will last us a lot longer than overground sections.

Of course, if the overground sections were to be segregated completely then the difference would be neglible. But on the MN proposed route, many of the underground areas are unsuited to overground metro (which is why the stations are sited underground obviously).

This is one case were saving pennies shouldn't be the order of the day. We only get one chance to get this right, we may as well take it...

gjim

In other countries the media is much more positive about big projects and doesn't have this dog-with-a-bone attitude to how much the thing will cost; rather the emphasis is on the benefits.

Absolutely and completely false.

Countries with the sort of public transport infrastructure I admire, for example Switzerland and Germany are highly cost conscious when it comes to expenditure on public transport and they strive to maximise the benefit for a given cost. Some examples that I am aware of are the cancellation of the Munich maglev and the decision to go with underground heavy rail and overground trams in Zurich rather than build an metro.

How the hell do you think these countries ended up with world class public transport infrastructure? It certainly wasn't by using the metrobest head-in-the-sand approach to the cost of public transport projects. They carefully consider various options and make it an imperative to provide the best possible infrastructure using the available funds. They debate the projects intelligently instead of whining about anyone who even mentions how much a project is going to cost.

The WRC campaigners, Guckianism and the likes of your Springfield monorail philosophy are the reason why developing rail based public transport in this country has been held back for years.

Cool Mo D

I wouldn't say that is completely true about Germany anyway - the much admired Munich U-bahn was not built after some dispassionate cost-benefit exercise for example.
It was originally going to be an on street light rail system with underground sections, but was upgraded to a metro as a showpiece for the 1972 Olympics.

Nostradamus

Cool Mo D wrote: »

the much admired Munich U-bahn was not built after some dispassionate cost-benefit exercise for example.
It was originally going to be an on street light rail system with underground sections, but was upgraded to a metro as a showpiece for the 1972 Olympics.

Built by mostly guest workers from Turkey who were paid half nothing at the time.

BluntGuy

I am certainly not in the Government's camp of randomly throwing money at projects in the hope that something might go right.

But I believe this is such a LARGE project that we can't afford to be cutting corners all over the place. The project is going to be expensive anyway. We may as well save ourselves extra expense in the future by building a good long-term solution or at least a solution that has future upgrades in mind.

That is apparently what MN proposes to offer.

Scrap MW for the moment. Metro North, bus routes and in particular Interconnector need to be worked on as they will deliver massive benefits.

bk

Personally I see no route out of the North city center where you could put a dedicated over ground route without closing off completely some major roads.

What are they going to do, close the Swords Road or Malahide Road, etc. to all traffic for MN, seems like madness and completely unworkable.

Seems like (and I hope it is) complete BS.

markpb

bk wrote: »

Seems like (and I hope it is) complete BS.

A bad idea never stopped an Irish politician before.