DART+ (DART Expansion)

FreudianSlippers

donvito99 wrote: »

I wouldn't mind.

MN should be viewed upon completion, after we're through the preliminary stages of this mess. I'd like to know the population of Dublin in not even 100 years, more like 25. By then we'll be back on our feet, and demand for a route like this will be substantial.

To expand on this, I think it's silly to not build this type of infrastructure now - it's creating jobs that we need and building the infrastructure we will need in the near to long-term future when we are recovered.

Wild Bill

DWCommuter wrote: »

With respect Wild Bill, I appreciate your opinion, but why don't you offer some definitive opinion on matters? Merely expressing an opinion on two particular commentators is hardly constructive in the absence of your own views on the matters at hand. Personally I'd love to hear what you have to say that is contrary to Myers and McDonald.

Well, I've given my views way earlier - but I suppose that's lost in the background by now.

I think DU is the single most important public transport project in Ireland. It joins up all the existing and proposed lines; greatly expands the Dart; eliminates the Loop line bottleneck and would give Dublin the same quality of transport infrastructure as most other European capitals already have ahs, in many cases for a very long time.

What else can I say? (Other than that the objections I've heard so far are a load of b****x). Which would be unconstructive! (albeit accurate).

Chris_5339762

Cool Mo D wrote: »

Some of you might be interested in this, just released by Irish Rail: http://www.irishrail.ie/projects/kildare_route_project2.asp

I'm not familiar enough with the area, but does this fix the gulley?

Jehuty42

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

I'm not familiar enough with the area, but does this fix the gulley?

It appears to be about fixing the "gap" between the end of the current 4-tracking and the eventual DU tunnel portal at Inchicore that Sponge_Bob has talked about before.

Sponge Bob

It bypasses the gulley, the KRP2 project is what I called the "Missing Link" for a long time around here.

It was to my mind completely pointless building the tunnel in its absence and KRP2 should be progressed along with the tunnel to completion at the same time .....it can start 2 or 3 years after the tunnel does and still finish at the same time. It will not be very costly as a necessary side project to the Tunnel...in fact it is probably the cheapest of the myriad side projects.

All of my concerns are addressed fully in the Project Description I am glad to say.

Project Description
It is proposed to

* Install two new railway tracks in parallel to existing tracks between Cherry Orchard and Inchicore
* Electrify the route from Inchicore to Hazelhatch in order to deliver DART services. The route distance is approximately 15 kilometres
* Upgrade two bridges at Le Fanu Road and Kylemore Road
* Provide a new junction at Inchicore to separate DART services from Intercity and regional services bound for Heuston

This project is a key component in the Greater Dublin Integrated Rail Network. Its delivery is a prerequisite to the full utilisation of the proposed DART Underground commencing at Inchicore.

Thank God for that. But it must be fully funded either upfront along with or within the same PPP as the tunnel project. Possibly as 'enabling' works.

Telchak

Would it not be wise to electrify Inchicore to Heuston as well? At least if the tunnel ever had to be closed for a short period (these things happen) then DARTs could be sent there instead of only being able to go as far as Inchicore

KC61

Sponge Bob wrote: »

It bypasses the gulley, the KRP2 project is what I called the "Missing Link" for a long time around here.

It was to my mind completely pointless building the tunnel in its absence and KRP2 should be progressed along with the tunnel to completion at the same time .....it can start 2 or 3 years after the tunnel does and still finish at the same time. It will not be very costly as a necessary side project to the Tunnel...in fact it is probably the cheapest of the myriad side projects.

All of my concerns are addressed fully in the Project Description I am glad to say.



Thank God for that. But it must be fully funded either upfront along with or within the same PPP as the tunnel project. Possibly as 'enabling' works.

Amazing that isn't it - a rather "Paul like" conversion on the road to Damascus on your part.

I find it incredible that you actually thought that no planning had gone in to this and pretty much rubbished my suggestion that this was actually going to be addressed, when I suggested it here and in several subsequent posts seven months ago.

My own comments were based on an informal off-the-record discussion at one of the open evenings that they held, a course of action that I suggested to you, but you did seem rather dismissive of that....

Sometimes, just sometimes, it is better to take a more softly-softly approach than running around like the proverbial bull in a china shop. Often times you can learn far more that way.

Sponge Bob

Softly softly gettee trainee ...is that what I am supposed to have learnt :nin ???

Do you have the slightest idea of how utterly ludicrous a public hearing on the tunnel would be absent hearing the KRP2 case in parallel with that for the tunnel.

The sheer arrogance of IE who were fully prepared to go to hearings this year with no public case published for KRP2 is breathtaking.

Evidently they did not want issues around land take in Ballyfermot/Cherry Orchard to arise at the Tunnel hearings. So they suppressed KRP2 for years.

In fact ALL the publicity material on the KRP2 project carefully avoids the land take issue even now but the residents of Landen Road and similar areas remain entitled, as always, to know exactly what IE plan to do with their back gardens and houses...if anything.

Remember this map ??

noelfirl

Oh give it a rest. Bad publicity or not you were harping on here adamant that they had somehow forgotten about the two tracks leading into nowhere at the end of that map, when it's quite clear that nothing of the sort had happened.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

All of my concerns are addressed fully in the Project Description I am glad to say.

Don't give yourself so much bloody credit, you're not the Emir of infrastructure planning.

Sponge Bob

Looks like I stirred up a right hornets nest in IE when All I Was doing (Honest) was Being Nice to them. Hopefully Wild Bill will ride in presently to rescue me

GizAGoOfYerGee

In the absence of the Interconnector, how will they transport DARTs to the Kildare line? via PPT?

Also, I assume Inchicore will become a DART depot?

Roryhy

GizAGoOfYerGee wrote: »

In the absence of the Interconnector, how will they transport DARTs to the Kildare line? via PPT?

Also, I assume Inchicore will become a DART depot?

Darts wont use Kildare line until interconnector is built, just regular commuter to the best of my knowledge.

Wild Bill

My own view is that the amount of bureaucratic ****e that IR or any other infrastructural developer has to go through is beyond belief.

Some back gardens trimmed?

Tough. Just do it. :cool:

ps - I hope that rescues you Sponge - if only by making you seem balanced and reasonable

DWCommuter

Wild Bill wrote: »

My own view is that the amount of bureaucratic ****e that IR or any other infrastructural developer has to go through is beyond belief.

Some back gardens trimmed?

Tough. Just do it. :cool:

ps - I hope that rescues you Sponge - if only by making you seem balanced and reasonable

Sums up the deal in lil oul Ireland.

We just don't do public transport, do we?:D

Empire o de Sun

Will they be electrifying all 4 tracks, or just the two middle ones?

Sponge Bob

DWCommuter wrote: »

Sums up the deal in lil oul Ireland.
We just don't do public transport, do we?:D

We don't do design for sure.

IE, it were they, had the highly original idea of coming up in Heuston ( with the 'station' itself over in the brewery across the road) ....and promptly hitting a bottleneck in the Gullet that cannot reasonably be quad tracked or electrified, all that back in 2007. This completely inadequate configuration was envisaged all the way through 2007 and 2008.

It wasn't until 2009 that IE conceded, moved the Heuston station to Heuston itself and the tunnel mouth to Inchicore.

That was a vast improvement. It was nevertheless evident that in order to complete the quad track configuration/separation that some serious work would have to be done around Kylemore Road.

Shame they only released the final design in late 2010 or early 2011 ...the best part of 4 years after the first half baked plans were released in 2007

I would be perfectly happy to see demolition around Kylemore Drive and Landen Road for the Interconnector Project/KRP2,not least because we can also put Lucan Luas along that cleared stretch in future.

It is just that I somehow feel that the locals are entitled to be told straight up about all of this by IE and are entitled to make their feelings known at the public hearings :cool:

The only way one could avoid all that would be by extending the tunnel mouth to a point west of Le Fanu Road, a rather expensive alternative.

Wild Bill

I do agree the original plan to come up in the middle of Heuston Station was daft.

Perhaps they were trying to keep the cost down?

DWCommuter

Sponge Bob wrote: »

We don't do design for sure.

IE, it were they, had the highly original idea of coming up in Heuston ( with the 'station' itself over in the brewery across the road) ....and promptly hitting a bottleneck in the Gullet that cannot reasonably be quad tracked or electrified, all that back in 2007. This completely inadequate configuration was envisaged all the way through 2007 and 2008.

It wasn't until 2009 that IE conceded, moved the Heuston station to Heuston itself and the tunnel mouth to Inchicore.

I know. I wrote to them about it in September 2007.

Empire o de Sun

look what I found



http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog261/ksachs/Transport%20planning.JPG

Wild Bill

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

look what I found

So - who said there was no planning?!

Uncanny how the current built-up area and transport links resemble what has actually happened! :cool:

Aard

There's three glaring omissions today, Wild Bill:
- eastern bypass
- Tallaght spur (Luas doesn't exactly cut it as "rapid")
- cross-city Dart routes.

Chris_5339762

God those motorway plans would have been almost as destructive as Ringway 1 in London.

DWCommuter

Wild Bill wrote: »

So - who said there was no planning?!

Uncanny how the current built-up area and transport links resemble what has actually happened! :cool:

Resemble yes. But what actually happened...not really.

DWCommuter

That map posted by Empire is what should have happened in totality and I'd have no problem with it.(in the context of ****e planning anyway) For a city as small as Dublin, it would have delivered solutions as long as planned housing was incorporated. (Low density as it was) However as we all know and leaving transport plans aside, land for housing was held back in Dublin and pushed development into the country until the land price in Dublin reached such a price that it made many rich, killed banks and left us with warped transport plans made up as we went along and now the infamous empty and half finished emporiums that are dotted across the previously withheld land.

Remember this folks. People were buying houses in Westmeath and Longford before Belmayne even had a planning notice pinned to a post. Think about it.

Sponge Bob

Is that document lurking anywhere Empire, I do agree that it is an uncanny and prescient piece of work...even if a low density future projection given our deep love of th'oul semi back then

Wild Bill

I am aggressively and unapologetically in favour suburban semi-d housing. It is the most advanced and civilized best quality of life that the masses of humanity have ever experienced.

It isn't that our love of back gardens "is back" - it never went away. People moved to Longford to get semi-Ds rather than flats in Dublin.

As I would have, had I had to.

Endlessly repeating brain-dead mantras about "sustainability" doesn't make the mantras rational. :cool:

dubhthach

Well that map only shows the proposed motorway on the route of the Royal Canal (connecting with Eastern bypass). It had been proposed earlier to build a motorway/dual carriageway on the Grand Canal Circular line with a bridge connecting to "Royal Motorway" in and around where the Samuel Beckett bridge is now.

--Edit--
Here's a map that I've seen on archiseek for what was proposed in inner city.

Zebra3

Wild Bill wrote: »

I am aggressively and unapologetically in favour suburban semi-d housing. It is the most advanced and civilized best quality of life that the masses of humanity have ever experienced.

It isn't that our love of back gardens "is back" - it never went away. People moved to Longford to get semi-Ds rather than flats in Dublin.

As I would have, had I had to.

Endlessly repeating brain-dead mantras about "sustainability" doesn't make the mantras rational. :cool:

The biggest problems with apartments is that pre-bust they weren't that far off the price of a semi-d. People aren't thick. If you can get 5 or 10 apartments on top of each other where you'd fit 1 semi-d yet each apartment is 80% the price of the semi-d, something is seriously wrong.

Wild Bill

Now that's a mess!

Empire o de Sun

I just found that picture on the internet. Don't know where to find the document.

But I can tell you about the Motorways a bit.

The Royal Canal Motorway and South County/Eastern Motorway would have required very little demolition of inhabited or used industrial buildings at the time. 90% of the route of derelect or open ground or waste ground (brown field site)

The M4 was suppoed to have joined the M50 just south of blanchardstown, maybe that was why the original exit numbers were strange, starting at "2" at Leixlip

You can still see what is left of the road reserve for the intersection with the M50 here.

Some of it did get done, although very little. Parnell Street Dualling was done though they gave up linking both ends even though the buildings are all new where the westbound carriageway was supposed to have gone on the corner of gardner street. Pressure of developers not wanting to lose land I suppose.

Back to the Darts
Maybe the extra reserve besie the M50 between the Railway and the N7 was for the Tallaght Dart.

Wild Bill

Zebra3 wrote: »

The biggest problems with apartments is that pre-bust they weren't that far off the price of a semi-d. People aren't thick. If you can get 5 or 10 apartments on top of each other where you'd fit 1 semi-d yet each apartment is 80% the price of the semi-d, something is seriously wrong.

The mess was the canal motorway scheme - not your comment!

The squeeze on development land around Dublin pushed the price up and the semi-ds out. In Sandyford when basic apartments where over 400k semi-d's that sold for 60k in 1994 were costing a million.

No new semis were being built and little trading of existing ones was taking place; people moved into the apartments or to Mullingar; where you could get a semi-d for the price of an apartment in Dublin.

We should have forced the zoning of far more land around Dublin and far less in the country; but the former was poison to Nimbys, builders who'd paid a fortune for development land, Greens and all the crack ideologues who wanted "sustainable" development away from Dublin and the latter was poison to every local land-owner and developer and "de-centralizer" in rural Ireland.

All the vested interests got what they wanted; the re-zone and build lobby in the country and the Green anti-development clown in Dublin.

And we see the result - a horse designed by a committee and financial ruin :mad:

Wild Bill

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

You can still see what is left of the road reserve for the intersection with the M50 here.

Nice - they have planted a little forest there - all was not lost.

dubhthach

I could be wrong here but I think I recall hearing that Griffith avenue has a density of 24houses per acre and this is with semi-detached houses. Most of what was been built around Dublin in 80's/90's ends up with a density of 8-10 houses per acre. Ballymum which is often held up as a failed example of "high density" only worked out at 8 units/acre for example (all those empty windswept green fields).
There is no law stating you have to build apartments if you want medium/high density. The problem in Ireland is the actual lack of proper planning and the fact that most housing schemes were drawn up by someone whose architecture/design skills come from doing "Technical drawing" in the Leaving Cert.

Empire - Regarding the reservation beside the M50 this is indeed the one that was set aside for heavy rail.

Empire o de Sun

dubhthach wrote: »

Empire - Regarding the reservation beside the M50 this is indeed the one that was set aside for heavy rail.

I was looking for evidence of it going through tallaght, but can't seem to see it. Unless, it was the route used by luas.

Empire o de Sun

Wild Bill wrote: »

Nice - they have planted a little forest there - all was not lost.

well here is a smaller forest for the M7 that never came to be, though abandoned I think, the reserve is kept, by a forest

Sponge Bob

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

well here is a smaller forest for the M7 that never came to be, though abandoned I think, the reserve is kept, by a forest

The M4 'reservation' was abandoned in the early 1990s

Click http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,708296,737380,6 ( then press 4 on your keyboard for the 1995 overlay )

DWCommuter

Wild Bill wrote: »

I am aggressively and unapologetically in favour suburban semi-d housing. It is the most advanced and civilized best quality of life that the masses of humanity have ever experienced.

It isn't that our love of back gardens "is back" - it never went away. People moved to Longford to get semi-Ds rather than flats in Dublin.

As I would have, had I had to.

Endlessly repeating brain-dead mantras about "sustainability" doesn't make the mantras rational. :cool:

I've no particular problem with Semi -Ds per say, but estates like that are extremely hard to serve with public transport. Even first phase housing areas like Crumlin, Drimnagh etc. despite being terrace housing still tended to be expansive.

As for the push for a Semi D in Longford being as a result of only flats being available in Dublin, that is correct, but only because land was not developed in Dublin quick enough and by the time it was, prices had been driven up by the carry on which still forced people out to the country as it was all they could afford.

From a public transport point of view this is really what DU is all about. It allows the poorer commuter rail services to the likes of Kildare, Louth, Longford, Westmeath, Carlow, Laois and Wicklow become far superior to what they actually are. When T21 was launched in 2005 the Kildare town and Drogheda aspects of the extended DART services were dropped. While Drogheda is back on the table, its worth pointing out that Sallins was originally the destination of the KRP quad tracking. But hollers of feeding sprawl put an end to that. The drawbridge mentality came into force but the sprawl was already created and at least the full DART plan was going some way towards providing it with public transport options.

I'm all for proper planning, but to get suburbia out of the car, effort has to be made and simply abandoning it in favour of what should have been done in the first place is a negative move.

monument

Wild Bill wrote: »

The squeeze on development land around Dublin pushed the price up and the semi-ds out. In Sandyford when basic apartments where over 400k semi-d's that sold for 60k in 1994 were costing a million.

No new semis were being built and little trading of existing ones was taking place; people moved into the apartments or to Mullingar; where you could get a semi-d for the price of an apartment in Dublin.

The problem was that few listened to those who warned that the price increases were not sustainable. International experience was clear that it would not last. But there was mass panic. Lots and lots of people knew better. The people who lied about their incomes to get mortgages for houses they could not afford were just as wrong as the banks which helped them do so.

A huge bulk of people did not want it to stop. Forget about developers, bankers and landlords for a second. Think more average people. Those who owned property for years felt they were getting rich. Those who had bought at the start of the boom were thinking something along the same lines. Those who bought a bit later on wanted prices to rise so they would also get rich. Those who bought from the middle to the end wanted price rises because they would be trapped. Half the country was a vested interest.

Denial of this will only allow it to happen again. Maybe not soon, but if we don't learn the lessons, mistakes are more likely to happen again.

Wild Bill wrote: »

We should have forced the zoning of far more land around Dublin and far less in the country;

Yes, central government should have stepped in over the zoning of lands in the country. But zoning wasn't the only problem around Dublin. Massive banks of land was been hoarded by developers and speculators to push up prices and they was happening for a long time.

Wild Bill wrote: »

...but the former was poison to Nimbys, builders who'd paid a fortune for development land, Greens and all the crack ideologues who wanted "sustainable" development away from Dublin and the latter was poison to every local land-owner and developer and "de-centralizer" in rural Ireland.

All the vested interests got what they wanted; the re-zone and build lobby in the country and the Green anti-development clown in Dublin.

And we see the result - a horse designed by a committee and financial ruin :mad:

How on earth are the results of the boom what any green, or anybody interested in sustainability, "wanted"?

L1011

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

well here is a smaller forest for the M7 that never came to be, though abandoned I think, the reserve is kept, by a forest

Around that area, we also have a linear park of sorts on the reserveration for the rail line to the Blanchardstown Town Centre that was planned in the 1980s

http://maps.google.de/?ie=UTF8&t=k&ll=53.378605,-6.393957&spn=0.00224,0.006899&z=17

Wild Bill

monument wrote: »

How on earth are the results of the boom what any green, or anybody interested in sustainability, "wanted"?

They "sustainable" lobby got what they wanted - tight zoning restrictions in Dublin.

The results may have been unintended consequences - but consequences nonetheless.

It was like squeezing a balloon - they pinched the building bubble in Dublin and it expanded somewhere else. Leaving a much worse situation when the balloon burst.

Nobody can calculate or define what "sustainable" means in terms of development - it is a trendy mantra rendered meaningless through mindless repetition.

The very word has itself become a form verbal and literary pollution.

Sponge Bob

Sustainable means we can commute on one charge from Longford to Dublin in our shiny electric cars because there is a Motorway network today

Had we no motorway network the same car with the same batteries could only sustain return travel from Enfield what with all the stopping and starting involved

dubhthach

MYOB wrote: »

Around that area, we also have a linear park of sorts on the reserveration for the rail line to the Blanchardstown Town Centre that was planned in the 1980s

http://maps.google.de/?ie=UTF8&t=k&ll=53.378605,-6.393957&spn=0.00224,0.006899&z=17

I believe that reservation is to be used as part of "Metro West" I'd have to check the design documents for "Metro west" again though to be certain.

GizAGoOfYerGee

dubhthach wrote: »

I believe that reservation is to be used as part of "Metro West" I'd have to check the design documents for "Metro west" again though to be certain.

Nope. MW goes up beside Diswellstown/Clonsila Road, half a kilometer to the west.

monument

Wild Bill wrote: »

They "sustainable" lobby got what they wanted - tight zoning restrictions in Dublin.

The results may have been unintended consequences - but consequences nonetheless.

It was like squeezing a balloon - they pinched the building bubble in Dublin and it expanded somewhere else. Leaving a much worse situation when the balloon burst.

Developers and speculators were holding massive land banks in Dublin, there's no question of this now. Yet you're trying to blame people who wanted sustainable development and mostly failed in getting their way. Have a think about that.

Wild Bill wrote: »

Nobody can calculate or define what "sustainable" means in terms of development - it is a trendy mantra rendered meaningless through mindless repetition.

The very word has itself become a form verbal and literary pollution.

Only in your mind has it become nonsense.

What's easy to say is that living 50km or 100km away from your work place is less sustainable than somebody living 15km. And living 15km is less sustainable than living 5km or less away.

But you're right, things are not always clear. Because cycling 20km is more sustainable than driving 5km. Or taking a DART train 30km is more sustainable than driving 15km.

Wild Bill

monument wrote: »

Developers and speculators were holding massive land banks in Dublin, there's no question of this now. Yet you're trying to blame people who wanted sustainable development and mostly failed in getting their way. Have a think about that.

Only in your mind has it become nonsense.

I think not.

Developers and speculators were holding massive land banks in Dublin. Yep. And they could do this because the daft NIMBY driven zoning and planning restrictions in Dublin made it possible. :cool:

Think about that.

monument

Wild Bill wrote: »

I think not.

Developers and speculators were holding massive land banks in Dublin. Yep. And they could do this because the daft NIMBY driven zoning and planning restrictions in Dublin made it possible. :cool:

Think about that.

Err but the problem with that theory is that developers and speculators were mostly holding on to land banks already ZONED for development!

DWCommuter

monument wrote: »

Err but the problem with that theory is that developers and speculators were mostly holding on to land banks already ZONED for development!

Sorry Wild Bill, but Monument is right.

Wild Bill

DWCommuter wrote: »

Sorry Wild Bill, but Monument is right.

Couldn't disagree more.

Yes - developers were hogging zoned land; nobody disputes that.

This was facilitated, made possible, by restrictions on the zoning of land by the Nimby element.

To make it simple: if you rezoned three times as much land the evil developers would need to spend three times as much tying up the land. And their existing portfolio would plummet in value.

So there was an unholy alliance between Nimbys and owners of the existing zoned land to prevent additional zoning.

Against which was pitted the brown envelopes of owners of some unzoned land.

Without the Nimbys and trendy "planners" this whole "zoning" nonsense would have been impossible. :cool:

DWCommuter

Wild Bill wrote: »

Couldn't disagree more.

Yes - developers were hogging zoned land; nobody disputes that.

This was facilitated, made possible, by restrictions on the zoning of land by the Nimby element.

To make it simple: if you rezoned three times as much land the evil developers would need to spend three times as much tying up the land. And their existing portfolio would plummet in value.

So there was an unholy alliance between Nimbys and owners of the existing zoned land to prevent additional zoning.

Against which was pitted the brown envelopes of owners of some unzoned land.

Without the Nimbys and trendy "planners" this whole "zoning" nonsense would have been impossible. :cool:

Have a read of this Bill. It relates to the amount of zoned land available in Dublin around 2004 and not yet built on at that stage.

My argument and that of monument (i think) concerns the amount of zoned land.


http://www.businessandfinance.ie/index.jsp?p=450&n=465&a=1764

I can find no evidence that development of housing land in Dublin was hindered by nimbyism. It may have existed as it does anywhere, but I don't think it caused the problems we are talking about. There are examples of developers sitting on large tracts of zoned and serviced land in Dublin while they were building housing estates in provincial towns.

Judgement Day

Chris_5339762 wrote: »

God those motorway plans would have been almost as destructive as Ringway 1 in London.

Interestingly the map shows the woeful Eastern Bypass as running on existing land as opposed to cutting across Sandymount Strand. :rolleyes: