Dublin Metrolink (just Metrolink posts here -see post #1 )

piuswal

CatInABox wrote: »

A lot of that could be sorted before hand though, only use trucks with netting covering the load, noise barriers to reduce the sound out, improved windows on the schools, etc. They're issues, but they're relatively easy to mitigate.



It's not a filler station. Without it, a large section of North Dublin will have a Metro line going underneath it, with service levels unimaginable for most people right now, and no way of getting on it. It'd be a slap in the face for everyone living in the area.

Highly unlikely that the route will go underneath a cemetery, there'd be far too many objections from quite a lot of diverse groups, from the church, to historians, to most political parties(all wanting to be seen to be protecting the memory of the rising/civil war).

So, a movement c 600mts by foot, to a station off Glasnevin Hill, is not realistic because of dead people as compared to hundreds of children and adults having to put up with high levels of noise, pollution and regular heavy traffic for at least six years?

See https://maps.openrouteservice.org/re...k1=en-US&k2=km from above re catchment area.

The Church, historians and politicians, few if any living anywhere near the area, would prefer to protect the dead?

It would only be passing well under the Cemetery, what effect would it have, say as compared to passing under houses?


At present the area is also used for parking facilities for children being dropped off and picked up from school. It is directly adjacent to a very busy road each morning. I wonder how that aspect alone might be managed.

marno21

piuswal wrote: »

Yes, I can see that point but having a bore hole at Na Fianna will mean a very difficult environment, noise and particle pollution for hundreds of school children

No it will not. Measures will be taken to ensure that there is no effect on the outside environment from the Metrolink operations at Mobhi Road.

piuswal wrote: »

Noise is going to be a major issue - seemingly some study associated with Frankfurt Airport is an example of the deleterious effect of constant noise pollution on school children - must try and find it.

Noise will be an issue directly above the access to the underground tunnels, which if the plans remain as is, will be directly above the Na Fianna site at Mobhi Road and will be restricted to a small area around the portal. Comparing a highly controlled tunnelling operation to a major international airport is wrong.

piuswal wrote: »

I must say naming it Griffith Park is misleading to many, even those who know the area thought it was referring to the nearby park on the Tolka, which I already referred to as a possible option.

Station names are not finalised and can be changed as a result of submissions made during the public consultation.

piuswal wrote: »

One can see the reasons for Mater (hospital) , Glasnevin (connect to railway lines and there is a lot of space there) and Collins Ave (DCU) stations but Griffith Park aka Na Fianna is simply a filler meet a distance between stops requirement,yet is likely to cause the greatest disruption to the greatest number of people and groups and organisations.

The station planned at Mobhi Road will be useful for the entire area around the station, including Na Fianna. If a Na Fianna member moves from Glasnevin to Swords they could easily continue to play for Na Fianna.

piuswal wrote: »

From Glasnevin why not go NW in line with the Finglas Rd then head north under GlasnevinCemetery and the Botanic Gardens crossing the Old Finglas Rd in line with the Ballymun Rd just west of Met Eireann and you are under road all the way to the Collins Ave station?

Tunnelling under the R108 makes sense as it avoids tunnelling directly under residential properties and would have less of an impact on the owners.

(Any parts of your post I didn't reply to is because I don't have sufficient local knowledge to comment.)

CatInABox

piuswal wrote: »

So, a movement c 600mts by foot, to a station off Glasnevin Hill, is not realistic because of dead people as compared to hundreds of children and adults having to put up with high levels of noise, pollution and regular heavy traffic for at least six years?

See https://maps.openrouteservice.org/re...k1=en-US&k2=km from above re catchment area.

The Church, historians and politicians, few if any living anywhere near the area, would prefer to protect the dead?

It would only be passing well under the Cemetery, what effect would it have, say as compared to passing under houses?


At present the area is also used for parking facilities for children being dropped off and picked up from school. It is directly adjacent to a very busy road each morning. I wonder how that aspect alone might be managed.

Ireland has a respect for the dead that borders on the fanatical. Glasnevin Cemetery recently had to back down on plans to build a chapel on site themselves, due to complaints surrounding unmarked graves. A different story going underground of course, but it'll still be a major source of objections, far worse than the Na Fianna grounds.

The current route of the Metro was chosen for a number of reasons, catchment area; ease of building; smallest number of CPOs, etc, but one of the reasons was also to reduce the amount of objections that they'd have to deal with. So the planners have looked at the area, knew that Na Fianna would scream bloody murder, and still think that the Na Fianna grounds are still worth it.

Personally speaking, I don't have any problem with lashing the tunnel underneath a cemetery, but I know an awful lot of people how would. I also don't have a problem with moving the station, but it's got to be for the right reasons. Moving it to reduce the amount of complaints and CPOs is a good reason, and I'd support it (anything to get it built faster), but I genuinely believe that going underneath Glasnevin Cemetery will bring a firestorm of objections. Even going closer to it will increase the objections, as from what I can see, it looks like it's possible to skirt the edge of the Cemetery, head under Botanic Gardens and still hit Ballymun Rd.

plodder

CatInABox wrote: »

Highly unlikely that the route will go underneath a cemetery, there'd be far too many objections from quite a lot of diverse groups, from the church, to historians, to most political parties(all wanting to be seen to be protecting the memory of the rising/civil war).

I really don't see how anyone would have a problem with that.

yabadabado

plodder wrote: »

I really don't see how anyone would have a problem with that.

I personally would have no problem with it but I'd expect there to be a huge backlash if it was planned.

piuswal

yabadabado wrote: »

I personally would have no problem with it but I'd expect there to be a huge backlash if it was planned.

Why a backlash?

Going 20 mtrs or so underneath with absolutely to visible interference. Are people crazy, putting children at risk instead!

I hear some group has got an invite to appear before an Oireachtas Committee, should make for interesting viewing and listening.

plodder

I'm still mystified. It would be going underneath and not disturb it at all. So, why would people object?

bk

piuswal wrote: »

Why a backlash?

Going 20 mtrs or so underneath with absolutely to visible interference. Are people crazy, putting children at risk instead!

I hear some group has got an invite to appear before an Oireachtas Committee, should make for interesting viewing and listening.

Putting children at risk! What nonsense.

Metro stations are built all over the world, in cities with much higher population densities, right next to schools, etc. The engineers are really good at minimising impact and danger to the areas around them, more so then a typical house or apartment building site!

marno21

bk wrote: »

Putting children at risk! What nonsense.

Metro stations are built all over the world, in cities with much higher population densities, right next to schools, etc. The engineers are really good at minimising impact and danger to the areas around them, more so then a typical house or apartment building site!

Exactly. This project isn't going be built by a fly by night group of white van men.

roadmaster

marno21 wrote: »

Exactly. This project isn't going be built by a fly by night group of white van men.

No thats left to certain road construction projects

CatInABox

piuswal wrote: »

Why a backlash?

Going 20 mtrs or so underneath with absolutely to visible interference. Are people crazy, putting children at risk instead!

plodder wrote: »

I'm still mystified. It would be going underneath and not disturb it at all. So, why would people object?

The Dublin Port Tunnel had a depth of 30 meters at Marino, and there was still damage to house and properties above.

The entire point of following the road is to not require such a deep excavation. The deeper it goes, the more expensive it is.

The only other Metro tunnel I could find that went under a cemetery is the DC metro under Rock Creek. They had to dig down to 800 feet below, and even then, they weren't allowed use tunnel bore machines, they had to use a machine that was little better than digging it out by hand.

monument

marno21 wrote: »

No it will not. Measures will be taken to ensure that there is no effect on the outside environment from the Metrolink operations at Mobhi Road.

I recall at the Metro North hearing that the RPA saying that there was risk of dust and noise at the Albert College Park dig site but their argument was that the park acted as a buffer between the dig and the residents and DCU.

I was following it a lot at the time because I was studying at DCU, but it was years ago, so, I'm open to correction.

bk wrote: »

Putting children at risk! What nonsense.

Metro stations are built all over the world, in cities with much higher population densities, right next to schools, etc. The engineers are really good at minimising impact and danger to the areas around them, more so then a typical house or apartment building site!

marno21 wrote: »

Exactly. This project isn't going be built by a fly by night group of white van men.

Accidents happen on large construction sites, including major rail projects: Crossrail worker death: Firms fined £1m for safety breaches and to passers by when trucks are traveling to-from sites.

This isn't just a metro station we're talking about -- it's a tunnel boring machine site (a dig site) which a huge amount of HGV truck movements.

I'm open to correction, but you'll be hard pressed to find many dig sites beside schools or even in areas of much higher population densities in cities like Dublin. Where possable, dig sites are away from populations or at least sited in parks etc.

And one of best ways of minimising risk is removing it -- ie in this case using a site not right beside school, and not on a busy three-lane road on a steep section of hill when you could use a site with access to a dual carrageway, with great separation and better lines of sight between the trucks and pedestrians and cyclists.

This is why we have truck restrictions on smaller roads and why we have a 5 axle ban across Dublin city centre (I know most construction trucks are 4 axle but these are also seen as a risk for cycling and walking safety and my point is about minimising risk).

CatInABox

monument wrote: »

I recall at the Metro North hearing that the RPA saying that there was risk of dust and noise at the Albert College Park dig site but their argument was that the park acted as a buffer between the dig and the residents and DCU.

I was following it a lot at the time because I was studying at DCU, but it was years ago, so, I'm open to correction.

I'll admit, I didn't follow Metro North at the time, so probably don't know as much about it as you, but I still think that noise and dust can be mitigated effectively. Having lived in London, and having experienced Crossrail construction sites nearby, it can be mitigated. Not removed entirely, but reduced to the point that it isn't a major issue.

monument wrote: »

Accidents happen on large construction sites, including major rail projects: Crossrail worker death: Firms fined £1m for safety breaches and to passers by when trucks are traveling to-from sites.

This isn't just a metro station we're talking about -- it's a tunnel boring machine site (a dig site) which a huge amount of HGV truck movements.

I'm open to correction, but you'll be hard pressed to find many dig sites beside schools or even in areas of much higher population densities in cities like Dublin. Where possable, dig sites are away from populations or at least sited in parks etc.

Accidents happen everywhere, not just major building sites. Crossrail had a construction site literally within the grounds of a school at Whitechapel. Steps were taken to reduce disruption to the school, but it still went on.

monument wrote: »

And one of best ways of minimising risk is removing it -- ie in this case using a site not right beside school, and not on a busy three-lane road on a steep section of hill when you could use a site with access to a dual carrageway, with great separation and better lines of sight between the trucks and pedestrians and cyclists.

This is why we have truck restrictions on smaller roads and why we have a 5 axle ban across Dublin city centre (I know most construction trucks are 4 axle but these are also seen as a risk for cycling and walking safety and my point is about minimising risk).

Moving the tunnel portal into Albert College park will still mean a station built at Na Fianna for three years, unless of course you also move the station, but then you've got two stations serving DCU, and none serving a huge area of Glasnevin.

I'd guess that they'd allow the trucks entering and exiting to use bus lane, meaning that disruption will be kept to a minimum. If I recall correctly, they employed a team of people to manage trucks entering and exiting the Dublin Port Tunnel site at Fairview. There was disruption, but not the end of the world.

bk

monument wrote: »

This isn't just a metro station we're talking about -- it's a tunnel boring machine site (a dig site) which a huge amount of HGV truck movements.

Errrr.... It is super common, Barcelona Line 9, look at those apartment buildings:



BTW really interesting video here about Barcelona Line 9, driverless trains, platform doors, all very similar to what is being suggested for Dublin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Q-HgHzeVo

markpb

monument wrote: »

I'm open to correction, but you'll be hard pressed to find many dig sites beside schools or even in areas of much higher population densities in cities like Dublin. Where possable, dig sites are away from populations or at least sited in parks etc.

The TBM entry point for the DPT was at Collins ave / Swords road, a busy residential area and surrounded by schools. People survived.

piuswal

markpb wrote: »

The TBM entry point for the DPT was at Collins ave / Swords road, a busy residential area and surrounded by schools. People survived.

Just have a look on

Gmaps; https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3737804,-6.2640339,17.25z?hl=en-GB

and zoom in on Na Fianna and see how small an area is being discussed, nothing compared to Collins Ave. It will probably entail hoardings, barriers etc within metres of the 3 schools,

prunudo

Is it any wonder nothing gets built in this country either to original plan, cost or time line.
Shock horror, construction site will cause dust, disruption and there'll be big trucks entering/leaving site. No matter what route they choose it will effect people, this is a huge huge project. In order to get a metro into the city there has to be some level of disruption.
I wonder do the parents of na fianna and the schools complain about the diesel fumes from all the buses and traffic passing by every day.

As a side note, I would have loved to have a project like this near my school. Who knows, maybe it would inspire a generation of children wanting to be engineers, surveyors or architect's. Better them all wanting work in fb or google.

CatInABox

piuswal wrote: »

Just have a look on

Gmaps; https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.3737804,-6.2640339,17.25z?hl=en-GB

and zoom in on Na Fianna and see how small an area is being discussed, nothing compared to Collins Ave. It will probably entail hoardings, barriers etc within metres of the 3 schools,

And everyone there will survive too.

Here's a picture of the Whitechapel Crossrail construction site:



You can't see it on this picture, but those hoardings on the right? That's a school. One of the walls of the school is literally used as a wall of the construction site.

plodder

I used to drive down Collins Ave past the TBM site five days a week while the port tunnel was being constructed. Granted it was a bigger site, but if there was a problem with dust, you would still have seen it. There was no dust, noise or anything. Most people going past would not have known what was happening there.

tom1ie

bk wrote: »

Errrr.... It is super common, Barcelona Line 9, look at those apartment buildings:



BTW really interesting video here about Barcelona Line 9, driverless trains, platform doors, all very similar to what is being suggested for Dublin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Q-HgHzeVo

Great video. Just reading an article on the project and I noticed this:
The new metro line is estimated to cost €6.5bn ($8.4bn), of which €1.3bn ($1.67bn) is being financed by The European Investment Bank.

Are we getting money off the European Investment Bank for MetroLink or is it all self funded?

Sam Russell

tom1ie wrote: »

Are we getting money off the European Investment Bank for MetroLink or is it all self funded?

If it we get money from the EIB, it is still self funded - it would be a loan not a grant.

bk

jvan wrote: »

I wonder do the parents of na fianna and the schools complain about the diesel fumes from all the buses and traffic passing by every day.

And those parents own Diesel cars and SUV's are very surprisingly more polluting then those buses!

A Dublin Bus surprisingly actually produces less pollution (PM's, NoX) then a typical Diesel car! This is due to buses, coaches and trucks actually having much stricter rules around emissions then small cars.

The Germans watered down the rules for cars so much that even a little Volkswagen Golf produces more cancer causing pollution then a Dublin Bus does. That is what the whole dieselgate thing is about. Quiet shocking carry on.

monument

CatInABox wrote: »

And everyone there will survive too.

Here's a picture of the Whitechapel Crossrail construction site:



You can't see it on this picture, but those hoardings on the right? That's a school. One of the walls of the school is literally used as a wall of the construction site.

It looks like the school exits onto the next road, not the same road as the site and the site is a station site, not a TBM site?

monument

bk wrote: »

Errrr.... It is super common, Barcelona Line 9, look at those apartment buildings:



BTW really interesting video here about Barcelona Line 9, driverless trains, platform doors, all very similar to what is being suggested for Dublin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Q-HgHzeVo

That’s not a typical TBM site in cities the size of Dublin in our kind of planning and environmental regulation.

markpb wrote: »

The TBM entry point for the DPT was at Collins ave / Swords road, a busy residential area and surrounded by schools. People survived.

People survived mass destruction for large urban road projects — it doesn’t make it the right thing do or the right plan to minimise risk.

Re the Collins ave / Swords road — the site was not near schools as far as I know and the trucks had easy access to the motorway network.

bk

monument wrote: »

It looks like the school exits onto the next road, not the same road as the site and the site is a station site, not a TBM site?

Neither will the schools by Na Fianna! Unlike what the poster said above, access to Scoil Cathriona is not via the road through Na Fianna, it has its own separate access road, north of the grounds/work site.

This separate access road also leads to the back of the Na Fianna Club House and to Scoil Mobhi, which separately could also be accessed by Whitehall College of Further education.

monument wrote: »

That’s not a typical TBM site in cities the size of Dublin in our kind of planning and environmental regulation.

Nonsense, TBM sites in cities the same size as Dublin is absolutely normal all throughout Europe.

How do you think Metros get built? Metro's tend to only start getting built when cities hit 1 million plus people. However by then, cities have usually hit population density where you have no choice but to slot TBM sites and stations in amongst city streets, buildings, schools and houses.

If you look at Metro building projects in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, cities the same size as Dublin, you can see exactly the same. It is completely normal and can be well managed.

monument wrote: »

People survived mass destruction for large urban road projects — it doesn’t make it the right thing do or the right plan to minimise risk.

Please don't equate the permanent destruction of neighbours by building massive motorways though the heart of cities to a relatively small temporary construction site that will be completely gone after 6 years, with no evidence it ever existed and will finally give the people of Dublin a fantastic form of high quality, environmentally friendly form of public transport!

This construction site really won't be anything more significant that the apartment and office construction sites popping up all over the city at the moment.

They are completely and utterly different things and it is hyperbole to suggest they are the same!

bk

Copenhagen:

bk

Amsterdam:

CatInABox

monument wrote: »

It looks like the school exits onto the next road, not the same road as the site and the site is a station site, not a TBM site?

The construction work closed Durward St, with site traffic entering and exiting from opposite directions on that street. The main entrance into the school is on Brady St, very close to the corner of Durward St. Trucks would have passed the school entrance on more than an hourly basis, you can even see the marks that they left on the ground turning left onto Brady St.

See Google maps here.

It's not a TBM site, but it is the site of a major, multi-year construction project that happened right next to a large school, a hospital and dozens of houses without major incident. Turning an existing Overground station into an underground station, all while also constructing another, new, underground station is not an easy task.

They've got an excellent article on it here.

monument

CatInABox wrote: »

The construction work closed Durward St, with site traffic entering and exiting from opposite directions on that street. The main entrance into the school is on Brady St, very close to the corner of Durward St. Trucks would have passed the school entrance on more than an hourly basis, you can even see the marks that they left on the ground turning left onto Brady St.

See Google maps here.

It's not a TBM site, but it is the site of a major, multi-year construction project that happened right next to a large school, a hospital and dozens of houses without major incident. Turning an existing Overground station into an underground station, all while also constructing another, new, underground station is not an easy task.

They've got an excellent article on it here.

• Not a TBM site -- so not near the amount of spoil or things that can go wrong.
• Not a suburban area with other sites to choose from.
• Even if it was suburban, an interchange station can't be moved away from where it needs to interchange with.

Also according to TFL the routes that go by the school are restricted ones: http://74f85f59f39b887b696f-ab656259048fb93837ecc0ecbcf0c557.r23.cf3.rackcdn.com/assets/library/document/c/original/crossrail%20lorry%20routes%20-%20lb%20tower%20hamlets.pdf and there was access even via the school grounds on part of the site which had restrictive access but this was done outside school hours.

bk wrote: »

Neither will the schools by Na Fianna! Unlike what the poster said above, access to Scoil Cathriona is not via the road through Na Fianna, it has its own separate access road, north of the grounds/work site.

This separate access road also leads to the back of the Na Fianna Club House and to Scoil Mobhi, which separately could also be accessed by Whitehall College of Further education.

All of them enter onto Mobhi Road. That's clearly what I meant when I said three lane road.

The reply from another poster that HGVs would use the bus lane and the risk that would impose on cyclists shows you guys really aren't grasping the concept of risk and avoiding needless risk.

bk wrote: »

Nonsense, TBM sites in cities the same size as Dublin is absolutely normal all throughout Europe.

How do you think Metros get built? Metro's tend to only start getting built when cities hit 1 million plus people. However by then, cities have usually hit population density where you have no choice but to slot TBM sites and stations in amongst city streets, buildings, schools and houses.

If you look at Metro building projects in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, cities the same size as Dublin, you can see exactly the same. It is completely normal and can be well managed.

I'm glad you went with Copenhagen and Amsterdam because they are two cities I know reasonably well.

I'm pro-metro, but, when it comes to construction and risks, Amsterdam is not the best example:

"Although the original budget for the north/south line was €1.4bn, the final cost is likely to be well over €3bn. Work started in 2002, and was due to end in 2011 but ran into massive buildings subsidence problems and technical issues along the way. The experts’ report urging a further delay has been around for a month, but was only published officially earlier this week." -- dutchnews.nl

With any delay like this the difference between a TBM site and a station site is massive.

To reduce risk of working nearer human activity and buildings etc, Copenhagen built a TBM site on their central man-made lake:



Some of the photos you posted show other sites on parts of squares and other open spaces -- as well as cost effectiveness, this has built-in risk avoidance.

There's no question that some sites are confined, but few planners of metros pick confined or problematic sites when there's an alternative near by and no good reason not to use it.

bk wrote: »

Please don't equate the permanent destruction of neighbours by building massive motorways though the heart of cities to a relatively small temporary construction site that will be completely gone after 6 years, with no evidence it ever existed and will finally give the people of Dublin a fantastic form of high quality, environmentally friendly form of public transport!

This construction site really won't be anything more significant that the apartment and office construction sites popping up all over the city at the moment.

They are completely and utterly different things and it is hyperbole to suggest they are the same!

I apologise for my comparison but the over zealous YIMBY-ism is nearly getting as bad as the NIMBY-ism.

Although, I have to note that, I still think there's an element of needless destruction with elements of MetroLink -- including far from temporary effects.

And a TBM site is not comparable to most apartment or office developments, not in terms of truck movements or in terms of risk -- these are two things that you and others are not getting for some reason.

CatInABox

Personally, I don't particularly mind where the tunnel portal is placed, or even where the stations are (outside of the main interchange stations). Putting the tunnel portal at Albert College Park would reduce the risk involved, and allow trucks in and out easier. If they do go down this route, I would hope that they still go with a station at Na Fianna, or at least very nearby, otherwise the people of Glasnevin will suffer a terrible injustice long term.