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

LongboardPro

This is why mainstream media is a dying breed.

salmocab

LongboardPro wrote: »

This is why mainstream media is a dying breed.

It is, we no longer pay for content it’s paid for by advertising, the advertising is based on the amount of views so it’s the media’s aim to get clicks not accuracy. There are some reputable people but it’s harder and harder to find. Populist outrage sells.

jd

marno21 wrote: »

.. suggesting that connecting Metro to the Green Line was a waste of money because it could be used to serve the SW of the city and reduce pressure on bus services

You know if the plan was changed to go SW he'd be on his show in 5 years asking how could a 3 biilion euro project have been allowed to become a 5 billion euro project..

prunudo

CatInABox wrote: »

Newstalk had a report on the news that Dublin is the slowest city in Europe, which was astonishingly pro Metrolink and BusConnects. The presenter could have challenged her callers on a few points, but almost all of the callers were sick of the congestion, and most saw public transport investment as the answer. Graeme McQueen was on, from the Dublin Chamber, and seemed pretty knowledgeable about the issues involved.

This kind of thing bodes well for PT investment, it seems that it's a growing issue for people, and if it turns into a vote-getter, then politicians will start listening.

Listens here.

Agree, the guy from the chamber spoke very well. Have heard him on various shows before and he's always knowledgeable and makes good points.
But did you hear the caller after who was a councillor for I'd imagine South Dublin. Basically saying what was touched on this thread yesterday about the plan should be redrawn to include a sw line and looping back to Sandyford rather than upgrading the greenline.
As others have said, we'll never get anything built if the councils don't work together and stop trying to out do eachother. I know the sw of the city needs a metro line, but it should be seperate and not at the expense of the current Metrolink proposal.

prunudo

marno21 wrote: »

In sharp contrast with Matt Cooper there just before 5 ranting about CPOing gardens for BusConnects and suggesting that connecting Metro to the Green Line was a waste of money because it could be used to serve the SW of the city and reduce pressure on bus services

I wish somebody would point out that this sw option would cost considerably more as there is no above ground route so it would all be tunneled. This doesn't seem to enter the minds of people who are calling for it as an upgrade to the greenline. Do they not realise that upgrading greenline is actually a small part of the cost of Metrolink.

And the infuriating thing is now you'll have listeners from both Newstalk and todayfm who think that a sw line is a viable alternative because they'll believe what they hear on the radio as gospel. Then they'll have Colm McCarthy giving his tuppence worth because you know, he's a economist and obviously knows whats he's talking about.

marno21

jvan wrote: »

I wish somebody would point out that this sw option would cost considerably more as there is no above ground route so it would all be tunneled. This doesn't seem to enter the minds of people who are calling for it as an upgrade to the greenline. Do they not realise that upgrading greenline is actually a small part of the cost of Metrolink.

I wish the NTA would remind considerate people along the Green Line that the Metro upgrade is a necessity and a vanity project.

They don't seem to make this point clear above the NIMBY noise.

Grandeeod

CatInABox wrote: »

https://twitter.com/DublinCommuters/status/1095669244568784897

Doomed to failure in terms of promoting the development of rail based PT. Far too broad. What happened to the group supposedly set up to promote "Metrolink"?????? What's the story with RUI these days????

There appears to be absolutely no specific pro Metro/DU/Expansion/Rail group anywhere, apart from the odd commentator and this forum.

Sam Russell

Mod: Please keep gifs off this thread - they are not adding anything. Posts deleted.

Dats me

Grandeeod wrote: »

Doomed to failure in terms of promoting the development of rail based PT. Far too broad. What happened to the group supposedly set up to promote "Metrolink"?????? What's the story with RUI these days????

There appears to be absolutely no specific pro Metro/DU/Expansion/Rail group anywhere, apart from the odd commentator and this forum.

I'm sure they'd welcome your help!

Grandeeod

Dats me wrote: »

I'm sure they'd welcome your help!

I'm retired!

marno21

I'm putting this here for those of you who gave up on the ramblings in the alternative route thread. Not to discuss it, but for anyone who may have missed it and wants to read it. Anyone who wants to discuss it can discuss in the alternative routes thread.

Shane Ross confirming today that MetroLink will be Swords to Sandyford and there will be no consideration given to Rathfarnham or any other fantasy routes, and that the project is an absolute requirement to maintain sufficient Green Line capacity required for growth.

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2019-02-13/24/#s28

prunudo

Reassuring to hear this. Between this and the Taosiachs comments last week about the importance of the project bode well for it going ahead, albeit slower than we on here would hope.

LeinsterDub

Grandeeod wrote: »

I'm retired!

So you have lots of free time on your hands

cgcsb

marno21 wrote: »

In sharp contrast with Matt Cooper there just before 5 ranting about CPOing gardens for BusConnects and suggesting that connecting Metro to the Green Line was a waste of money because it could be used to serve the SW of the city and reduce pressure on bus services

It's gas, like in most other countries in Europe, people are pretty critical about the cost of projects, but none would be so presumptuous as to comment on technical issues such as routing, CPOs etc. This seems to be a sort of uniquely Irish thing, lads who done Home Ec for the leaving talking about luas gauge, transport modelling and what have you.

Pixel Eater

Grandeeod wrote: »

Doomed to failure in terms of promoting the development of rail based PT. Far too broad. What happened to the group supposedly set up to promote "Metrolink"?????? What's the story with RUI these days????

There appears to be absolutely no specific pro Metro/DU/Expansion/Rail group anywhere, apart from the odd commentator and this forum.

Well if you can convince people who use other forms of transport that Metrolink will benefit them indirectly by reducing congestion then you'd have far more voices compared to the relatively small amount of NIMBYs currently making all the noise.

Marcusm

marno21 wrote: »

I wish the NTA would remind considerate people along the Green Line that the Metro upgrade is a necessity and a vanity project.

They don't seem to make this point clear above the NIMBY noise.

A necessity and a vanity project?

marno21

Marcusm wrote: »

A necessity and a vanity project?

Somehow managed to omit the word "not" there

lucernarian

cgcsb wrote: »

It's gas, like in most other countries in Europe, people are pretty critical about the cost of projects, but none would be so presumptuous as to comment on technical issues such as routing, CPOs etc. This seems to be a sort of uniquely Irish thing, lads who done Home Ec for the leaving talking about luas gauge, transport modelling and what have you.

That's just an argument to authority there - no one is above scrutiny, fault, misjudgement or indeed corruption. With increased discussion of the National Children's Hospital, it reveals precisely that kind of skullduggery and blind acceptance of "expert" advice and which led to a project coming in currently for about 2* projected cost.

Also there's a lot of folks who read and post here who are intimately involved with some aspect of the consultant-politician-construction-public service circlejerk but as we don't have the conflict of interest rule here, I can't elaborate on that. But there's no way of knowing who has what background when they post here normally.

cgcsb

lucernarian wrote: »

That's just an argument to authority there - no one is above scrutiny, fault, misjudgement or indeed corruption. With increased discussion of the National Children's Hospital, it reveals precisely that kind of skullduggery and blind acceptance of "expert" advice and which led to a project coming in currently for about 2* projected cost.

At this stage, how do you (or anyone) know if the overruns at the hospital are due to corruption, missmanagement, scope creep, or a combination of any other amount of factors?

What if it's established that cost overruns are mostly due to advances in medical equipment/technology that result in layout changes?

lucernarian

cgcsb wrote: »

At this stage, how do you (or anyone) know if the overruns at the hospital are due to corruption, missmanagement, scope creep, or a combination of any other amount of factors?

What if it's established that cost overruns are mostly due to advances in medical equipment/technology that result in layout changes?

The point was there's plenty of potential reasons for the mismanagement of that NCH project and for any megaproject - but at the same time without knowing what factors played any role or the largest role, the outcome and information published so far does show a shocking overspend and that errors in pricing had been made. E.g. the infamous cabling estimates - relevant to the shoddy costing done so for the general Metrolink proposal. Here's a quote from the subcommittee meeting: "The development board had got the price of cables but did not know early on how many would be needed". With Metrolink, I don't know why so little attention was paid to two other suppressed CBAs and I can't believe that it serves the public interest to keep those hidden.

Metrolink has offered a lot of transparency as to the kinds of options available to the project (unlike NCH) - the issue is that the evaluation of these options and the cost effectiveness of each are based off a lot of guesswork that is pragmatically unsound and also ethically wrong IMO.

As for that optimistic assessment of the overrun at NCH - a hypothesis I've yet to encounter in the ongoing commentary- the Mazars report commissioned on the overspend - did give some insight. That report stated that "The budgeting process failed to properly estimate the likely future costs of the project within the stated contingency limits".

How then can people have faith in the delivery of this project, spanning many years of future capital budgets, when tunnelling costs and the green line luas infrastructure upgrades are based on guesswork? These factor into the options chosen, and the setting aside of the €120 million spent on acquisitions and planning for the original Metro North

CatInABox

Is there actually two CBAs though? I'm sure that every journalist worth their salt tried to FOI these reports if they existed, but we haven't seen or heard anything since, which leads me to think that they don't.

I also don't think the NTA would care enough to suppress any report, even if it was critical. They'd just release and if necessary, move on to the next project, like Dart Underground.

antoinolachtnai

lucernarian wrote: »

cgcsb wrote: »

At this stage, how do you (or anyone) know if the overruns at the hospital are due to corruption, missmanagement, scope creep, or a combination of any other amount of factors?

What if it's established that cost overruns are mostly due to advances in medical equipment/technology that result in layout changes?

The point was there's plenty of potential reasons for the mismanagement of that NCH project and for any megaproject - but at the same time without knowing what factors played any role or the largest role, the outcome and information published so far does show a shocking overspend and that errors in pricing had been made. E.g. the infamous cabling estimates - relevant to the shoddy costing done so for the general Metrolink proposal. Here's a quote from the subcommittee meeting: "The development board had got the price of cables but did not know early on how many would be needed". With Metrolink, I don't know why so little attention was paid to two other suppressed CBAs and I can't believe that it serves the public interest to keep those hidden.

Metrolink has offered a lot of transparency as to the kinds of options available to the project (unlike NCH) - the issue is that the evaluation of these options and the cost effectiveness of each are based off a lot of guesswork that is pragmatically unsound and also ethically wrong IMO.

As for that optimistic assessment of the overrun at NCH - a hypothesis I've yet to encounter in the ongoing commentary- the Mazars report commissioned on the overspend - did give some insight. That report stated that "The budgeting process failed to properly estimate the likely future costs of the project within the stated contingency limits".

How then can people have faith in the delivery of this project, spanning many years of future capital budgets, when tunnelling costs and the green line luas infrastructure upgrades are based on guesswork? These factor into the options chosen, and the setting aside of the €120 million spent on acquisitions and planning for the original Metro North

How do you accurately price the cost of building a railway in 2025 for which you don’t even know the route yet?

The design is actually very conservative. The proportion underground has been minimized and is much less than for MN. The design has obviously brought on board a load of learnings from MN.

Making the tunnel longer would make the project even more uncertain.

What project should we do if we don’t do this one?

Tell us more about these suppressed CBAs.

Sam Russell

Mod: Metrolink only - The children's hospital is for somewhere else.

cgcsb

I read today that the Sagrada Familla will be completed sometime between 2026-2028, same time as Metrolink (very tentative), they're sort of sister projects in that they're such long running sagas that nobody can really remember the start.

marno21

marno21 wrote: »

TII have issued a tender for ground investigation of the Metrolink route for the design & EIS stages of the project. This must mean that a route has now been selected; will surely be published very shortly

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_frameset.asp?PID=134907&B=ETENDERS_SIMPLE&PS=1&PP=ctm/Supplier/publictenders

Tender awarded to Causeway Geotech Ltd

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_frameset.asp?PID=134907&B=ETENDERS_SIMPLE&PS=2&PP=ctm/Supplier/PublicTenders

ricimaki

marno21 wrote: »

Tender awarded to Causeway Geotech Ltd

https://irl.eu-supply.com/app/rfq/publicpurchase_frameset.asp?PID=134907&B=ETENDERS_SIMPLE&PS=2&PP=ctm/Supplier/PublicTenders

Take a look at the documents in the attached information towards the bottom of the page. If you download the large zip file, it has some PDF's (2 are over 200MB in size), showing the location of historical and new boreholes for the project. Here's what the Ranelagh to Beechwood section looks like:


Notice how the new boreholes in green are to the West of the Luas line, not directly on it like the red marks. This lines up with where a Beechwood tie-in would go....

Edit: On closer inspection, many of the boreholes are all over the place, so don't get your hopes up

Dats me

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/careers/

NTA hiring a public affairs officer about 18 months too late. Many other management roles too, so looks like they're finally sorting out their resources problem.

Also hiring clerical officers for anyone who doesn't have experience.

MetroLinker

Latest article in the IT:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/metrolink-route-to-be-published-within-weeks-1.3797157

"The additional tunnelling was likely to add more than €100 million to the cost of the €3 billion line." I mentioned in a previous comment that there is a 'budget' figure currently in the public press. Large scale infrastructure costs are currently under scrutiny in Ireland and Metrolink need to tread carefully here.

Idbatterim

MetroLinker wrote: »

Latest article in the IT:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/metrolink-route-to-be-published-within-weeks-1.3797157

"The additional tunnelling was likely to add more than €100 million to the cost of the €3 billion line." I mentioned in a previous comment that there is a 'budget' figure currently in the public press. Large scale infrastructure costs are currently under scrutiny in Ireland and Metrolink need to tread carefully here.

Those morons in the times knows who butters their bread! So if they don’t continued it out further and “divide” communities like the Berlin Wall , it’s ok because it’s now cheaper. What do those idiots propose?

prunudo

In the grand scheme €100m isn't that much extra. Also if it does come in the around the €3bn mark then when compared to the Nch it will be a bargain of a project.