Dublin Metrolink - future routes for next Metrolink

Sam Russell

LXFlyer wrote: »

Sam I was making the point that the bus routes already go where the people want to go, and that’s to Camden St and east. That’s where the metro from Rathfarnham needs to go in my opinion (and not way out west of the city centre as you’re suggesting). A central node makes more sense.

Please tell me which bus routes in south central Dublin spend too much time wending their way around housing estates? This line is trotted out so much yet isn’t valid in the vast majority of cases since the Network Direct rollout. It’s BS frankly at this stage.

The bus routes in the area suffer from severe congestion on the main radial routes due to lack of roadspace. Let’s cut this BS about the principal routes wending around housing estates because with a few exceptions it doesn’t hold water anymore.

150. Goes around the houses.

16. Ballinteer to the airport through heavy congestion, with a trip around Whitehall.

I am only familiar with the 4 and 7/7a, that appear to only travel in convoy.

LXFlyer

Sam Russell wrote: »

150. Goes around the houses.

16. Ballinteer to the airport through heavy congestion, with a trip around Whitehall.

I am only familiar with the 4 and 7/7a, that appear to only travel in convoy.

The 150 is a local community route. Do you think that those people in the areas it services don’t deserve a service? I’d like to see you try and remove it!

There are plenty of alternatives along the Crumlin Road - 27, 56a, 77a and 151 and the 15a to Whitehall Rd.

The network needs a mix of local and direct routes.

I agree about the 16 (the 1 should serve Beaumont) but that’s one route Sam. Hardly representative of the entire network and certainly not the case in south Dublin which is the area
I am discussing re metro.

Sam Russell

You are better informed over DB than I am. s I said, my experience goes as far as the 4, 7/7a and that is it.

However, I think shifting the Metro II just 1 km west is just a minor re-routing and people will be delighted with it if they live 1 km further west of it, and not affected if they live 1 km east of it. It would still connect with much public transport.

LXFlyer

Sam Russell wrote: »

You are better informed over DB than I am. s I said, my experience goes as far as the 4, 7/7a and that is it.

However, I think shifting the Metro II just 1 km west is just a minor re-routing and people will be delighted with it if they live 1 km further west of it, and not affected if they live 1 km east of it. It would still connect with much public transport.

Well then why make such a daft throwaway remark about bus routes if you can’t actually back it up?

As someone who has used most of the bus routes from south central Dublin during my commuting life, I think you’re completely barking up the wrong tree with the notion of going 1km west. At the risk of repeating yourself - the principal traffic generators are all to the east - the CBD and retail areas. That is where people want to go, and it’s the bus stops nearest those areas that are the busiest on all the bus routes. Sending people out to the west of the city centre along Patrick St is pointless as there’s far fewer traffic generators and its further away from where the majority wish to travel to.

Frankly Sam, you have already admitted you’ve no idea about traffic patterns in the area, and coming with notions like this without having any understanding of where people are actually going to/from is frankly daft. There’s no substitute for getting out there and watching the flows in reality.

Metro lines in Dublin ideally need a central hub (Tara St is best in my view).

[Deleted User]

Speaking of a massive expansion in homebuilding in Cherrywood, the N11 remains an option for offering improved high frequency & high capacity public transport to and from the city centre.

For Terenure/Rathfarnham/Templeogue/Knocklyon/Firhouse, there are no options for improving public transport beyond banning private cars from the main routes into and out of the city centre. Traffic is chronic and buses have nowhere to go on congested roads

You can look at Census '11 population density for Dublin here: http://airomaps.nuim.ie/id/Census2011/?mobileBreakPoint=600/ (select the population button & the pop density one). The green line route was significantly lower density than any potential southwest spur, and the proposed home building in Cherrywood will be a long time matching the growth Knocklyon/Firhouse/Ballycullen and Rathfarnham have had.

The green line route was chosen because it followed an existing landbank. Not because it was superior in terms of population demographics or potential passenger journies.

Sam Russell

Deleted User wrote: »

The green line route was chosen because it followed an existing landbank. Not because it was superior in terms of population demographics or potential passenger journies.

The Green Line followed the old Harcourt Line, closed by FF Todd Andrews. It should have continued onto Bray on the old alignment.

tom1ie

So here’s a crazy idea.....
Bus connects is rumored to cost 2 billion.
Charlemount to firhouse is 8.8km of a tunnel. (Let’s say 9km).
It’s approx 100million per km.
100 million by 9= 900 million.
A metro station costs approximately 80million.
Let’s say 6 stations. ( rathmines, rathfarnham, terenure, rathfarnham, ballyboden, knocklyon)
80 million x6 = 480million (let’s say 500 million.)
900million + 500 million = 1.4 billion.
That means we’d have 600 million, from the original 2 billion to spend on brt, to put in a couple of feeder, to the metro station routes, and orbital brt routes, that would join up pt transport nodes orbitaly.
With the traffic that would be taken off the roads from the capacity and frequency offered by metro2, busses would have a lot more road space and be quicker and more efficient anyway, meaning the entire 2 billion was never needed to upgrade the network.
Discuss.

markpb

tom1ie wrote: »

With the traffic that would be taken off the roads from the capacity and frequency offered by metro2, busses would have a lot more road space and be quicker and more efficient anyway, meaning the entire 2 billion was never needed to upgrade the network.

In my experience, buses in Dublin are not limited by road capacity, they're limited by no physical segregation, poor bus lanes design, poor bus stop design, limited bus lane enforcement by AGS, excessive dwell time caused by limited doors and poor ticketing options and, of course, the biggest one of all: too many taxis (legally) in the bus lanes. None of those will be solved by building a metro anywhere. They'll be solved by investing in the bus system, as is proposed.

tom1ie

markpb wrote: »

In my experience, buses in Dublin are not limited by road capacity, they're limited by no physical segregation, poor bus lanes design, poor bus stop design, limited bus lane enforcement by AGS, excessive dwell time caused by limited doors and poor ticketing options and, of course, the biggest one of all: too many taxis (legally) in the bus lanes. None of those will be solved by building a metro anywhere. They'll be solved by investing in the bus system, as is proposed.

Yeah but in areas that would be served by metro2 there would be no room for physical segregation. There are no continuous bus lanes into the cc in that area as it is!
Db is absolutely limited by road capacity, as if we had wider roads, lanes could be turned into qbc’s.
I completely agree with you regarding taxis ags and dwell time, but none of these will have much of a bearing on overall journey time as the bus will be stuck in traffic as there is no room for a qbc. Hence the only option is to remove the traffic via a metro.

LeinsterDub

tom1ie wrote: »

So here’s a crazy idea.....
Bus connects is rumored to cost 2 billion.
Charlemount to firhouse is 8.8km of a tunnel. (Let’s say 9km).
It’s approx 100million per km.
100 million by 9= 900 million.
A metro station costs approximately 80million.
Let’s say 6 stations. ( rathmines, rathfarnham, terenure, rathfarnham, ballyboden, knocklyon)
80 million x6 = 480million (let’s say 500 million.)
900million + 500 million = 1.4 billion.
That means we’d have 600 million, from the original 2 billion to spend on brt, to put in a couple of feeder, to the metro station routes, and orbital brt routes, that would join up pt transport nodes orbitaly.
With the traffic that would be taken off the roads from the capacity and frequency offered by metro2, busses would have a lot more road space and be quicker and more efficient anyway, meaning the entire 2 billion was never needed to upgrade the network.
Discuss.

Even in London buses are still the back bone the PT.

Over the period there were a total of 4.44 billion bus journeys taken in England, more than half of which (2.4bn) were made in London.

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling-three-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-englands/

Annual passenger numbers 1.37 billion

https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-underground/facts-and-figures

tom1ie

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Even in London buses are still the back bone the PT.



http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling-three-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-englands/



https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-underground/facts-and-figures

Agreed but I’m not saying scrap dB! I’m saying instead of spending 2 billion on bus connects, which let’s face it, is gonna be watered down so much it will be unrecognizable, on cpo’s alone build metro 2 out of that pot and with the money left over, put that into expanding the fleet.

LXFlyer

markpb wrote: »

In my experience, buses in Dublin are not limited by road capacity, they're limited by no physical segregation, poor bus lanes design, poor bus stop design, limited bus lane enforcement by AGS, excessive dwell time caused by limited doors and poor ticketing options and, of course, the biggest one of all: too many taxis (legally) in the bus lanes. None of those will be solved by building a metro anywhere. They'll be solved by investing in the bus system, as is proposed.

Mark - the fundamental problem in south central Dublin is the lack of roadspace. Try taking a 14 or 15 south in the evenings. There’s no space for an outbound bus lane in Rathmines or along Rathgar Road which is now taking an eternity to travel through.

The buses then get stuck in Rathmines, Rathgar, Terenure and Templeogue villages due to the confined space.

That’s the fundamental problem.

None of that will be solved by BusConnects.

tom1ie

LXFlyer wrote: »

Mark - the fundamental problem in south central Dublin is the lack of roadspace. Try taking a 14 or 15 south in the evenings. There’s no space for an outbound bus lane in Rathmines or along Rathgar Road which is now taking an eternity to travel through.

The buses then get stuck in Rathmines, Rathgar, Terenure and Templeogue villages due to the confined space.

That’s the fundamental problem.

None of that will be solved by BusConnects.

This is the problem summed up in one paragraph.

schemingbohemia

LXFlyer wrote: »

Mark - the fundamental problem in south central Dublin is the lack of roadspace. Try taking a 14 or 15 south in the evenings. There’s no space for an outbound bus lane in Rathmines or along Rathgar Road which is now taking an eternity to travel through.

The buses then get stuck in Rathmines, Rathgar, Terenure and Templeogue villages due to the confined space.

That’s the fundamental problem.

None of that will be solved by BusConnects.

I think a bit of magical thinking in Rathmines could work. 3 lanes with 2 bus lanes and 1 one-way car lane that changes direction at 1pm!
Any examples of this mad-cap thinking anywhere?

tom1ie

schemingbohemia wrote: »

I think a bit of magical thinking in Rathmines could work. 3 lanes with 2 bus lanes and 1 one-way car lane that changes direction at 1pm!
Any examples of this mad-cap thinking anywhere?

? So what happens if your in a car and want to go the other direction? Don’t think that’s gonna work in rathmines, plus people don’t give a damn about bus lanes. They park in them to run into costa coffee! I’ve seen this!
Theres just not enough space for bus connects to have any effect on rathfarnham rathmines templeogue terenure Harold’s x green hills kimmage etc etc

bk

First of all, BusConnects is supposed to cost 1 billion over 10 years, not 2 billion!

That is just 100 million per year, which really isn't that much.

At the moment we buy 100 buses a year as replacements for old buses. Each new bus costs about €400,000 so that is €40 million per year alone for normal fleet replacement and they are expecting to increase the umber of buses bought per year. So really your only talking about €50m per year being spent on improving bus infrastructure throughout the city, it really isn't that much.

This thread seems to have turned into just focusing on a narrow corridor in the South West and it's issues! There are similar issues all over the city and BusConnects will be trying to help the entire city, all 16 core bus corridors.

LXFlyer

bk wrote: »

First of all, BusConnects is supposed to cost 1 billion over 10 years, not 2 billion!

That is just 100 million per year, which really isn't that much.

At the moment we buy 100 buses a year as replacements for old buses. Each new bus costs about €400,000 so that is €40 million per year alone for normal fleet replacement and they are expecting to increase the umber of buses bought per year. So really your only talking about €50m per year being spent on improving bus infrastructure throughout the city, it really isn't that much.

This thread seems to have turned into just focusing on a narrow corridor in the South West and it's issues! There are similar issues all over the city and BusConnects will be trying to help the entire city, all 16 core bus corridors.

Indeed it will be across the city, but the south central part part of Dublin has the slowest bus speeds in the city by a mile, which (in my view) does make the issues facing it that more urgent than others, and frankly there is damn all surface solutions that are going to resolve that.

bk

LXFlyer wrote: »

Indeed it will be across the city, but the south central part part of Dublin has the slowest bus speeds in the city by a mile, which (in my view) does make the issues facing it that more urgent than others, and frankly there is damn all surface solutions that are going to resolve that.

Shrug, we currently have a housing crisis in Dublin. They is little or no space for new housing on this SW corridor, there is lots of space for tens of thousands of new homes along the Green Line, thus it is a higher priority and would have a much better business case. It really is as simple as that.

A SW line needs to happen eventually, I agree, but it simply isn't a priority now.

LXFlyer

bk wrote: »

Shrug, we currently have a housing crisis in Dublin. They is little or no space for new housing on this SW corridor, there is lots of space for tens of thousands of new homes along the Green Line, thus it is a higher priority and would have a much better business case. It really is as simple as that.

A SW line needs to happen eventually, I agree, but it simply isn't a priority now.

Well you will forgive me if I again say that your post is talking tosh and comes across as exceptionally patronising.

What about all the homes that are already built in that area? There have been large developments built in the Knocklyon/Firhouse areas since the 1990s and they have appalling public transport due to the narrow nature of the roads.

Are you saying that a 90 minute commute time (yes it has been that bad regularly) from that area to the city is acceptable?

I’m sorry but I fundamentally disagree with you.

You’re effectively saying sorry, but you thousands of people who bought out in that area during that time are second class citizens.

I’m certainly not going to accept that from anyone.

I make no apology for fighting for better transport in that area as it is appalling and nothing on the surface is going to resolve that unless you plan on demolishing all the villages and decimating every front garden in sight!

I suspect you might change your tune if you had to endure those sort of journey times.

bk

It is always a fundamental question for major infrastructure development.

Do you prioritise development towards areas that already exist and do need better public transport, but have very limited space for new development or do you instead prioritise development towards more green field type sites and help encourage the building of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of new homes and business.

I mean the SW is the mess that it is because planners over the decades allowed a massive amount of development in this area without also developing the need public transport infrastructure.

With the Green Line upgrade they are finally doing the right thing, building up the public transport infrastructure in parallel with the tens of thousands of new homes there coming on line. It is fundamentally good planning.

Going with your plan instead would cost WAY more and simply continue the planning mistakes of the past with insufficient capacity on the green line for all those new homes. It would just moves the issues that the SW are having to the new areas along the Green Line and again cost WAY more and likely risk the entire Metrolink project as it becomes too expensive.

To be honest, you are coming at this from a selfish place, you live in the SW corridor and you want better public transport, that is completely understandable. However you aren't looking at the bigger picture of the entire city and what has the best business case and the best alignment with national policy.

LXFlyer

Again - why should anyone in the south central and south west part of the city effectively be abandoned?

The southeast has DART, the N11 QBC, and LUAS.

You go on about this as if no one is living in the south or southwest - there are thousands of homes there already and they don’t have proper public transport.

Yet your solution is to spend money on an area that does have several functioning public transport systems and to hell with the rest of the people who don’t.

For the record I’ve commuted across the city over my working life and nowhere is as bad as the south central area.

I accept my solution would cost more, but there are already the thousands of homes already built that have not got an acceptable level of public transport available to them. That may not happen in my lifetime if this plan happens as it stands.

And I still maintain that an extended closure (talking far more than Ranelagh-Charlemonth of the Green Line to facilitate the conversion to Metro (as suggested by a TII engineer) will cause utter mayhem in the entire south Dublin area.

And for the record I have never been accused of not seeing the bigger picture - the big picture is that a huge swathe of Dublin is being ignored here. That’s enough for me.

tom1ie

bk wrote: »

First of all, BusConnects is supposed to cost 1 billion over 10 years, not 2 billion!

That is just 100 million per year, which really isn't that much.

At the moment we buy 100 buses a year as replacements for old buses. Each new bus costs about €400,000 so that is €40 million per year alone for normal fleet replacement and they are expecting to increase the umber of buses bought per year. So really your only talking about €50m per year being spent on improving bus infrastructure throughout the city, it really isn't that much.

This thread seems to have turned into just focusing on a narrow corridor in the South West and it's issues! There are similar issues all over the city and BusConnects will be trying to help the entire city, all 16 core bus corridors.

Ok so going on your reasoning what timeframe do we have to get bus connects implemented and finished as a whole 10 years!!! How is that going to alleviate any traffic problems in dublin? In 10 years time there will be far more traffic on the road anyway, and we’ll be back to square one.
This thread is veering towards one area of Dublin in particular because that area has no pt apart from a woefully inadequete bus service, which is due to traffic, which is caused by lack of qbc’s, which is caused by space constraints.
Other areas have access to light rail and heavy rail that the sw corridor just doesn’t.
By the way thanks for pointing out it’s only 1 billion I was sure I seen a figure of 2 billion. Maybe that was wishful thinking!

Markcheese

markpb wrote: »

In my experience, buses in Dublin are not limited by road capacity, they're limited by no physical segregation, poor bus lanes design, poor bus stop design, limited bus lane enforcement by AGS, excessive dwell time caused by limited doors and poor ticketing options and, of course, the biggest one of all: too many taxis (legally) in the bus lanes. None of those will be solved by building a metro anywhere. They'll be solved by investing in the bus system, as is proposed.

Who's actually responsible for bus stops and bus lánes at the moment...? Could one body work on improving bus infrastructure line by line.. So stops the right size for the bus that uses them, barriers to keep pedestrian clear of the bus as driver pulls in, dedicated tow trucks (or parking wardens) to remove offender from stops and lanes.. A single body to work on improving junctions and light sequences for rush hour buses... And that's before you get to luas style ticketing... Anything to make the existing buses move more efficiently....

lucernarian

bk wrote: »

Shrug, we currently have a housing crisis in Dublin. They is little or no space for new housing on this SW corridor, there is lots of space for tens of thousands of new homes along the Green Line, thus it is a higher priority and would have a much better business case. It really is as simple as that.

A SW line needs to happen eventually, I agree, but it simply isn't a priority now.

That value of tens of thousands has never been justified, considering most of the space available (per the govt's own register of land available for development) is not around an expanding international airport :pac: there's really not much (in the hundreds of units maybe) in the vicinity of the MetroLink, almost all on the northside unless Windy Arbour Golf Course could be CPOd and rezoned for the greater good.

I've refuted that point before too, there's no point in pedalling it yet again, as it's not that relevant to the thread - except for if it could be extended to Donabate, and I think that would radically change the potential for residential growth to something like what Almere offered to Amsterdam over the last 30 years. (nearing 200k residents)

Certainly the SSW corridor has significant issues which are not going to be solved with buses alone (Though the dodder cycling route would help a little). The problem is, it's also the part of Dublin that will be furthest away from rail transport when MetroLinky is hypothetically built.

tom1ie

bk wrote: »

Shrug, we currently have a housing crisis in Dublin. They is little or no space for new housing on this SW corridor, there is lots of space for tens of thousands of new homes along the Green Line, thus it is a higher priority and would have a much better business case. It really is as simple as that.

A SW line needs to happen eventually, I agree, but it simply isn't a priority now.

Just to point out I wasn’t advocating building a sw metro (metro2) instead of upgrading Luas Green, I was suggesting diverting the money from bus connects to fund metro2 as well as going with the metrolink plan as it stands.

tom1ie

bk wrote: »

First of all, BusConnects is supposed to cost 1 billion over 10 years, not 2 billion!

That is just 100 million per year, which really isn't that much.

At the moment we buy 100 buses a year as replacements for old buses. Each new bus costs about €400,000 so that is €40 million per year alone for normal fleet replacement and they are expecting to increase the umber of buses bought per year. So really your only talking about €50m per year being spent on improving bus infrastructure throughout the city, it really isn't that much.

This thread seems to have turned into just focusing on a narrow corridor in the South West and it's issues! There are similar issues all over the city and BusConnects will be trying to help the entire city, all 16 core bus corridors.

I got that 2 billion figure from an article wrote in the indo by Paul Melia. Apparently it’s for an entire reorganization of Dublin’s bus system.

Sam Russell

It is not just the SW of Dublin that suffers from the lack of PT and particularly rapid PT. The whole of Dublin suffers from the lack of PT with the exception of those within a short distance of a few narrow corridors.

We must get started with something and Metrolink is a start. Let that be built and in the meantime, design Metro II, Bus Connects, and BRT where these are appropriate.

There have been too many plans over the decades that all came to nothing much.

tom1ie

Sam Russell wrote: »

It is not just the SW of Dublin that suffers from the lack of PT and particularly rapid PT. The whole of Dublin suffers from the lack of PT with the exception of those within a short distance of a few narrow corridors.

We must get started with something and Metrolink is a start. Let that be built and in the meantime, design Metro II, Bus Connects, and BRT where these are appropriate.

There have been too many plans over the decades that all came to nothing much.

I agree that we have to make a start ASAP, but we need to be lining up other projects that are going to deliver proper results aswell. Unlike bus connects which from what I can see is an over hyped bus replacement scheme that will build fancy new shelters and bits of bus lanes here and there. That money could be better spent keeping a tbm going past charlemount/ green line tunnel , and spurring off in the sw direction.

Sam Russell

tom1ie wrote: »

I agree that we have to make a start ASAP, but we need to be lining up other projects that are going to deliver proper results aswell. Unlike bus connects which from what I can see is an over hyped bus replacement scheme that will build fancy new shelters and bits of bus lanes here and there. That money could be better spent keeping a tbm going past charlemount/ green line tunnel , and spurring off in the sw direction.

Well, it will not be next week, or even next year when the TBM crosses the Grand Canal to break to the surface. By the time it gets south of SSG, there might be plans afoot for Metro II, whatever that will involve.

The current plan does not even speculate what will happen the the stub of Green Line that is south of SSG. It could go east towards Docklands, or west towards Harold's Cross or south towards UCD and the N11. It needs to go somewhere.

LXFlyer

Sam Russell wrote: »

It is not just the SW of Dublin that suffers from the lack of PT and particularly rapid PT. The whole of Dublin suffers from the lack of PT with the exception of those within a short distance of a few narrow corridors.

We must get started with something and Metrolink is a start. Let that be built and in the meantime, design Metro II, Bus Connects, and BRT where these are appropriate.

There have been too many plans over the decades that all came to nothing much.

Again it is worth restating that the south central QBCs (they are not just southwest Dublin and people should recognise that) have the slowest bus speeds in the city - yes there’s a citywide problem, but no other area has slower bus speeds. That point seems to go over people’s heads.