Dublin Metrolink - future routes for next Metrolink

Sam Russell

Marcusm wrote: »

I would agree that there is no point in so much duplication. Realistically, however, the planned route is not going anywhere near Portobello and acquiring land for a station might be complex!

This thread is about alternatives.

Taking the underground a bit further west is no harm. A stop at Portabello would serve a good extra aea. dropping two or three stations wiould save money and improve travel time. Look at how far Sandymont Dart St is from Sandymont Village - it does not make it any less usefull for those that use it.

Having bus stops every 200 metres slows the buses to a crawl. Having metro stops closer the a Km is wasteful. Just because the Luas does it does not make it good practice.

CatInABox

Marcusm wrote: »

No inside knowledge and it looks to me that the documents have been changed - now only 155/177 visible. Option 6(b), which no longer seems to appear, was a Beechwood South tie in which involved Green Line continuing to Beechwood and Metrolink rising up and “joining” it. The cost was higher than Charlemont it Ranelagh but did not have the same level of road closures or closure of the existing line for any significant period. Given the thrust of opposition I would have thought these were better factors. A tie in at Charlemont or Ranelagh sterilises a lot more land, closed roads permanently and had environmental considerations (Ranelagh Gardens destruction) that I suspect could get it tied up in litigation for years.

Sometimes I wonder if there is the capability of weighing 4 or 5 factors and discerning the most cost effective path of least resistance.

I think that you're talking about option 6. I don't remember a 6(b) in there, even going back months.

The page numbers are screwed up because two appendices, F and I, were held back, they were never in there. They're both about property valuation, so presumably there's issues with releasing that info.

CatInABox

Rethink Metrolink have been spewing more stuff out, but this article also shows the latest "plan" by the Greens. They now want the line to go from Charlemont/Ranelagh, through UCD, into Sandyford, and then out to Knocklyon. It's the last paragraph here.

Some one should really take those crayons off them, they can be dangerous if inserted up their nose.

Marcusm

Sam Russell wrote: »

This thread is about alternatives.

Taking the underground a bit further west is no harm. A stop at Portabello would serve a good extra aea. dropping two or three stations wiould save money and improve travel time. Look at how far Sandymont Dart St is from Sandymont Village - it does not make it any less usefull for those that use it.

Having bus stops every 200 metres slows the buses to a crawl. Having metro stops closer the a Km is wasteful. Just because the Luas does it does not make it good practice.

I didn’t mean to shut debate; I tried to explain the background to my response.

Portobello and onwards would be great in my opinion. However, if it’s going to track back to the Green Line alignment, I suspect it won’t get any airtime at this stage as it’s a mini-diversion from the researched route rather than a game changer, such as Portobello, Rathmines, Tathgar, Terenure, Templeogue etc which would be an alternative worthy of a delay. IMO, a mini diversion to Portobello then back to the planned route would delay the overall project significantly without being s radical benefit.

Marcusm

CatInABox wrote: »

I think that you're talking about option 6. I don't remember a 6(b) in there, even going back months.

The page numbers are screwed up because two appendices, F and I, were held back, they were never in there. They're both about property valuation, so presumably there's issues with releasing that info.

There were definitely diagrams of a tie in at Beechwood as i’ve Described which I don’t see there anymore. It’s fresh in my mind as I was trying to convince a friend who lives on Beechwood that it woukdn’t Reallydestroy her life!

strassenwo!f

marno21 wrote: »

strassenwolf, you appear to be pushing 2 agendas here:

1. That the Luas Green Line needs upgrading however the main element to consider is that it must remain a Luas tram line at all costs.

2. That the money to be spent on Metro South should instead be ploughed into another Metro line, even though it will only cover the costs of around 2km of tunnelling.

You may see it as 'pushing an agenda'; I prefer to see it as helping readers to become acquainted with options which may be available.

With regard to your option 1, It isn't clear that the Green line needs upgrading at this stage. Several other cities in Europe have shown, over many years, that it is perfectly possible to run safe tram sections with a throughput which is 50% (+) greater than what is currently being done on the off-street section of the Green line (between Peter Place and Sandyford).

In most cases, those tram sections in other cities involve several out-of-centre tram routes merging and sharing a common section through a busier part of the city centre. My suggestion is that two tram routes - one through the very centre of Dublin and one to/from an area which is busy at peak times (Baggot Street Bridge, and perhaps beyond to around Grand Canal Dock) would share a tram line which is tailor-made for higher throughput than it is currently providing to the city.

Assuming that metrolink.ie's passenger uptake projections for the southside Green line are correct, with peak-time uptake of around 12,000 passengers per hour at peak times in 2047, adoption of the higher throughputs we see in those other cities would mean that a combination of the current city centre Green and, for example, a Baggot Street Bridge spur, should mean that there would be no necessity to worry about replacement of that off-street section until the mid-2040's or so. Dublin could then be free to focus on other stuff.

Of course, the metrolink projections don't take into account the effect that other potential rail routes on the southside might have on demand for the Green line service. Other competing routes might reduce the demand along that corridor. I have said a number of times on this thread, and on others, that the best way to serve places like Cherrywood is to gradually build a fairly easy new rail route along the N11, which would also serve places like Belfield (which would have a very different travel demand profile), Donnybrook, parts of Stillorgan, Foxrock, Loughlinstown, etc, which are quite remote from other rail services. Not a priority now, but something which should be looked at in the 2040's or so, along with an upgrade of the southside Green line.

marno21 wrote: »

Why would it be a better idea to build a Luas extension to Baggot Street bridge rather than add additional capacity to the existing Green Line corridor via Metrolink?

There should be no need to replace the Green line in order for it to have a higher capacity. Adding extra capacity involves increasing throughput, and as I pointed out above, there should be no major difficulty doing that. The advantage, with what I have suggested, is that it would enable the off-street LUAS to directly serve areas of south Dublin which are not currently served by rail.

Replacing the off-street section won't add any new areas of south Dublin to the rail network, it won't overall make current LUAS journeys any quicker on the southside - and in many cases it will make them longer - and it will add no transport paths on the southside which can be completed by rail.

There is also the question of demand from the northside locations on the proposed metrolink route. There's a pretty constant demand for travel between Swords and the Airport, and between the Airport and the City, but I wouldn't be so sure that the other locations on the Northside justify the metrolink's potential throughput, which is 40 tph.

40 tph on the southside Green line would deliver a capacity of well over 16,000 people per hour to/from Sandyford. But the metrolink.ie projections for the Green line are for just 13,000 people per hour in 2057 along that corridor. It could probably be well into the next century before that demand is reached on a replacement 'metro' route to Sandyford.

marno21 wrote: »

If the Luas Green Line can remain as is and have all these significant capacity increases, why do you believe the NTA are going down the current route of the Metrolink connection?

I really don't know. There is obviously a tendency to go for the easy option, and the current southside LUAS represents a very easy option, even if it's way off fulfilling its' potential as a tram line.

I'd have thought the planners would be looking at this 2021-2027 project as a way of starting to build towards areas where they could massively reduce journey times into and out of the city, with delivery and considerably shorter journey times (90 minutes or so down to 20 minutes or so) being realised in the years 2030-2040 along southside corridors other than the Green line.

marno21 wrote: »

If there is such substantial need for a Walkinstown/Rathfarnham Metro vs the Green Line upgrade, why didn't the NTA include it in their 2016-2035 policy? I assume you made a submission at the time given the level of interest you have in this.

It's certainly a good question. And it has been difficult to find what other routes were examined closely by the people involved in the metrolink project.

I've looked at several density maps of Dublin's southside over the years, and I haven't seen any major differences between Walkinstown and Windy Arbour, or Rathmines and Ranelagh, or Terenure and Dundrum, which make me think that one of those pairs needs to have a replacement for an already fine LUAS while the other needs to struggle on for another few decades with the bus.

Dats me

You dodged the question about making a submission to the NTA strategy? Really?

So you feel strongly enough about it to type the same thing out over and over for a year but only just as a proposal has been developed and it's too late to be implemented without a delay measured in years (note that there has been a year between publications on the already designed route).

strassenwo!f

salmocab wrote: »

But if we did your plan then Metrolink would go to SW Dublin. So when the green line is upgraded it would require a new metro to be built as the green line can’t be upgraded in isolation.

This is a very pertinent point.

If the southside Green line were to be be replaced by a metro - though as I have pointed out above it doesn't seem to be necessary yet - any future southwest line would be faced with a dwindling area of the south-east/east-central area of the city to serve, as almost all other areas would be pretty well served by the DART or the metro.

It is clear that any metro in Dublin has to visit the south-east and/or south-central areas of the city centre to be effective. If you look at any European city you will see that this is so. (Orbital metros are something else, and Dublin is a long way off that stuff).

I hope that the authorities start work fairly soon on extension of the northside Green LUAS towards Finglas and beyond, though I fear that the routing of the proposed metro - just 400 metres or so from the recently built Green LUAS to/from Broombridge - will make this more difficult, as the metro will inevitably cannabilise that line and make it much more difficult to build an extension.

This is one of the reasons I strongly favour the metrolink going through Drumcondra, and connecting with both of the heavy rail lines there. It would probably be a bit more expensive and would cetainly require a bit of ingenuity, what with the canal and stuff, but it would leave Dublin with a rail line nicely placed almost halfway between the Connolly DART and the Green LUAS.

The current proposal would leave Dublin with a metro which is considerably further away from the DART line at Connolly - so they both have less efficient uptake of their catchment along the Royal Canal - and the near vicinity of the proposed metro in the Cabra area route will certainly make it more difficult to develop the Green line further towards Finglas and other areas in the northwest of the city.

While the Green line is there, and doesn't yet need to be replaced and can still deliver much more to the city as the Green Line, there is an opportunity to use the northside metrolink to deliver rail transport to two other areas of the southwest part of the southside.

In the mid 2040's or so, when the current Green Line on the southside may need to be upgraded, it could well make sense to connect the southside Green line - and perhaps a line along the N11 - with a line or lines emanating from the northside Green line.

It is certainly a worry that the current metrolink proposals on the northside would lead to cannabilisation of the Green line on the northside, but broadly a Rathfarnham route and Walkinstown route should be able to match what is coming from or going to Swords and the Airport.

When the Green line needs to be upgraded, in around the mid-2040's or so, it would very possibly make sense to build a connecting tunnel between the current southside Green line and whatever has been developed in the northwest over those years, in or around Broadstone, and perhaps have, or plan to have, an N11 route going in there as well.

I'd guess that the most logical place for an interchange between the Knocklyon and Walkinstown routes, on one line, with the Sandyford (and perhaps N11 routes), on a second, would be St. Stephen's Green.

In that way, you would have all metro routes going through the central business area. For many people this arragement would see a considerable reduction in journey times into/out of the city (90 minutes down to 20, for example), and they would have quick, direct access to the central business area of the city.

What's not to like?

Under the current metrolink proposal, there would be a very marginal improvement in journey times for many people on the southside, but many other southside journeys, along what is the current LUAS Green route, will actually be longer than they are now.

I struggle to see how the current proposals improve the city.

strassenwo!f

Dats me wrote: »

You dodged the question about making a submission to the NTA strategy? Really?

So you feel strongly enough about it to type the same thing out over and over for a year but only just as a proposal has been developed and it's too late to be implemented without a delay measured in years (note that there has been a year between publications on the already designed route).

No, I didn't dodge any question.

Marno said that he 'assumed' that I had made a submission. I can't really do anything with his assumptions.

Though I did notice post number 824 on this thread, which also deals with submissions.

Marno is free to assume what he likes.

If Marno wants to ask a question, then I am here, and I will do what I can to answer the question.

antoinolachtnai

strassenwo!f wrote: »

You may see it as 'pushing an agenda'; I prefer to see it as helping readers to become acquainted with options which may be available.

With regard to your option 1, It isn't clear that the Green line needs upgrading at this stage. Several other cities in Europe have shown, over many years, that it is perfectly possible to run safe tram sections with a throughput which is 50% (+) greater than what is currently being done on the off-street section of the Green line (between Peter Place and Sandyford).

It actually is pretty clear. You haven't demonstrated any meaningful alternative.

You keep repeating stuff that just isn't true or putting forward your opinions as fact.

You have put forward a reconfiguration of the Luas which would cost the guts of €200m and close down the luas line for months or years. It is just another form of upgrade. And it wouldn't produce as good a result as Metrolink.

strassenwo!f

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

It actually is pretty clear. You haven't demonstrated any meaningful alternative.

You keep repeating stuff that just isn't true or putting forward your opinions as fact.

You have put forward a reconfiguration of the Luas which would cost the guts of €200m and close down the luas line for months or years. It is just another form of upgrade. And it wouldn't produce as good a result as Metrolink.

Antoin, I don't see how the current LUAS would need to be reconfigured.

You'd demolish that house at the corner of Peter Place, then you'd build a LUAS line towards Baggot Street Bridge. It shouldn't present major engineering problems.

antoinolachtnai

strassenwo!f wrote: »

Antoin, I don't see how the current LUAS would need to be reconfigured.

You'd demolish that house at the corner of Peter Place, then you'd build a LUAS line towards Baggot Street Bridge. It shouldn't present major engineering problems.

To do this, you'd want to permanently close a couple of lanes of traffic. In a previous iteration you wanted to put a significant road underground to facilitate your luas.

What you are describing is a big, disruptive project which will deliver a low-frequency service that goes somewhere that nobody really wants a service to.

You would still have to bridge Dunville Avenue and at Sandyford.

It really isn't going to save anything over just doing Metrolink.

strassenwo!f

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

It actually is pretty clear. You haven't demonstrated any meaningful alternative.

You keep repeating stuff that just isn't true or putting forward your opinions as fact.

You have put forward a reconfiguration of the Luas which would cost the guts of €200m and close down the luas line for months or years. It is just another form of upgrade. And it wouldn't produce as good a result as Metrolink.

No, I don't think there'd be any reconguration requred. The Green luas would continue on doing what it does now, The spur would directly serve other areas.

Integrating the spur might take a weekend, at most, but then you're free to go, to use the throughput levels we are currently seeing in other European cities.

antoinolachtnai

You are going to have the luas open while you build a road tunnel under it?

You are going to largely close Adelaide Road to traffic on a permanent basis and it isn’t going to cause any disruption?

How are you going to bridge Dunville Avenue without at least weeks of disruption?

What capacity (in people per hour) do you think this will achieve?

What is your basis for believing this is achievable?

Dats me

strassenwo!f wrote: »

No, I didn't dodge any question.

Marno said that he 'assumed' that I had made a submission. I can't really do anything with his assumptions.

Though I did notice post number 824 on this thread, which also deals with submissions.

Marno is free to assume what he likes.

If Marno wants to ask a question, then I am here, and I will do what I can to answer the question.

I don't get the point of being so antagonistic and passive-aggressive?

CatInABox

Once again, your harping on about magical trams in other cities, despite the fact that experts have ruled out what he's talking about repeatedly. What goes on in other cities has no bearing on a tram system that has the significant difference of being possibly the highest capacity system in the world already.

There's no way to increase the frequency on the green line without major works.

salmocab

Strassenwolf. Why is the metro being 400 mts from the green line in the north city cannabalising the green line but everywhere else you tell us that lines should be in competition with each other?

marno21

strassenwo!f wrote: »

No, I didn't dodge any question.

Marno said that he 'assumed' that I had made a submission. I can't really do anything with his assumptions.

Though I did notice post number 824 on this thread, which also deals with submissions.

Marno is free to assume what he likes.

If Marno wants to ask a question, then I am here, and I will do what I can to answer the question.

It's normal behaviour for someone who invests this amount of time and effort into an idea that they have that they inform the people who may actually implement the idea, especially when they ask the public for ideas and suggestions.

marno21

I am giving up here to be honest. It's over 800 posts of round and round in circles and bizarre alternative facts with no end to the discussion.

Thankfully Metrolink will sort out the Green Line for the forseeable future and we can concentrate on sorting out other issues rather than having the Green Line being kicked down the road.

LeinsterDub

strassenwo!f wrote: »

In the mid 2040's or so, when the current Green Line on the southside may need to be upgraded, it could well make sense to connect the southside Green line - and perhaps a line along the N11 - with a line or lines emanating from the northside Green line

The NTA are saying late 2020's and they haven't factored in the recent removal of the height cap on building. So do pray tell does your figure come from?

strassenwo!f

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

To do this, you'd want to permanently close a couple of lanes of traffic. In a previous iteration you wanted to put a significant road underground to facilitate your luas.

I have suggested that a very simple road tunnel between Fitzwilliam Place and Harcourt Road or Harrington Street would reduce on-street road traffic in that area. This would facilitate construction of a LUAS spur towards Baggot Street Bridge. Apart from that, it would make the Fitzwilliam Place, Adelaide Road and Leeson Street junction more manageable anyway.

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

What you are describing is a big, disruptive project which will deliver a low-frequency service that goes somewhere that nobody really wants a service to.

No. There is considerable peak-time demand to get to areas like Baggot Street Upper and Lower, Haddington Road, Mount Street Upper, etc. Adding a LUAS service would make it easier to get to and from there. Building a Green line spur to there shouldn't cause any major disruption, and even less so if a road tunnel were in place to reduce LUAS/traffic conflicts.

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

You would still have to bridge Dunville Avenue and at Sandyford.

That shouldn't be necessary. As I posted earlier in the thread, proper tram and traffic management at those locations should still allow several hundred cars to cross at those junctions at peak times.

In cities which are currently achieving a throughput of 50% more (+) than Dublin's Green line trams are currently doing on the southside, they also (mostly) have interactions with car traffic, and their systems seem to work. I can see no reason why Dublin can't do the same. Of course it would make it even easier if those junctions were taken out of the equation, but I doubt if it is necessary to remove them.

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

It really isn't going to save anything over just doing Metrolink.

It seems unlikely that building a Green line spur to Baggot Street Bridge, and possibly a very simple road tunnel along Adelaide Road, would cost as much as tunnelling a metro all the way from the river to the Green Line tie-in, wherever that eventually turns out to be. But with the inevitable infrastructure cost-spiral that happens (and not just in Ireland) I suppose it is possible.

Even if it did end up costing as much, it would have delivered a number of new areas directly served by rail in South Dublin, and would have reduced journey times. Replacing the LUAS Green line wouldn't bring rail transport to any new areas of South Dublin, and won't, overall, reduce journey times on the current southside route.

strassenwo!f

LeinsterDub wrote: »

The NTA are saying late 2020's and they haven't factored in the recent removal of the height cap on building. So do pray tell does your figure come from?

I can well understand why the poster Marno21 is getting frustrated. For perhaps the fifth time on this thread, I quote the official figures:

metrolink.ie wrote:

During 2017, the numbers carried by the Luas Green Line in the busiest morning peak hour was approximately 5,000 passengers in the northbound direction. The introduction of new 55 metre length trams, and the extension of the existing trams, will increase the Green Line capacity up to approximately 8,000 passengers per direction per hour based on a three minute frequency.
...
Over the next two decades, passenger demand levels on the Green Line will reach approximately 11,000 passengers in the northbound direction, and expected to grow to approximately 13,000 passengers by 2057. This is beyond the carrying capacity of a standard Luas system and an upgrade to a metro system is required.

Thus, based on the above, a 55m tram is able to carry about 400 passengers, based on the current throughput of 20 trams per hour.

A throughput 50% greater than the current one, which is what several other European cities are doing, would equate to 12,000 passengers per hour.

Based on the above figures, it should be around 2047 when the Green line might need an upgrade.

It doesn't seem likely that the Green line will be upgraded to a metro all the way to Cherrywood, because much of it is on-street south of Sandyford. Removal of the height restrictions, and thus potentially colossal development of Cherrywood, would sound to me like it will eventually need its own metro line, and the N11 might be just such a route.

strassenwo!f

CatInABox wrote: »

Once again, your harping on about magical trams in other cities, despite the fact that experts have ruled out what he's talking about repeatedly. What goes on in other cities has no bearing on a tram system that has the significant difference of being possibly the highest capacity system in the world already.

They're not magical trams. They're operating, Monday to Friday.

What goes on in other cities should certainly have a bearing on what goes on in Dublin. What is Dublin supposed to do? Learn from the public transport systems in Limerick, or Galway, or Letterkenny?

The Green line tram is very possibly the highest capacity tram line in the world. It has no competition, on one side to the DART line, for the most part 3-5 kilometres, and on the other side, to the Red line, several more kilometres.

If you compare this with cities like Dresden, or Krakow, where the preciousness of their central cores pretty much prevents tunnelling, they have had to develop tram systems around that, and those systems carry way more passengers than Dublin's trams, per head of population and possibly also in total.

It is absolute nonsense to talk about Dublin having a tram 'system', when there are two tram lines in the city, with no interaction with each other apart from where they cross on O'Connell Street, and it is rubbish to be patting yourself on the back when the two cities mentioned have tramlines serving every corner. Dublin is presently light years away from having a rail-based system as good as Dresden or Krakow.

CatInABox wrote: »

There's no way to increase the frequency on the green line without major works.

No, it shouldn't require much. One solution, which I've already posted on this thread, would be to build a spur to Baggot Street Bridge. That shouldn't require major works.

LeinsterDub

Your misquoted lie

During 2017, the numbers carried by the Luas Green Line in the busiest morning peak hour was approximately 5,000 passengers in the northbound direction. The introduction of new 55 metre length trams, and the extension of the existing trams, will increase the Green Line capacity up to approximately 8,000 passengers per direction per hour based on a three minute frequency.
...
Over the next two decades, passenger demand levels on the Green Line will reach approximately 11,000 passengers in the northbound direction, and expected to grow to approximately 13,000 passengers by 2057. This is beyond the carrying capacity of a standard Luas system and an upgrade to a metro system is required

The actual quote.

Green Line Capacity
During 2017, the numbers carried by the Luas Green Line in the busiest morning peak hour
was approximately 5,000 passengers in the northbound direction. The introduction of new
55 metre length trams, and the extension of the existing trams, will increase the Green Line
capacity up to approximately 8,000 passengers per direction per hour based on a three
minute frequency.
The extension of the Green Line in December 2017 to include Luas Cross City has already
seen a significant increase in passenger numbers over the entire route of the Green Line. In
addition, as areas such as Cherrywood and Sandyford are further developed in the coming
years, the passenger demand on the Green Line will further increase. Analysis undertaken
with the NTA’s Regional Transport Model indicates that by 2027, the level of demand on the
line will exceed the carrying capacity of the Luas system, even with the introduction of longer
trams.
Over the next two decades, passenger demand levels on the Green Line will reach
approximately 11,000 passengers in the northbound direction, and expected to grow to
approximately 13,000 passengers by 2057. This is beyond the carrying capacity of a standard
Luas system and an upgrade to a metro system is required.

You sir are lying

marno21

I can't be the only one who finds the 2057 projection hopelessly optimistic

LeinsterDub

marno21 wrote: »

I can't be the only one who finds the 2057 projection hopelessly optimistic

The 2057 projection is the demand not the capacity. The capacity will be exceed by 2027

CatInABox

marno21 wrote: »

I can't be the only one who finds the 2057 projection hopelessly optimistic

I think the 2027 projection is hopelessly optimistic, never mind 57.

It's the kind of projection that said we'd get decades out of the M50, only to find it was beyond capacity on day one.

strassenwo!f

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Your misquoted lie


The actual quote.



You sir are lying

That is a serious slur.

I did not post anything which was incorrect. I did leave out the middle paragraph, because it didn't deal with figures, and I indicated this by using an ellipsis (...).

I expect an apology.

LeinsterDub

strassenwo!f wrote: »

That is a serious slur.

I did not post anything which was incorrect. I did leave out the middle paragraph, because it didn't deal with figures, and I indicated this by using an ellipsis (...).

I expect an apology.

Well you'll not be getting one. You've seriously misrepresented the facts in order to make make them fit your agenda. The middle bit is the key element of the quote and you well know it.

strassenwo!f

LeinsterDub wrote: »

Well you'll not be getting one. You've seriously misrepresented the facts in order to make make them fit your agenda. The middle bit is the key element of the quote and you well know it.

No. You originally asked where I was getting the figures from, and I provided you with the figures from metrolink. I didn't include the middle bit because it didn't include any figures.

At no stage did I lie, and it is appalling that I have been accused of doing so.