Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299793#Comment_122299793

well I think your never gonna change the NIMBY culture tbh.
They just have to be taken out of the equation.

Geuze

Metrolink will be 18.8km with 16 stations.

An extension to metro line 14 opened this month in Paris.

• 15.7 km / 9.8 miles
• 8 new stations
• 1 million pax per day
• Similar to our plam: fully driverless trains with frequencies up to 85 seconds
• 6 years of construction

Cost: €2.8 billion (€178M per km) (no cost overrun)

Given that stations are expensive, we should be able to do it for 5bn - 6bn?

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122300335#Comment_122300335

Construction started in 2014, was delayed by COVID and water table issues, and opened this year.

If you add inflation of 3% to 6% per year, you get to the same cost estimate of Dublin's MetroLink (7 to 12B).

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122300335#Comment_122300335

How long was it in planning?

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299611#Comment_122299611

Of course. Should have said a glut of senior planners moved.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, it makes sense for jobs to open in councils and that to be a career route for people. The problem is that when it all happens at once instead of in a consistent, controlled way. It's a huge problem when you have long hiring freezes, I think they are almost always a terrible idea. But politics aside, it takes a long time to "recover" from them - it is just not something you can do overnight and that is the position we find ourselves in at the moment.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122299793#Comment_122299793

Ultimately the entire planning system is clearly not fit for purpose and well-intentioned laws and regulations are merely abused by nimbys to over-litigate every single tiny development. It is not sustainable.

cgcsb

agreed, the whole planning system needs to be torn down and replaced with a simplified continental approach. We now have judges with no education in planning and a lot of ego basically making planning decisions in contravention of policy and in contravention of the planning boards decision.

KrisW1001

We don't.

We have judges making decisions about whether the actions of ABP, or any other government body, complied with Irish law. That's what a judicial review is, it's very limited in scope, and it can only be the job of the judiciary - I'd rather not have the government deciding on whether or not the government is acting lawfully.

More resources for ABP to prevent mistakes, and the proposed small changes to the planning laws are all that's needed. Like all process improvements, it will take time to see things getting better: you can't magically step up capacity in any organisation overnight.

We cannot adopt a "continental approach". First, because there is no such thing : each European country had its own procedures; and second, even if there were one model, those countries operate under a different, and incompatible, legal system to ours.

The planning process worked fine in the 2000s when we had money to properly fund ABP, our delays now are a result of the cubacks in the 2010s.

Sierra Oscar

Great to see some positive news such as this.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/chief-executive-of-new-zealands-largest-transport-project-resigns-to-lead-dublins-metrolink/a1871446186.html

loco_scolo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122300956#Comment_122300956

Unfortunately I don't think it's as simple as "hire some more people to prevent mistakes". We have a growing culture of NIMBYism, supported by a legal system who make a tonne of money objecting to anything and everything. It wasn't like this in the 2000s.

It's not so simple as ABP preventing mistakes - not when others are spending huge resources to find "mistakes" or oversights, or decisions that failed to consider section 435, clause 205, subsection 17.22c, or some obscure reference to an endangered moth no one has ever heard of.

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122301688#Comment_122301688

A lot of that stems from the governments decisions to put strict time limits on SHD applications, placing no limits on the number of SHD applications that could be made and not giving extra funding to grow AbP to handle all the extra work. It was inevitable that mistakes would be made and a cottage industry would spring up to find and exploit those mistakes in judicial reviews. It was almost a no brainier to commit money to a JR because you were almost guaranteed to get it back when you win.

Hopefully now that things have changed and calmed down a little, AbP will make fewer procedural mistakes that can be exploited so NIMBYs will be less likely to take on JRs because the chance of losing their money will be higher.

Zebra3

Go away money becoming a big issue too and no doubt plenty of objectors (rightly or wrongly) smell it.

IT had a story the other day about locals who objected and got go away money and other locals who didn’t. The headline kinda implied that one lot were smarter than the other.

Moral of the story: object to everything.

ArcadiaJunction

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122283197#Comment_122283197

That's also the FF, FG, Lab, SD, Greens, PBP way too.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122303136#Comment_122303136

No. It's none of their "way". Every party you list has either proposed Metrolink or publicly supports it (Labour, PBP and SD have all berated the government about the delays). SF too.

The only ones against it are a small number of professional contrarians in rural constituencies, and they change their mind every time they listen to the local radio phone-in.

Any chance we can leave the political doomsaying off this thread and talk about the actual project..?

Rodonmac

fwiw I think what's required is a Planning Appeals Tribunal (PAT). Each appeals case would be decided by a panel comprising three individuals - a planner, a lawyer and a developer. All appeals on a single planning application would be held together, need not have an oral hearing, and could make summary decisions. It would have two advantages:

1.a bad-faith objector would have to do more than lodge an objection seeking 'go away' money. They would also need to be prepared to follow that through to making an appeal and presenting their case. (Even then they could have summary judgment against them)

2. as quasi-judicial proceedings, PAT's decisions would not be susceptible to judicial review, and could only be appealed to the High Court on a point of law (i.e. on the grounds that the Tribunal had misunderstood the law or applied it incorrectly).

Then (rump) ABP's role could be confined to recommending changes to strategic infrastructure projects but its decisions would be non-binding and subject to appeal to the PAT.

KrisW1001

Bad-faith objectors looking for go-away money are a problem with private planning, not large infrastructure projects. In large infrastructure projects, the bad-faith objectors turn up at every meeting anyway, and then mount a legal challenge once the planning is granted.

In your part 2, you seem to misunderstand what a Judicial Review is. In the current situation, JRs can only be brought on points of law - they are not appeals. Putting another body in the way between planning grant and JR would just lengthen that process: a NIMBY group would drag out the procedures of your PAT, and then launch a JR.

Basically, the problem with vexatious respondents is that they are just as happy to delay a project as long as possible, in the hope that funding dries up. Giving them another place to call in just helps them.

The proposals already put forward for the next Planning Act are better, in that they limit the scope of people who can appeal against planning to those who would be directly affected, or members of existing civil-society groups whose remit would cover the project. That won’t stop FIE and company, but it will stop the phoney “Nxx Alternative Campaign” or “XYZ Action group” objections that are secretly bankrolled by property owners whose potential future profits will be negatively affected by the new infrastructure.

Pete_Cavan

There is already a Planning delays to infrastructure thread, most of the last odzen posts should be there.

That thread should probably be sticky-ed at this stage as unfortunately tapping a sign doesn't work on the Internet.