Luas Finglas

so the highest frequency would be on the central section with the most on-street running and junctions. sounds about right...

Having a turnback at Charlemont makes zero sense. Almost nobody gets the Luas to go to Charlemont.

I must be imagining the large numbers that get on and off there so.

Remember that people would connect with Metrolink at Charlemont.

You cannot run the full planned frequency any further north of Charlemont - it’s just not physically possible with three road crossings between there and St. Stephen’s Green all of which will have high numbers of buses passing across them.

Anyone working in grand canal Dock area will get off there and take a Dublin bike up along the greenway to their work. Much handier than going to Stephens green and walking to a connecting bus.

It's more for operational reasons though, there's no capacity North of Charlemont for more frequent trams. Additional trams added to the green line will have to terminate at Charlemont. This is what happens when youndepent on on-street trams for high capacity distant suburb to centre travel. The DART plan of 1975 called for a fully segregated electrified dart line along that alignment and here we are in 2021 with 55m trams going up the Dublin mountains.

It doesn't "cut off" anything further north, it just means waiting for another Luas or using another mode of transport. It is less than ideal and disappointing that that will be the case but there are no other options. Hopefully the experience of this suboptimal situation will focus minds that Luas is not enough for the Green Line and that it will have to be upgraded to Metro. Some people will never come round but a dose of this reality will lead to the majority accepting that the short term pain of tying in is worth the long term gain of having Metrolink run from Swords to Sandyford.

Well there is another alternative: they could look at feeding northbound trams at Charlemont to another cross city route via some alternative city-centre routing. What's clear from Luas cross city is that one central connection is not enough, so while Metrolink to Charlemont will alleviate passenger demand on the Luas network, it won't actually alleviate capacity constraints on the Luas network itself (simply because it is not part of the Luas network). Of course, it was always inevitable that more cross city Luas lines would be needed, especially without the Green line south of Charlemont being integrated as part of Metrolink. It's a problem of growth that's new to Dublin but common to other cities, Manchester being the most obvious and comparable example.

Only additional trams would terminate there though the existing service could continue northwards. There's no possibility of increasing capacity further north

None of which are even remotely on the planning radar.

Well with respect what relevance has it to a discussion about the Luas extension to Finglas?

It is just getting crayons out for the sake of it.

There is nothing like that remotely likely to happen in the next 20 years.

Does anyone else thinks it's a missed opportunity to have a LUAS stop at the northern side of Tolka Valley Park? Under the current proposals, it's a 5-10 minute walk from the park to a stop. Although this isn't far, I think it's a missed opportunity to encourage greater public use of the park and discourage car use.

Yeah for sure I get that. Though PT is not just getting people to and from work at rush hour. We should fully utilize all amenities in the area, bringing people to the park during the day, sunny evenings and on weekends.

There are actually very few parks on the whole length of the line, arguably only Stephen's Green and Iveagh Gardens.

I would argue this is justification enough to have a stop at the northern side of Tolka Valley Park. Even with an extra stop here, the distance between stops is similar to most of the line south of Cabra.

By the looks of it, the removal of the cycle route was requested last minute by the NTA