New bridge across river Liffey planned by Dublin Port

it's an expansion of the container port which is already on the Southside. Implication is that the access will be via the new bridge and the tunnel. Most of the traffic for the existing container port uses the Eastlink and the tunnel.

EDIT - I missed the bit about a new RO-RO terminal on the southern side, but the new bridge will effectively contain that traffic within the port until it hits the tunnel. If anything it will be an improvement for the local communities as they'll see a reduction in trucks using the Eastlink.

At the moment there are 2 ports and trucks going between them are using the Eastlink and the public roads around there. This new bridge will effectively connect the 2 parts of the port together internally.

Council will lose a few quid on the Eastlink toll won't they?

Playing worlds smallest voilin

Their plans are not very detailed at the moment. The new bridge is not wide enough for segregated Luas and road traffic lanes. Does that mean a Luas extension to Ringsend will share the bridge with port traffic?

More Detail on the 3FM project.

3.3m is not wide enough for "future LUAS", right? TII's own documents say 6.6m:

I cant see this working out as a plan in 2016 to spend €50 million to by pass the Merrion Gates Dart rail line level crossing never got off the ground.

Too many objections from NIMBYS in Sandymount, Dublin 4. Meanwhile gates are still being hit by trucks, cars etc on a weekly basis.

I cant see how the Sandymount residents will allow this planned new link bridge to go ahead.

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/herald/news/first-look-at-50m-plan-for-merrion-gates-bottleneck-35164878.html

I know where it is going, I m just saying take a look at the SAMRA part of this RTE report, they are objecting already, read it.

https://www.innovision.ie/dublinport3fm

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/0321/1364338-dublin-port-opens-consultation-on-port-masterplan/

Hmnn, last time I checked, Sandymount and Merrion wasn't exactly 'near'.

Hopefully their objections will be given the short shrift they deserve and they can refocus on matters more local to them.

The computer generated view across the beach from Sandymount shows no impact that I can see, but who would want to lose their view of an old power station, one of the largest sewage works in Europe and an incinerator. That vista might be ruined if the three high stacks of containers placed in front of them do get stacked higher in time.

for reference, this is the current view from Sandymount beach which is a world heritage site/ unspoilt vista or something.

If I amnt mistaken, the most of the development will happen behind those trees on the left, if not more to the left again towards Ringsend/ Eastlink Bridge - so their magical view should remain fairly much the same.

it's not a world heritage site. The bay is a protected area but none of this planned development is in the bay itself and as pointed out above, the view across the bay already has a filthy 1960s power-plant in it & most Dubliners would lynch you if you tried to demolish it.

On a related note, I was in London recently and visited the Tower of London. I was amused that you can see the Shard (tallest skyscraper in Western Europe) from pretty much every part of the Tower, along with a load of other skyscrapers. It doesn't detract at all from the experience of visiting it. Meanwhile in Dublin you can't build a 10 storey building because it might be visible from one of our (somewhat overrated) Georgian streets.

I'm open to correction but I think (other than Tara Mines) containers are the only rail-freight flow left in Ireland? It's a consultation and Ryan's general point is that the plan make no allowance for Ireland's climate targets and is entirely based on road freight.

A huge amount of the freight that comes into Dublin is destined for the Dublin region (which is one of the reasons why proposals to move the port to Rosslare or wherever are dubious) but there is probably some potential for moving some of the material destined for regional locations onto rail.

All of what you say about rail freight is technically true, but on the other hand Irish Rail is planning to build a new rail freight hub in Castlebar, a small town of 12,000 people with just a handful of industrial locations nearby. If you look at it that way, there must be significant scope to expand rail freight at Dublin Port.

To continue the Mayo example, correct me if I'm wrong, but Ballina, a small town, has more container rail freight traffic than Dublin Port. So again, that suggests significant potential for expansion at Dublin Port.

Bulk liquids also travel with the containers. And there’s a timber train from the west as well.

I'm sure the data is available to various government departments to answer these questions. There really needs to be an assessment of the data done to assess the viability of rail freight.

I can't see for sure but I would assume most containers go to a central distribution point to be opened and contents removed. We are seeing more and more goods going from a central depot direct to the customer. This is obviously the case for online retailers but also some types of shops no longer hold stock and purchased items are delivered to the customer, e.g. large electrical goods. Argos is gone here now and scaled back in UK, that's because holding stock at many locations doesn't work v large centralised storage and distrubute from there. For bulk delivery of goods to the central distribution point, it needs to be located on the rail network but also with good access to the road network for onward delivery of individual orders.

If you take all of the containers which arrive in Dublin on a particular day, then look at those which are going outside Dublin as the sealed container, i.e. a supposedly suitable for rail transport. How many trains would have to carry them? I mean, you could run a train to Cork and drop off containers along the way (ignoring for now the operatioal difficulties this would cause, the handling facilities required, etc.) but is there enough containers to justify running that train? Same goes for trains to Limerick, Galway, Mayo, etc. It's all well and good saying there are lots of containers but not much good if they have to be split across multiple trains such that all struggle to cover the cost of running the train.

You'd likely have to have the train(s) available to run each day even if they are not full to break even point, customers are not going to switch to rail if the operator is doing things to suit themselves at the expense of the customer. Customers will expect their containers delivered when they requested them, they won't accept their container arriving a day later because there wasn't enough other containers that day to justify running the train.

that's true, but we're signed up to global agreements which are codified into Irish law. The port company can't just ignore them (and in their response to Ryan they claim that they have taken them into account).

While it makes for poor reading, you have also missed a few key points..

1) the CSO figures includes some business that will never be transport by rail again, like Milk from farm to dairy, cattle from farm to Mart etc..

2) Your figures are in tonnes, but rail tends to do longer journeys than road(both in Ireland and Internationally), laden tonne/kms would be a more accurate measure

3) the rail figure does NOT include Bord na Mona and the other bog railways, which until 4-5 years ago move large tonnages by rail every year from bogs to Power Plants, briquette factories and tipplers.