DART underground - options

No doubt the report recommends whatever outcome whoever commissioned it wanted...

I think that a few years after DART+ has been completed (which is many years away yet), the Business Case for a tunnel will be extremely strong. There is huge unmet demand for massive transport which DART+ will tap into and that demand will only grow, particularly with the improved journey times and new destinations opened up by Metrolink and BusConnects.

DU was always doomed to fail because it tried to do too much all at once. With the existing lines upgraded and the rolling stock available, the case for the tunnel to link everything up becomes very strong.

DART+ took a pragmatic approach and I'd say the case for the tunnel was intentionally downplayed. This made the €1bn investment in DART+ more palatable and they could claim to be maximising investment already made in the PPT. The same pragmatic approach was taken with not extending Metrolink along the Luas Green line, the Businnss Case for something that was going to kill the project was conveniently not strong enough. After DART+ has been completed, the way to maximise that investment is to allow through running.

We will also be limited in increasing intercity services if DARTs are taking up terminating capacity, there is no point in many of the investments proposed in the AIRR if there is nowhere for these trains to go in Dublin.

Sorry what is there to support DU having a 'weak CBA'? The fact is that the CBA for DU is positive. The only reason the modeling for DU does not envision it being required in the lifetime of the current transport strategy for the city is because the NTA changed the long term demand assumptions to account for changed travel patterns as a result of the pandemic ...but those assumptions are already beginning to look totally dated.

Odd... you seem to have stopped reading before I used Munich as my example. Let's try again: That city's population was about 1.1 million in 1965 when the east-west S-Bahn tunnel was signed off. That's very much comparable to Dublin today. At the same time, Munich also commenced the building of a three-tunnel metro under the city. Copenhagen remains the same size as Dublin, and is probably the closest model for Dublin in Europe, as it has the same kind of geographic limits. And still, it has a heavy-rail commuter system that runs through the city, and a Metro.

Neither of those systems carry inter-city trains, by the way. They are used solely for higher capacity commuter rail - DART services, effectively. Unless IE basically rebuilds it, low running-speeds make Phoenix Park Tunnel capacity constrained from the get-go, and fairly soon (<10 years) we'll end up having to look at a better solution anyway.

An inter-city link between the lines radiating from Dublin is also needed, but it doesn't have to be in the city, it doesn't have to be underground, so it is not necessarily DART Underground.

If there were such an inter-city tunnel, it probably should be a wholly underground tunnel with no intermediate stops - any intermediate station would become "Dublin Central" simply by existing, and there just isn't the amount of space needed to properly create a station of the necessary capacity. The original plan for DU was to give Connolly and the Loop Line over to commuter rail entirely, and bring inter-city services through the higher-capacity Docklands station - it wasn't a bad idea, but it does seem that later developments at the site will now prevent that.

Yes - it's a high capacity link, but every single S-Bahn service has to traverse it, and the intermediate stops are, in hindsight, too close together, especially the four central ones (Hauptbahnhof, Karlsplatz, Mairienplatz, Isartor) which are only 700 metres apart on average - you can often walk between any two neighbouring stations along here in the same time it would take to go down, wait for a train and come back up again.

Would Oslo be a good comparison? Similar population to Dublin, maybe geographically it's shape makes it better suited to public transport, but two major railway tunnels though the city. The Oslo Tunnel, a 3km heavy rail tunnel bringing regional trains to the central station and serving Nationaltheatret with an underground station in what I'd consider the dead centre of Oslo. Then there's the T Bane common tunnel, a 7km tunnel that is used by all 6 lines of the metro.

Oslo has a population of around 700,000 in the city proper maybe double that in the surrounding area.

My heart knows that DART Underground would be a huge success, my head wants more numbers.

There is nothing unique about Ireland. Our leaders are no more inept or competent than our peer countries. One thing I do think is different is that we seem to be so afraid to waste money on building something that we spend 10 times as long to get the design "perfect", but still find it doesn't work when we put a shovel in the ground.

I've watched other countries build something then tear it down and rebuild within a couple of decades when it was shown to not be working. We're still talking about it.

Neither Amsterdam or Copenhagen have much or any underground heavy rail tunnels because they have the necessary above ground infrastructure. Dublin needs a tunnel to replicate what they already had.

You've obviously never travelled on a bus between Dublin and Belfast. Bus Eireann's national route network converges on Dublin Airport for a reason. And once Metro is built, the airport would be as convenient for the city centre as Heuston (if not more so). You only need to look at passenger numbers to the airport to understand how much sense this would make. It would also mean Cork-bound services and Belfast-bound services are served from the same station. Much of the land needed to create such a path would be greenfield.

The sole reason that there is no PPT service at weekends is the shortage of train drivers. This is currently being addressed in the training programme, but there is still a backlog caused by the long internal dispute and the suspension of in-cab training during Covid. Hence they have been playing catch-up ever since and are now starting to increase the numbers.

They are also increasing the throughout of trainees as I understand it from this year so that will help.

Remember though that it takes over a year to train a new driver, so expecting rapid change isn’t realistic. Incremental service increases are happening as new drivers become available across the network.

Clearly a further increase in training throughput will be needed after DART+ gets the railway order.

I think that conflating this specific issue with the delays in the planning process really is a red herring.

No it’s not an excuse. It’s a fact.

You can’t just magic train drivers out of thin air.

It takes over a year to fully train a new train driver - it’s not a job that people can walk into, or indeed one which you can address shortfalls quickly, due to the rigorous training requirements.

Between Covid (due to social distancing, no in-cab training could happen), and a lengthy dispute between the unions and the previous CEO there was nearly a two year period of no new drivers being passed out. Consequently they’ve been playing catch-up on that for some time now.

Since training resumed post-Covid, they have been pretty much just filling in the vacancies that arose over the last number of years either through drivers retiring or some of the external recruits leaving when they found the job wasn’t for them.

But I believe that they are now finally starting to expand the numbers of drivers - and we should see some improved schedules from the December timetable change and then incremental increases during 2024 as more drivers pass out.

As I said above, the numbers that can go through the training school are I understand being expanded as well.

The situation at the railway company is a completely different situation to the bus companies - there are no shortage of applicants. It’s just a long process to train a new driver.

To be fair there have been service improvements in the last twelve months - extra services to/from Westport, the evening service to/from Gorey, extra services during the day between Heuston and Newbridge.

They are adding the services as and when they have drivers available to drive them.

Agree, shortage of drivers is only really an acceptable reason for as long as it takes to recruit new drivers. Once that time has elapsed, it's actually not a labour shortage issue.

I don't know if it's changed since Broombridge LUAS opened but for many years the morning service from Maynooth to Bray was the busiest service on the line.

I had a look at Jacobs report and have to say I really liked the idea of Heuston-Christchurch-St Patrick’s Cathedral-Charlemount-Grand Canal Dock-Docklands alignment (S01 R02).

Whilst Pearse is a more natural location, GCD is not bad. It would provide a lot of utility to the city in terms of linking the West of the city to core business areas and amenities such as as the Aviva and Grand Canal Theatre. And while you lose out on the direct Trinity connection that you get at Pearse, people can connect with the Green Line or Metro at Charlemount to get down to that part of the city core.

The south west of the city both lacks a line within the core and closer to the canal that links to the centre and the east. This arguably would tick off both boxes.

For all the talk on if Dublin can handle this line, I think there is a real failure of imagination. The population within the canals is about to pop by 20% in the next 2-3 years. The shear amount of development makes this inevitable.

I could live with either a heavy rail Canal corridor with a LUAS in the south inner core connecting Dame Street-Dublin Castle-Christchurch or the more limited DART Underground (Heuston-Christchurch-Tara-Docklands) and a LUAS along the canal.

My fear with the cheaper option is that it doesn’t sell. The problem with DU has always been that Irish Rail didn’t know how to sell it to the public. My fear with the other alignment is the “cost”- as for whatever reason despite the fact that we are awash with money that the country has no confidence in itself to deliver more complex projects anymore.