DART underground - options

There has to be a balance to all of that. Ireland has no culture of apartment living, with 89% of people still living in houses, the highest level in the EU, 10% ahead of The Netherlands (79%) and comparing to 52% across the entire EU. It is so ingrained in the national psyche, we can't hope to stop it. There will always be a huge demand for housing and good luck banning new houses!! Simply not going to happen.

Without question, Dublin City, its suburbs and commuter towns are becoming denser. You can really appreciate this if you fly into Dublin Airport and get a view south towards the city, or drive into the city from the M4, M7 or traverse the M50. There will always be huge demand for housing, but thankfully this is being supplemented by increased apartment construction.

Notably, The Netherlands has a population of 18m in an area smaller than Leinster+Munster and still manages to produce an enormous amount of food and produce, and maintain 20% natural land (forest, rivers etc).

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/housing-2023

EXACTLY!

The biggest problem and turn off for people living in apartments is the following:
It's nearly the same price for a 2 bed apartment as it is a 3 bed Semi-D, plus you have management fees on top.
You've less space outside and inside, and you're on top of your neighbors. Storage is a problem too. (No attic). Not to mention you electricity bills are higher (gas bill is lower mind you). You've only one parking spot, and generally speaking it's not secure. People leaving their bulky items like buggys and bicycles and also rubbish in the common areas (landings). And if you have asshole neighbors you're in real trouble.

Like for that trade off, I'd be wanting a similar sized apartment at half the price of what a 3 bed semi-D would be, then maybe I'd consider it.

Until apartment living changes, the expectation is that there will be some sort of public transport to and from the city. It was like that in the 90's when people moved out to Enfield, Naas, and Balbriggan etc, and its still like that now 30 years later.

As I said I've done apartment living, (I used to live in Spencer Dock, and that's a good setup). Its ok for someone living on their own, but that's about it. Indeed many of the non Irish people I work with grew up in apartments, but bought houses after living in apartments here because apartment living here is not even remotely what it's like in the EU.

The solution to all this is to fix apartment living and densify the city. It isn't to spend billions on public transport and spew hundreds of thousands of rubbish semi-d's spread out over all of Leinster!

There is no proposal to spend billions on public transport and spew hundreds of thousands of rubbish semi-d's spread out over all of Leinster. The proposal is to spend billions on public transport to bring it in line with what is required in a large European city.

There are several well populated towns around Leinster and beyond and these are increasing in population through densification and planned expansion. While Dublin needs to densify further, that is only part of the solution. Populations will continue to grow away from the city and we need adequate public transport to service that.

Dublin isn't overcrowded.

There's no question IMHO that the remoteness of Heuston is a major problem. Yes, the Luas helps, but it's not fast and is little help if your destination is on the southside. Likewise the post-2016 services to Pearse/Connolly via the PPT are good, but again if you're going to the Southside you have to spend ~half an hour or more going around city, including crossing the Liffey twice. The same is true of airport travel: with the Metro, extending the DART to St. Stephens Green would give everyone out at least as far as Hazelhatch the option of a 1-transfer journey to the Airport.

Building some kind of Dart Underground as proposed IMHO is a no-brainer, though as two posters above me demonstrate, the question would be how best to use the newly improved Kildare line.

Dublin is not big enough to warrant a "Crossrail" sized rail tunnel.

Why build 200m full-sized mainline stations under the city at massive cost and disruption when 90m metro-sized stations would do the job just as well for a fraction of the cost. All you need is to make it Irish gauge to connect to the mainlines.

Only downside there is no interoperability with Metrolink 1 but that's the trade off. That is actually plausible, DU isn't (and it never was).

I would like to think the TII, privately*, have a list of 'next' projects that they can move on once the current ones are in progress.

Having a pipeline that a skilled workforce can move onto in sequence would be ideal. We have years of infrastructure to catch up and can't afford to see those skills move abroad as they have nothing to work on.

• I say privately as they have been clever with DART+, breaking it small projects so one issue doesn't bog the whole thing down. Doing the same with DART underground or another Metro line would keep the 'not here' brigade in the dark until the benefits these projects bring are self evident.