DART+ (DART Expansion)

DUB is already serving those passengers from Cork and Limerick, but they're arriving mostly by car.

The biggest problem with any "rail from Cork to DUB" proposal isn't in Dublin at all, it's at the far end. Your typical 0630 holiday flight out of Dublin means a 5:30 checkin at the latest, which means you'd need to be on this DART-to-the-airport by 4:50, which means you're train arrived at Heuston at 4:40, so it had to have left Cork at 3:00 (I'm assuming we'll have an electrified railway by now, capable of doing the trip in 100 minutes).

How viable do you imagine a daily 0300 Cork-Dublin train is, commercially?

The only realistic option is to take the train the night before, overnight in a reasonably priced hotel near to a metro stop (plenty of scope in the North City to build one), then take the 15-20 minute trip on the metro to the airport.

Once there's a rail link to the airport, there is no need for a second one. Want to give Belfast passengers a better rail link to the airport? Then build a Metro/DART line that provides the interchange between the Northern line and the existing Metro to the airport - there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

No, standard transport policy is to have intercity services terminate in the city which is the destination for the vast majority of passengers. Further onward travel in or around the city can be done on the local transport network, travel to other locations generally requires changing to another service to that location.

Do you have any examples of European cities where standard transport policy is to build a multi-billion € tunnel through the capital city to allow a few passengers to travel between regional cities more than 400km apart without changing?

A better way of doing that is to have inter-city rail bypass Dublin.

Inter-City could stop at Hazelhatch, west of Leixlip (Louisa Bridge), Dublin Airport and Rush&Lusk, with all of those becoming interchange for onward travel in Dublin. This would free up Dart West, Dart South-West and Dart North from those annoying inter-city trains, and would cost far less as no tunnelling required, except maybe at the airport.

A bit late for this, they already quad track most of the way to Hueston.

DART will already be completely segregated from Intercity services out of Heuston by the extension of the four tracking along the “Gullet”.

The vast majority of Intercity passengers aren’t going to/from the airport but rather the city centre or points accessible from it.

I’m not sure that turfing the majority of people off out in the sticks as you’re suggesting would be a positive change.

With the additional orbital bus routes being delivered through BusConnects, both Heuston and Connolly will have more direct connections around the city.

They all recently built mainline tunnels under the capital to bypass the city in order to link much smaller cities which have little travel between them? I'll go with KrisW1001's well researched post and say what you suggest isn't standard transport policy.

Terminal capacity isn't that big an issue in Dublin and wouldn't be an issue if the DART+ Tunnel was built. With DART trains bypassing Heuston and Connolly, both would have plenty of capacity. Add to that the new Spencer Dock station.

Rather than building a heavy rail mainline tunnel from west of Heuston to north of the airport, it would be cheaper to extend the DART+ Tunnel further north. Connect back to the existing line around Clongriffin, that effectively quadtracks the Northern Line. Not that I think that will happen, just pointing out that there are options to achieve what you want at much less cost. It wouldn't connect directly to the airport but that isn't worth the enormous cost involved.

It's now four weeks since the RO was granted for Dart+ West.

Has there been any actual statement from IE about it, or the impact of the non-approval of the depot? Their website does not seem to have any mention of it.

Will work go ahead on DART West while they try to sort a new depot?

yes

yes a redesign in the same location is possible.

Just a thought: the AIRR proposed both a new inter-city link between Clongriffin and Drogheda, and a (presumably DART) spur from Clongriffin to Dublin Airport. I think everyone agrees that the Clongriffin-Drogheda link is worth doing, but the Airport DART spur is seen as a bit of a waste of money.

So, as an alternative proposal, assuming that the Drogheda line will need to get around or through Swords anyway, why not drop the Airport spur, and instead, four-track the Clongriffin-Drogheda link as far as Swords - two fast tracks for inter-city, and two slow tracks for DART. Then you could add DART services between one of the three Swords Metro stops and the DART Northern line. A mainline station for Swords at that point would also give the option of changing between DART, mainline or Metro services, and would be very useful as a transport hub an area that’s expected to account for most of Co. Dublin’s future population growth. Further in the future, additional DART tracks could be added to the corridor beyond Swords (it would be madness to not take enough land for four tracks on any new rail alignment). This work could be done ahead of development (for once!) as a North-western complement to any extension of Metro North to the North.

As a bonus, Belfast people will get a nice connection to Dublin Airport by changing to Metro at Swords, just as passengers from other directions will be able to change at Tara or Glasnevin.

Fantastic to see DART SW completed years ahead of schedule!! 🫡

https://m.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/dublin-news/new-dart-station-in-south-dublin-finally-opens-after-15-years/a113864587.html

I’m not sure how they’ll get that mainline past Swords either - it seems crazy not to have any stop for Swords when building a brand new rail alignment so close to it. I don’t see a line following M1 here, but rather going West of Swords on a more direct route. At that trajectory, Fosterstown would be within distance. From there, to get to Drogheda, you wouldn’t follow the course of M1, but take a more direct NNW route (M1 runs East of Swords, strikes North until Stamullen, then turns Northwest for Drogheda).

As for four-tracking. I only mean to secure the land required for expansion where there's a possibility of service extension - the land is the cheapest part of a railway build, but it’s the hardest thing to acquire afterwards.. Point taken about Northwest/Border, but there I think it would be prudent to buy the width to accommodate a two-track alignment, even if only one track is built - basically, allow space for the next level of capacity. Drogheda-Clongriffen is one corridor where you’d expect more development over the next 50 years, and over that timescale it could justify a DART service parallel to the existing Northern one.

Just to second @Bsharp ’s post: In a previous job, our company was working on an medium-size infrastructure/services project for a government agency (not in Ireland). We knew our tender had been accepted months before any public announcement was made. After the tender acceptance, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on their side as various politicians had to sign various bits of paper to release the funding that would pay us - it was only after that was done that they made it public that the process was complete and we had won the contract. Legally, though, once a tender offer is officially accepted, there is a contract in place, so we were able to get going pretty quickly after the award.

? That's exactly my point.

If anything is happening, it's all completely behind closed doors and the general public - who are paying for this - have no idea what is going on. That isn't acceptable in my book.

As far as I can see, neither the IE nor Dart+ websites even make mention of the RO being granted, which is absolutely bizarre.

The Irish Times printing this as if it were news. This has been known for some time. The public interest is in maximising the use of the available network, and absent big improvements to track capacity, a curtailment of Howth branch direct service is sadly inevitable.

You could have a few morning peak trains using Clongriffin as a turnback, which would alleviate overcrowding at Howth Junction.

The figures quoted are referring to potential line capacity - those frequencies may not apply until later, but the detailed scheduling beyond this has not been done yet.

More importantly, the figure of 20 and 30 trains refers to the full 3 hour peak period in the morning inbound.

It isn't per hour.

Since the recent timetable change, between 07:00 and 10:00 through Malahide southbound there are:

• 9 DART paths
• 9 Outer Suburban paths
• 3 Enterprise paths