Dublin - Metrolink (Swords to Charlemont only)

People are defending it on solid and substantial grounds. McDowell is primarily complaining about the cost, and the cost he's primarily complaining about is incorrect, being a 95th percentile worst case, nowhere close to the actual construction estimates.

In addition there is zero evidence that cancelling the project/delaying the project for a review of costs, will do anything but push the costs up as construction costs generally continue to rise year on year, not limited to this project.

One could reasonably expect a journalist to research the topic they plan to speak about at least a little bit, so two options present themselves, either Mr McDowell hasn't properly researched the Metrolink and therefore his opinion on costs should be discarded and is misinformation as it is based on incorrect assumptions regarding its cost and also about the existing economic conditions that would mean any delays simply exacerbate the cost of the project.

Or alternatively one could take into account the reporters historical public record with regard to public transport generally and take the view that he is actually a capable journalist who is deliberately misrepresenting the facts for his own ends as he has a history of opposing the "currently in progress major public transport project" in favour of the "not currently in progress, and therefore not likely to be in progress for at least a decade, at which point I'll turn around and oppose it, project"

But hes not asking questions based in fact, like another poster mentioned hes phrasing metrolink as solely an airport link which is completely misleading, he is also claiming absolutely it will cost 20+ billion while that is a worst case scenario. Finally he has not once publicly admitted to his own personal bias against it ie his rental property, by constantly and intentionally omitting that key detail his entire motive for being against it should be brought into question.

One of his key reasons he claims for being against is it will only directly serve a small portion of the city and that is unfair to everyone else. This is EXACTLY the same reason he was against the LUAS for which his then solution was to instead build a metro….. yet now hes against the metro and wants more light rail….. see the pattern?

If only he did ask serious questions instead of lying.

I think we have substantial volumes of documentation prepared by the NTA and presented to ABP to support the case for Metrolink on one side. On the other, despite some good in his past, we have an old man shouting at the moon waving a newspaper article.

That just about sums it up.

McDowell is a barrister. He knows very well how to frame an argument. There’s a few tricks that he relies on:

• Use Scary Numbers. Nobody can dispute that the number is stated in a report, but few will go back and read it, or have the necessary knowledge to interpret what it actually means. By the way, this one works spectacularly well against other barristers, who have to be the most innumerate group of people I’ve ever met (I am not joking here: calculators came out at a hearing when it was proposed that a €320,000 asset was to be split equally).
• Keep repeating a strawman argument until people start to believe it’s the real issue, then attack it. Here, it’s the idea that we’re spending a fortune on an city-centre to airport link, which is stupid when there’s a perfectly good coach service via the Dublin Tunnel if that’s what you wanted. Ignore the truth: that Metro is primarily being built to solving Dublin’s growth challenges for the next 30-50 years by allowing sustainable development of Swords and North County Dublin.
• Why eat today when there’ll be jam tomorrow? No point in doing Luas when we’ll have a Metro soon. No point in doing Metro when Luas expansion could get to the airport (and remember, the only point was to get to the airport, right?). While we wait for that Next Big Thing, we’ve nothing, but I’m sure that wasn’t the point… right?
• Give me perfection or give me nothing. You know the old saying: The best time to plant a tree was fifty years ago, so there’s no point planting one now. The cost is only getting higher the longer we delay this project; by rights we should have done this a decade ago (although try find any evidence of McDowell supporting the thing a decade ago), so surely there’s no point in doing it now.

On your last point specifically ironically McDowell did actually support a Metro when he was arguing against the Luas way back under the same argument hes using against the metro now that it will only serve some of the population of Dublin and that's not fair. Now he has switched to supporting more light rail instead of a metro so he can continue to claim he is actually in favour of public transport and really he will actually just object to whatever is on the table and claim to be in favour of "other thing".

Which short amount of time, and which figures are you referring to?

From previous posts here it seems Metro North had a 3-6 billion estimate in 2011, Metrolink had an 8-12 Billion (ish?) estimate in 2022?

That doesn't seem particularly crazy for 11 years of inflation and a construction sector that's outpacing the inflation figure significantly?

General inflation between mid-2011 and 2022 was just unter 15% dumulative.(from CSO). The metrolink estimates you quote show costs more than doubling over the same period. Something similar seems to have happened since 2022.

If the costs of a project are subject to such huge unexplained revision, then you have to question the case fro the project and the competence of those producing the estimates.

There is effectively no real world opposition to this. Just a few media cranks, online curmudgeons and perennially angry types.

All you hear "on the street" is it's a disgrace that the capital doesn't have a metro like any normal country.

A city that will have two million if its built on time or thereabouts. A single metro line to an airport A few km from centre, that will handle forty million plus easily, by the time it opens, even if it were 2035, realistically it will be 45 to 50 million by then and the size swords will be at then too. Totally pathetic... put the money into metrolink, couldn't care less what other areas it doesn't get wasted on...

LiLiterally, fine of its 23 billion... its substantially less than the annual hse budget ? Look, after many of us have paid in decades of substantial taxes, I couldn't care less about the loud voices, that contribute nothing... championing the world's largest welfare state... build infrastructure. In the UK they are cutting welfare, do the same here if necessary...

Even at that stupid price, it’d only be 3-4 billion a year or so: the whole thing isn’t paid in one go. At a more realistic estimate, the price would be about 1~1.5 billion a year.

If you want to see what that means in terms of the whole Government expenditure, there’s a breakdown here: Where Your Money Goes (Spoiler: it would be 2.5~3.3% of total spending at the crazy level, 1% or so at the realistic one)

And on the subject of spending, click through those headings and you’ll see that the biggest single use of government money every year is… paying the old-age pension. So, anyone complaining about waste on welfare, please ring your ma and tell her she’s a scrounger. And do let us know how it goes, because we could do with a laugh while we wait for ABP to get its finger out on MetroLink.