Metro Madness

[seamasdefaoite]

the RPA has planned to put metro west through moyle park college, my school in clondalkin, its just sheer madness im telling ya now, construction begins '09 it will be a big issue for the locals and euros

[Pidge]

It's always good to see the young people expressing a viewpoint.

We need to recognise that young people have a voice.

[alonso]

the RPA has planned to put metro west through moyle park college, my school in clondalkin, its just sheer madness im telling ya now, construction begins '09 it will be a big issue for the locals and euros

Have they announced their preferred option?

It has to go through Tallaght TC, Clondalkin Village ,Liffey Valley and Blanch TC. Otherwise it's a waste. The issue for the locals and euros (why not the GE?) is the delay in delivering this essential project. I'll have a look for more info. Where is the school?
edit: yeh i see where it is, slap bang in the middle of the village. Route option 1 will almost certainly go here. The land take might not be significant, and it'll be worth it, as this will give a high speed alternative to many nightmare M50 trips

[FakeViking]

It's always good to see the young people expressing a viewpoint.

We need to recognise that young people have a voice.

Are you not being a bit presumtive here? The poster could be a young student, a teacher or an adult student, does that dismiss the validity her/his point? That their school will be severly disrupted for consturction by a project that a) should have happened 10 years ago and b) should be properly planned. Not like the 'back of the envelope' stuff we've seen, and paid for, with the Luas?

[RBinge]

Thirty years ago there was a well thought out and sensible study done called the Dublin Rail Rapid Transit Study, commissioned by CIE after an earlier study in 1971 called the Dublin Transportation Study. Seeing as Westside was being developed around the expanding sewerage system that ran near the railways (True - Dublin's westward expansion was based on the movement of "movements") it made sense to look at the existing transport system and how it would evolve.

A target date of 1991 was set - at that point it was envisaged that there would be electrified suburban rail services along the coast lines and to Blanchardstown and Clondalkin/Lucan. There would be two branches, one to Ballymun from Glasnevin and the other to Tallaght from Cherry Orchard. There would be two interlinking underground lines connecting everything, one from Heuston to Connolly and another from Broadstone to Sandymount, with a central station in Temple Bar. Two Busways, an innovative concept, were pencilled in from Mount Argus to Tallaght and on the Harcourt Street Line to Dundrum.

If the vision was there, which it wasn't, this would have been an excellent basis to build a fully integrated transport system that would be serving more of us than the system that is being put in place in a piecemeal fashion. Bizarrely, we can't even agree an integrated ticketing system that London and Paris has already in place and that we could adopt at little or no cost.

Of course, Ireland being Ireland, the whole thing was ripped to shreds and bits of it have been implemented in the meantime. The 1984 electrification of Howth to Bray was the first part and successive governments (including Fine Gael lead governments - I'm not partisan on this issue) dropped the ball on the whole thing. The reason why the Tallaght Luas Line takes the route it does was that CIE had brought the land for the Tallaght Branch and the route from Red Cow to the Square was intact, unlike the land set aside for the Tallaght Busway, which was sold off in small bits and built on.

Bottom line is, Public Transport infrastructure projects get all sorts of stuff thrown at them. Luas came in over budget for the simple reason that it was delayed for political reasons and an additional depot became necessary after Marys Harney and O'Rourke got collywobbles over running trams down Dawson Street. An architect of my acquaintence once suggested to me that rail projects offer less opportunities for "connected" "entrepreneurs" to make money off them, as the red line that denotes them can't be shifted as easily as road projects. It would be very interesting to see if and how often the M50 was moved before the route was finally cast in stone.

[evercloserunion]

To be honest I don't think the Metro is too good an idea. It's bound to cost quite a bit of money, money that could be far better spent improving what public transport we do have, in my opinion--or even extending the Luas. Frankly I think we're trying too hard to be amongst the major cities of Europe, an idea that simply has no ground in reality.

[Rapunzel]

To be honest I don't think the Metro is too good an idea. It's bound to cost quite a bit of money, money that could be far better spent improving what public transport we do have, in my opinion--or even extending the Luas.

But what about those people who live outside the areas where the train/luas go and perhaps have a bus going past their door once an hour? I think it's a good idea to link up all the transport so we have choice when and where we can go.

I know it will cost a lot of money but I think it will be worth it. The same thing was said when the luas was being considered and now thousands of people travel on it everyday.

[Catalpa]

Don't they have overhead suburban rail lines in New York?

Come to think of it the last bit of the western line into Connoly Station is overhead too IIRC?

Why not?

[forest]

The peoblem seems to be that we are anglo speakers if the french had invaded instead of the english we would probably have a 1st rate system now

Back in the 1950s we had for the time a very good public transport system both in the city of dublin in the form of trams and an extensive rail system outside

(Have you ever looked at maps of irish rail in the 1930s or so far more lines than now, Same is true for the UK)

But then some wise guy in the US decided nah ************************ public transport everyone is driving now we don't need it.
The UK followed the US example and we went "ah well the Yanks and the birish are doing it, so it has to be a good idea."
So what did we do we pulled up the trams in dublin and closed vast amount of railways throughout the country

We just ignored the small little french man jumping up and down No No don't do that.
Unfortunatley we didn't understand him, if only he spoke english

[evercloserunion]

But what about those people who live outside the areas where the train/luas go and perhaps have a bus going past their door once an hour? I think it's a good idea to link up all the transport so we have choice when and where we can go.

I know it will cost a lot of money but I think it will be worth it. The same thing was said when the luas was being considered and now thousands of people travel on it everyday.

That's exactly why the money that the government want to spent on the metro would be far better spent extending the Luas lines, placing more buses on the road or even just making the existing ones more punctual. In my opinion, building a metro would only mean that we have one more ************************ form of transport, what we need is to bring the standard of the transport we currently have up to the standard we require.

I know people would have said the same thing about the Luas, and it's quite a legitimate argument. But we do need to have a sense of proportion here. Dublin is not France, and it is certainly not New York. Our tram system cannot even be called a system, serving only two lines, and I think the Dart could afford to be extended into certain key areas as well.