Metro Dublin metro procurement to begin this year

[spudfan]

Hope the link works

Dublin metro procurement to begin this year | Metro Report International | Railway Gazette International

[Flying Snail]

The link works for me.

Long way to go yet on the Metrolink project before any works begin, but good to see some progress.

[LNERW1]

Anything for good public transport. It's long past time we got a proper European metro system, never mind rail. Hopefully this leads to more development of the Luas and new rail lines in cities around Ireland.

[murphaph]

I'm quietly confident they are really serious this time. If ML goes ahead, DART Underground will eventually follow as it's such a no-brainer. 

[Darrman]

I'll be convinced it's real when spades go into the ground.

[jhb171achill]

Woooohooooo!!!! Roll on the opening in 3012!

[Branchline121]

It may have took 20 years but at least we’re (nearly) getting there.

[Louth]

The Metrolink will go from just north of Swords to Ranelagh and link with Irish Rail at Tara Street and Drumcondra stations only. The latest cost estimate is approx €20 billion. If you live in any place off the route this project will be of very little benefit to you (think of people travelling to Dublin Airport from Belfast, Cork or Galway or indeed Malahide). The net result will be a very expensive piece of transport infrastructure benefiting part of Dublin only. It will also suck funds from all the other transport projects that are so urgently needed in Ireland. That said, I fear our politicians will give it the green light.

[Mol_PMB]

The same could be said of any piece of transport infrastructure though!

I wonder how many people travel from Belfast or Cork to Dublin Airport? Belfast and Cork both have their own airports with a good range of destinations, and if you want to go further afield then it's perhaps easier to fly from Belfast or Cork to (say) Manchester or Amsterdam and change there.

For those who do want to go to Dublin Airport there are some express road coaches which seem to provide for the market fairly well and have the advantage of a direct journey to the airport with no need to handle luggage through changes of transport mode. But I don't think there's a huge volume of traffic that way.

Malahide - well that also has a regular direct bus to the airport. It runs through from Sutton. I used it a few weeks ago and it was reliable and convenient.

 

This metro will surely be useful for commuting into Dublin from north and south, and for providing a quality link from the airport into the city centre for onward connections to greater Dublin by suburban train or LUAS.

[Flying Snail]

The metrolink will be hugely beneficial to more than just the people living along its route: it connects the airport to the city centre and rail network and provides 3,000 park and ride places.

And the parts of Dublin it serves directly are not insignificant. There will be 53 million trips annually. Swords in particular will benefit massively.

 

 

 

[GSR 800]

1 hour ago, Mol_PMB said:

The same could be said of any piece of transport infrastructure though!

I wonder how many people travel from Belfast or Cork to Dublin Airport? Belfast and Cork both have their own airports with a good range of destinations, and if you want to go further afield then it's perhaps easier to fly from Belfast or Cork to (say) Manchester or Amsterdam and change there.

For those who do want to go to Dublin Airport there are some express road coaches which seem to provide for the market fairly well and have the advantage of a direct journey to the airport with no need to handle luggage through changes of transport mode. But I don't think there's a huge volume of traffic that way.

Malahide - well that also has a regular direct bus to the airport. It runs through from Sutton. I used it a few weeks ago and it was reliable and convenient.

 

This metro will surely be useful for commuting into Dublin from north and south, and for providing a quality link from the airport into the city centre for onward connections to greater Dublin by suburban train or LUAS.

Anyone travelling via the Sligo line to the airport (I'll use Mullingar as my example) can get the train to Drumcondra and from there to the airport or city centre. Tara Street is a pretty good connection, a 5 minute DART to either Connolly or Pearse.

Of course this is beside the point. Getting a metro going means there's the expertise and infrastructure to continue with other metro projects down the road.

As to costs, the longer we wait the more it costs. I'd be more concerned with getting in a good contractor for the job so it stays to budget.

[leslie10646]

Reference the point about this being no use to you if you're heading to Dublin Airport from Belfast - The Northerners jump on the Express bus - members of my family in the North use them regularly and extol their virtues.

@Louth - I hope that you will live to see that it will be a magnet for people going into the City, just as Thameslink and the Elizabeth Line have been to London. However, with one caveat - there has to be car parking at each station in the suburbs so that people can "Park and Ride".

There may never be the volumes to make feeder buses really take over from people's own vehicles - but, it can be done. When I'm in Switzerland, I stay in a village a few kilometres out of Spiez and that place (population in the low hundreds) enjoys being on a two buses an hour service. People use them, sometimes they are full and standing, because they are utterly reliable - which is the key.

I just hope that they get on with it before the costs rise any more!

 

 

 

[DoctorPan]

Metro will be a game changer but should also reviewed alongside the other projects that have been progressed at the same time.

DART+ will provide transformative connections to the metro, Heuston side of the network, the option of changing at Hazelhatch/Heuston for a DART to Glasnevin to connect with the metro, or luas/bus on to the city center to connect with the metro. On the Sligo line, changing at Maynooth for a DART to Glasnevin will bring you into the metro system. Northern and South Eastern line has connections at Tara Street. Also would not be surprised to see an extension to connect to the Northern line and unlock land development north of Swords announced around the time construction is nearing completion. 

 

Also it should not be viewed as a city center to airport connection, the town of Swords suffers from terrible public transport connectivity and a reliable consistent journey time will be transformative. NTA has found that there can be up to over 60 mins of a journey time variance of buses from Swords into town due to traffic congestion. 

It is one of the most congested corridors at the moment, its not surprising looking at the trip generators served by the alignment. The capacity the metro can bring is amazing, its around 20,000 people per hour per direction, the luas is roughly around ~8,000 in comparison while a bus on a bus corridor on a 15 min frequency tops out at around 3,000 people per hour per direction.

[Mol_PMB]

I wouldn't be surprised if Glasnevin becomes a stop on the Sligo trains once the Metro is in operation. 

[LNERW1]

4 hours ago, Flying Snail said:

The metrolink will be hugely beneficial to more than just the people living along its route: it connects the airport to the city centre and rail network and provides 3,000 park and ride places.

And the parts of Dublin it serves directly are not insignificant. There will be 53 million trips annually. Swords in particular will benefit massively.

 

 

 

More than a million trips a day- fair impressive, I’d say thats about 10x LUAS isn’t it? But then I’d use a rail line if it was built by my house so fair enough.

[Flying Snail]

28 minutes ago, LNERW1 said:

More than a million trips a day- fair impressive, I’d say thats about 10x LUAS isn’t it? But then I’d use a rail line if it was built by my house so fair enough.

a week  

I think its impressive alright - Luas had just over 48m trips in 2023 I think

Edited 40 minutes ago by Flying Snail