Transport strategy switches gear to Luas lines

If you live along the route of one of four proposed Luas lines to Finglas, Lucan, Poolbeg or Bray, and thought you would be taking a tram in the next decade, you will instead be waiting until sometime after 2031.

Hoping to get a metro from the airport to the city? Again that’s a wait of a decade or more.

If you're in the traffic-choked suburbs of Clongriffin, Blanchardstown, Clondalkin or Knocklyon, a Luas might be on the way, but not until after 2042, which is when you might also travel underground by Dart from Heuston Station to St Stephen's Green and to the north of the city.

However, if you're hoping to catch a metro out to Rathfarnham or Sandyford, that's a ticket to nowhere.

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The cost of the full 20-year transport strategy for the greater Dublin area has more than doubled from €10.3 billion when the programme was published in 2016 to €25 billion now, but this colossal jump in costs has not been matched by a commensurate increase in infrastructure; in fact, it appears a lot more money is doing a lot less work.

Delays

National Transport Authority (NTA) deputy chief executive Hugh Creegan on Tuesday indicated that delays to these projects were a major factor in the spiralling costs, along with the NTA perhaps offering a healthier dose of financial realism than previously.

“The lapse of time, construction inflation and the greater knowledge about the greater contingency and risk to be built into cost estimates, that’s why we’re seeing the figures we have today,” he said.

The NTA was not willing to confirm the costs of MetroLink, but reports in recent months suggest it has increased from €3.5 billion to some €10 billion, meaning it would swallow the bulk of the capital’s transport budget.

Which explains the NTA's major gear shift in the strategy from metro to Luas. When the metro was granted permission in 2010 it was just a northern line from Swords and Dublin Airport to the city centre. In the 2016 Dublin transport strategy it became a north-south line running from Swords to Sandyford. Two years ago the NTA said it would go ahead with the northern leg and investigate the options for a future southside route. These options included pursuing the Sandyford route – an upgrade of the Luas Green line to a metro, or options which would see the route go to UCD then Sandyford, or west to Terenure and Rathfarnham.

Modified plans

The updated strategy is “modifying” the rail plans, Mr Creegan said. Instead of having any southside metro, a Luas would run to UCD and Sandyford, which would take the pressure off the Green line and remove the need for a metro in that direction. “We are very attracted to that,” he said.

In relation to the western metro option, well it’s just too expensive: “The benefits of the project were less than the cost,” Mr Creegan said.

Which goes to the heart of the love for the Luas: it’s cheap, comparatively.

Of course, we’ve been here before. When the last crash came and the government had to choose between the three big-ticket transport projects – Metro North, Dart underground and cross-city Luas – it chose the cheapest, the extension of the Luas Green line across the city. MetroLink, essentially old Metro North, is likely to go ahead with a planning application due to be submitted next year, but after that it looks like underground is out and tram lines are in, but only if you’re prepared to wait.