Greens urge Brennan to join two Luas lines

The Minister for Transport must integrate the two Luas lines under construction in Dublin, the Green Party said today.

Speaking as the party launched a postcard campaign to pressurise the Department into connecting the two lines, Dun Laoighaire TD Mr Ciaran Cuffe said Mr Brennan now has to give his "unequivocal support to the Luas project and ensure that people have a choice between leaving the car at home and having good quality public transport available."

The completion cost of Luas is now estimated at €765 million, nearly three times the initial projection of €288 million. Traffic in Dublin city has been severely disrupted during construction.

Two free-standing lines are being built. One 14 kilometre line runs from Tallaght to Connolly Station and another nine kilometre long line joins Sandyford to St Stephen's Green. Because they are physically separate, two depots have to be built to store the GEC-Alsthom trams.

The original plan in 1997 envisaged a single loop line fromTallaght to Balally, south of Dundrum, running on-street through the city centre from St Stephen's Green to Middle Abbey Street. But that was dropped by the Government in 1998 which, at the time, was considering running all or part of the Sandyford line underground.

Mr Cuffe told ireland.comthe additional work required to join the two lines would not create undue traffic disruption. "Mary O'Rourke, threw this out several years ago but Seamus Brennan has more or less been in power for most of the last 15 years so we think that a lot of the blame lies at his door not having the Luas running today."

The Green Party's campaign comes two days after Mr Brennan admitted on RTÉ's Primetimethat parts of the Luas system are a mess and a mistake.

He said if they were starting with a clean sheet of paper and knowing today's figures they would probably opt for a complete city-wide metro and probably do 100 per cent of it underground.

Green Party transport spokesman Mr Eamon Ryan, said there had been "dithering as to whether we should build it overground or underground. Regardless of this, now everyone in transport terms recognises it would make sense to connect the two lines.

"The planning and design stage is done, that is the expensive bit. We have learned a lot, we have learned from our mistakes hopefully. It wouldn't be that expensive. And I think we should work 24-hours a day to get it through. Going this small half-a-mile section isn't going to take that long.

He said joining the Luas would not become redundant even if an underground Metro was built. As part of its campaign the Green Party are handing out postcards asking Mr Brennan to "join the dots" and connect the two lines.

The postcards are going to be distributed over the next month by the Green Party and are addressed to the Minister for Transport.