Years, and millions of euro, lost to indecision over Dublin transport

For decades there have been various plans put forward aimed at creating an integrated high-capacity public transport service for Dublin.

However, these plans have been beset by arguments over the optimum routes and a shortage of money.

At present, Dart and suburban rail services on the coastal northern and southern lines run through the city centre.

Services from Maynooth also operate to Connolly and Pearse stations.

However, southwestern suburban services from Kildare run to Heuston station and do not integrate with the Dart, northern suburban or Maynooth lines.

At the same time, it is generally recognised that there is a requirement for a high-capacity service running from the city centre to the airport and on to Swords, one of the fast-growing parts of the capital.

Under the former Fianna Fáil/Green administration, ambitious plans were drawn up for a light rail service – known as Metro North – to operate to the airport and Swords while a separate link was envisaged to join together the northern line near Connolly Station and the western line beyond Heuston. This heavy rail project was to be known as the Dart underground system.

Permission

An Bord Pleanála

granted permission for Metro North in October 2010, though it shaved three stops and 2.3km of track from the 18km line originally sought in 2008 by the

Railway Procurement Agency

.

In December 2011, Iarnród Éireann was granted its railway order for Dart Underground just one month after the project was shelved by the Fine Gael/Labour Government.

The approved 7.6km underground line was to link Heuston station to the Dart line for the first time, with underground stations at Spencer Dock, Pearse Station, St Stephen’s Green, Christchurch and Heuston, as well as a ground-level station at Inchicore.

Soon after Leo Varadkar took up the transport portfolio in 2011, he announced that only one of "the big three" transport projects – Metro North, Dart Underground and the cross-city link-up of the two existing Luas tram lines – would be going ahead. In November that year he announced Luas as the winner.

Metro may have had the advantage of taking people all the way to Dublin Airport, but Luas had the advantage of being cheaper.

The cross-city Luas scheme was expected to cost about €370 million, while the metro was projected to cost at least €3 billion.

Many transport experts argued that the Dart Underground was the more valuable of the projects from an infrastructural perspective and the consensus appeared to be that the airport metro would never see the light of day.

However, yesterday the Cabinet decided, on foot of a recommendation from the National Transport Authority, to effectively kill off the Dart Underground as envisaged.

The tunnel under the Liffey and the city centre from Connolly to Inchicore, as envisaged in the original plan, was deemed to be too costly at nearly €3 billion.

This tunnel is now to be re-designed and could be scaled back to run only from Connolly to Heuston or merely under the river to Pearse Station.

Extension

Other elements of the Dart expansion plan are to go ahead, such as extending the existing line to Balbriggan by 2022. However, the critical under-city element will be missing, although Minister for Transport

Paschal Donohoe

insisted it will be constructed at some stage in the future.

At the same time, it has emerged that the National Transport Authority has recommended a revised and less expensive “optimised” metro link to Dublin Airport and Swords.

Such a system, which is being considered by Cabinet as part of its new capital plan to be launched next week, would follow more or less the same route as the original metro plan from the city centre but would have fewer stations, shorter platforms and would require less rolling stock.

The proposed new system would not be a metro system such as operated in Paris or New York. Rather it would be a tram system, similar to Luas but operating longer vehicles with greater capacity.

Significant sums have been lost by the “will-they-won’t- they” nature of successive governments’ transport planning. An estimated €150 million was spent on the original Metro North plan and €35 million on Dart Underground before they were shelved.

Some of this expenditure may be salvageable for use on the revised transport projects to be implemented in the years ahead.

How much has been lost for good, only time will tell.