Luas extensions delayed until 2008

A lack of progress on public-private partnerships to deliver extensions to the Luas means it will be at least 2008 before passengers can travel to Cherrywood or the docklands, it has emerged.

The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) said yesterday the seven-kilometre extension to Cherrywood in south Dublin could be delivered by 2008 if all remaining issues were sorted out expeditiously.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has already raised almost €20 million in special development levies within a boundary of about a kilometre of the line. However, much more will be needed - even with State aid - before the overall cost of about €200 million is reached.

The RPA initially hoped work on the Cherrywood extension would begin immediately upon completion of the Sandyford line.

But the agency said yesterday that issues as to whether agreements should be signed with the property developers' company, Rathdown Light Rail, or individual property owners, had yet to be finalised.

The amount of contributions of large land-owners, such as the property company Dunloe Ewart, controlled by builder Mr Liam Carroll, has also yet to be agreed.

"Two pieces of the jigsaw are in place - our plans and the local authority levy - but we need the third: the signed agreements with the key players," Mr Ger Hannon of the RPA said yesterday.

In relation to the docklands route, the public-private partnership arrangement is different but also complex.

Reservation for the route has been made by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, and last year the RPA launched an indicative route through the area, based on an alignment along Mayor Street. Much of this is publicly owned, and the private contribution will be made in cash by property-owners along the route.

However, Mr Hannon said the precise arrangements with Treasury Holdings and CIÉ, which own land at the Point end of the route, were not concluded.

Mr Hannon told The Irish Times that even if the public inquiries into both lines got under way this year, it would take nine months to achieve a Railway Order. That would bring the process to September 2005, and tendering, contracting and construction would bring the operating date "to 2008 at the earliest".

While, at 1.5 kilometres, the Docklands extension is much shorter than the 7.5-kilometre Cherrywood stretch, it would not be delivered in a correspondingly shorter timescale. "When you engage a company, contracts and tendering procedures need to be as detailed for a 1.5-kilometre line as a 7.5-kilometre line, and the scale of the thing doesn't necessarily shorten the process."