A proposed underground railway line from Spencer Dock via Pearse Station, St Stephen's Green and Dame Street to Heuston Station would link with existing track to provide Dublin with a "circle line". This would make contact with all the main routes into the city centre. The proposal, currently being examined by engineering consultants, is to be welcomed. The habitual reliance by Dublin commuters on private rather than public transport has brought a traffic problem of very serious proportions to the capital. Increasing affluence has served merely to exacerbate the problem.
Dublin's new-found wealth would be better used to install a unified public transport system than to increase the number of cars on its streets. To this extent the £500 million price-tag on the new project seems well worth while. There are, however, some questions to be asked. Is a mixture of light-rail and heavy-rail, above ground and underground, the ideal way to provide a comprehensive urban rail system? Are proposed improvements to the transport infrastructure of a city with a burgeoning population being suggested in a piecemeal rather than a comprehensive fashion? Would an extensive underground system function better than a mixed system? Would an expanded Luas light-rail network be more efficient?
Examples can be put forward to support any of these arguments. The virtues of the Manchester and Sheffield trams have been extolled by those who support Luas. The underground lobby can point to the successful metro systems which have been installed in medium-sized cities such as Lyon and Marseille. The French metros have a number of beneficial aspects. They do not in the first place produce the visual clutter of overhead wires associated with light rail. They do not, therefore, interfere with the aesthetics of a city in the way over-ground systems do, though some people undoubtedly feel uncomfortable with the idea of travelling below ground level.
One has only to consider the visual "iron curtain" of the "Loop Line" bridge which partitions central Dublin from its finest building to understand the type of damage ill-considered above-ground rail systems can do. It is to be hoped, now that there is money to spend, that it may be possible to replace this monstrosity which has defaced the capital for so long. Although it is not expected that Luas will produce a similar abomination it should be realised that it will make for an increase in the visual clutter which currently infests Dublin's centre.
No costings are immediately available for an underground system similar to that in operation in Lyon. In this context it should be noted that much of the funding for the metro there was achieved at little expense nationally or locally by floating shares on the stock exchange very much in the way that entrepreneurs and shareholders helped fund Ireland's first railways. The proposal for an underground line from the docklands to Heuston shows at least that imagination is being applied towards an improvement in Dublin's transport infrastructure. There are still many indications that a piecemeal rather than coherent approach is being taken. It is time to focus on a comprehensive overall view of the problem including investigating the use of private finance as well as spending state funds.