Vincent Browne: Have a read of this. It is the history of the Luas project, taken from a study by the economic consultancy firm, DKM.
In April 1994 a Dublin Transport Initiative report recommended the establishment of a three-line light-rail system for Dublin. One line was to go from Tallaght via Naas Road, Inchicore and Heuston Station to the city centre. A second was to go from Ballymun via Whitehall and Drumcondra to the city centre. A third was to be from Cabinteely via Dundrum and the old Harcourt Street railway line to the city centre.
The total cost of this three-line system was estimated at £259 million (€329 million). The plan was to construct this over the period 1994 to 1999.
In the same year (1994) the Government published its National Development Plan which allocated only £200 million to the light-rail project. This meant a further study to see what could be undertaken for the budgeted allocation.
In June 1995 a study estimated the cost of building a line from Tallaght to Dundrum via the city centre would be £233.42 million (in 1995 prices). The Ballymun line was being dropped at that stage. It was calculated that the system would be in operation in 2000.
There was some sense in this proposal as the single line connecting Dundrum to Tallaght through the centre of the city would have resulted in significant economies with a single depot, shared staff and common rolling stock.
In May 1997 the Government decided to extend the Dundrum line to the Sandyford Industrial Estate. In October the same year it decided to consider whether the system should be underground in the city centre. In April 1998 it decided against an underground system.
In May 1998 it announced significant changes to what had been planned earlier.
The line from Tallaght to Middle Abbey Street was now to be extended to Connolly Station. The line from Sandyford to St Stephen's Green would be extended to Ballymun and Dublin Airport, and the section between St Stephen's Green and Broadstone would be underground.
This had the effect of creating two unconnectable networks and was now costed at £400 million-plus, and the sharing of costs that would have accrued from a single line were now dropped.
The Tallaght-to-Connolly Station line was to be completed by the winter of 2002 and the other line by the summer of 2003. There was no deadline for the St Stephen's Green-to-Dublin Airport section, but drilling for the underground section was to be completed by autumn 1999.
These changes in May 1998 invalidated much of the work up to that point. In July 2000 the Government approved in principle the development of a metro system and that the St Stephens Green-Sandyford line would be integrated into that system.
By January of that year (2000) the cost of the project (not including the metro system) had risen to £366 million (€466 million).
By January 2001 the estimated cost had risen to €675 million, some €209 million more than the estimates of a year earlier.
By August-September 2003 the estimated cost of the project had risen to €778 million, and the estimated opening dates were August 2004 for the line from Tallaght to Connolly Station and June 2004 for the line between Sandyford and St Stephen's Green.
In addition, it emerges from the recent ESRI mid-term study of the National Development Plan that at no stage was any evaluation conducted of the costs of the disruption caused by the digging up of streets and the laying of the railway lines.
So, to summarise, almost 10 years ago a plan was devised to build a three-line light-rail system at a cost of €329 million, which was to be completed by 1999. We now have a two-line system that is to cost at least €778 million and they won't be ready, at best, until the summer of 2004.
Yes, of course inflation has to be taken into account but, by whatever measure is used, the costs far exceed what was originally intended and, of course, the time involved is much longer and the project is significantly less.
And the madness of it all is the sheer wastefulness. At a fraction of the cost we could have had bus corridors, travelling along almost the same routes as the Luas (if necessary the Harcourt Street line could have been rebuilt to facilitate buses, but surely that would not have been necessary).
There would have been no need to dig up the streets. We could have had them all in place a decade before the Luas will be ready. There could have been sleek user-friendly buses with fast entry and exit facilities and an integrated ticketing system, and we could even have had competition on bus routes to help keep fares low.
One is tempted to ask: why not let the lunatics run the asylum? But there is no point. They already do.