[Article] Work begins on pace line

[ThomasJ]

From the Independent

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/royal-rumble-as-work-on-rail-link-starts-1532775.html


Royal rumble as work on rail link starts
National News Home

Tuesday November 11 2008

Dublin football star Ciaran Whelan and his Meath counterpart Nigel Crawford joined forces with jockey Johnny Murtagh yesterday to mark the beginning of work on the €160m Clonsilla to Dunboyne railway line.

Work officially began on the 7.5km line yesterday, and Iarnrod Eireann says it will be open by 2010 before being extended to Navan by 2015.

It includes the country's biggest car park at Pace, beside the M3 motorway, where spaces for 1,200 vehicles will be provided.

The line will branch off the Maynooth line at Clonsilla and terminate at the interchange with the M3 north of Dunboyne, at Pace. All services will terminate at Docklands Station, with trains every 30 minutes at peak times, which will be extended to every 15 minutes as demand increases. Off-peak services will run every hour.

Iarnrod Eireann yesterday confirmed the main contract for the project has been signed with SIAC Construction, which will commence construction on site at the start of December.

As well as 7.5km of double track between Clonsilla and Dunboyne, the project includes three new stations.

[Mark Gleeson]

It hadn't even had its public hearing this time last year, so excellent progress

Relatively low risk project, so shouldn't see any problems

[ccos]

I note they still say extension to Navan in 2015, if they were intent on slithering out of that wouldn't they just have neglected to mention it, this sort of keeps the idea in the public domain

[Mark Gleeson]

To be fair they would be able to start in June 2013 and probably have Navan open by Dec 2015, back track 1 year for planning approvals and contracts, June 2012, add 18 months for works order prep and public consultation, you get Jan 2010 so there is still plenty of time before we can mark it up as a dead project

There is a curious pattern of things happening at the very last minute in T21

[ccos]

Thats true, but I was just pointing out if a decision had been made to bury the project why would they mention it in press releases? surely it would be better to keep it off the radar.

[Mark Gleeson]

But no decision has been made to not proceed, its being reviewed. The official government line is that the project is feasible, business case is in progress currently for the short listed route options. There is still a good 14 months or so before we can say it won't be delivered on time.

We have roughly worked out the critical dates for all T21 projects by which various bits should be completed, curiously nearly always at the last minute the go ahead will be given

[Mark]

Doubt it will get through CBA to be honest.

In reality if Meath CoCo had any foresight they wouldnt have allowed Ashbourne and Ratoath to expand and focused all the deveopment in Drumree/Dunshaughlin, Kilmessan, Batterstown etc.

As it is, I cant see the population densities being enough.

[al2637]

What are peoples thoughts on the capacity issues that the Pace extension is going to cause for existing users of the line.

So, all trains from Pace will be destined for Docklands, but to me it seems very obvious, that people from the new stations will simply get off at Consilla and change to trains heading to Connolly and beyond resulting is a reduction in available capacity to exsiting customers from Coolmine, Castleknock, Ashtown etc etc.... can anything be done to resolve this other than running the trains from Pace non-stop?

Any plans for extra capacity into Connolly?

[Mark Gleeson]

This has always been the only real concern

Yes Connolly, Tara and Pearse are the current favoured destinations.

There are 3 things to look at:

1. Lots of jobs still going in down in Docklands so increasing demand for travel
2. There will be passengers beyond Clonsilla towards Maynooth looking for Docklands as will there be inwards of Clonsilla
3. For those seeking the city centre, there will hopefully be the Luas from Broombridge to O'Connell Street to St Stephens Green. That covers the new DIT has well

We have discussed that on Sundays all Pace trains run via Connolly as there won't be much demand in Docklands, those who need it have the Luas to Connolly, thats an operational matter not planning so we don't know where to go with that.

Extra capacity in Connolly will come on stream in 2011, advanced plans for that. Realistically there will be 10 trains an hour inbound, 4 from Maynooth, 4 Dunboyne, 2 Sligo/Longford, current situation is 12 trains in 2 hours