The NTA business case documentation reveals some stunning incompetence:
First, they consider the entire DART extension project, including the Underground part, as well as electrification to Maynooth, Balbriggan and associated rolling stock and maintenance costs. This yields a favourable ratio of costs to benefits of 1.4 to 1. They then consider the Underground section in isolation and come up with an unfavourable C/B ratio of 0.8 to 1.
This is crazy: the underground and underground bits are clearly complementary: each could well have a C/B ratio of <1, but taken together they would come out with a favourable evaluation . Considering the Underground bit on its own is nonsense: only a madman would want to build a tunnel from Inchicore to East Wall with no other supporting investments. The whole thing seems to be an exercise trying to weasel out of Dart Underground by constructing a straw man in the form of a stand-alone tunnel and surprise, surprise its not viable!
Other bits are just as bad. There are proposals for cheaper versions of Dart Underground. One would commence tunneling at Heuston rather than Inchicore: a much earlier proposal which was dropped, for very good technical and operational reasons as anyone familiar with the Heuston-Islandbridge rail layout would appreciate. Other versions include ending the Underground from Heuston at Pearse, so there would still be enormous tunneling costs with minimal extra connectivity, a truly daft suggestion.
I have seldom seen such an incompetent piece of work. Needless to say the media have proved to be useless a spotting the flaws in what has to be one of the worst transport documents ever produced.
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