Work begins on Luas Green Line extention - Irish Independent - 27 February 2007

[Colm Donoghue]

Work begins on Luas green line extention


PRELIMINARY work has begun to extend the Luas green line from Sandyford to Cherrywood in south Dublin.

The €300m extension will add another 7.5km to the route, almost doubling its original length from St Stephen's Green.

Starting at the Sandyford Industrial Estate, thenew spur will include 11 stops, and will involve two new bridges over the M50. Half the cost will come from private funds.

One company, CLG Ltd, has begun site clearance work on the route, while the Rail Procurement Agency has also signed a contract with SIAC Construction for the diversion of underground pipes and cables.

The main contract for the tracks, stops and power lines is expected to be signed in the autumn, and the entire project is expected to be completed by 2010.

[Mark Gleeson]

They got the go back in January, and they won't have serious work started till the autumn?

Thats ridiculous, compare that to Irish Rail on the Kildare route, or even Pace where line clearance is already done

[Derek Wheeler]

Ah Mark, they still have lots of people in hi-viz in the area marking out the route. Only last week the lads in vests were working hard drilling test holes at the Leop roundabout.

[Mark Gleeson]

Legally they didn't need a works order to do that

Bear in mind the contract tenders where issued before the works order was brought to public inquiry

[Rushed2nowhere]

By the way €300m for 7.5 kilometres works out €40m per kilometre. €40m will buy 130 new busses. Also I thought the Sandyford - St Stephens Green section was running at near capacity levels? At the moment it takes the Luas 22 minutes to reach St Stephens Green from Sandyford so were talking about 40 minutes from Cherrywood to St. Stephens green.
I'm not anti Luas but it seems like an excessive amount of money and the journey time seems similar to amount of time the bus would need to complete the journey.

[Mark Gleeson]

Well its 20 minutes to Sandyford now.

I argued they couldn't support the demand but no one listened

There are 8 more 40m trams on order the Green line is going to get most of those

[StephenM]

So what can they do to improve capacity? At the moment give or take peak hour has trams running every 4 minutes.

I take it that longer trams are not that much of an option and more frequencies will result in pile ups at the Stephens Green terminus, dont want to spread the service too thin either, perhaps a quarter of trams should operate Sandyford - Stephens Green and the other 3/4's should operate to Cherrywood. That might give a chance to the service incase of a problem while also providing reasonable capacity for all.

[Derek Wheeler]

They will never cater for demand. Dublin is so utterly underdeveloped in public transport terms that any new initiative is swallowed up. The Luas is naively touted by politicians as the solution, hence its rather large inclusion in T21. Its actually only part of the solution and in my opinion is doubling as a train, which of course it isn't.

They'll be talking double decker within 20 years. Remember where you read it first.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Derek Wheeler

They'll be talking double decker within 20 years. Remember where you read it first.

20 years??? More like 5

[StephenM]

Well appart from hills and the obvious Charlemont, is that a possibility? I mean looking at the pantographs you would think so, then again for a fast frequent light rail service moving people up and down the stairs and buying in new trams to operate it might be an issue. Its been done before, may be we can do it again!

Come to think of it, based on other projects there would probably be something small that will be blown totally out of proportions by the press and the TD's that would block the thing we call "Progress".

[Mark]

Originally Posted by StephenM

So what can they do to improve capacity? At the moment give or take peak hour has trams running every 4 minutes.

I take it that longer trams are not that much of an option and more frequencies will result in pile ups at the Stephens Green terminus, dont want to spread the service too thin either, perhaps a quarter of trams should operate Sandyford - Stephens Green and the other 3/4's should operate to Cherrywood. That might give a chance to the service incase of a problem while also providing reasonable capacity for all.

They can ramp up frequency to 2.5 minutes and extend the trams to 50m. All the BX route options are designed to take 50m platfroms (60m including 2 5m ramps either side). They are also examining having short running trams to Sandyford and back while others would run the full length to Cherrywood/Bray. Ratio of short running and full distance not decided yet.

[Mark Gleeson]

The RPA talk about 50m trams but fail completely to apply it out in the field

NONE of the platforms on B1 are capable of taking a 50m tram by design, they would need to be extended later

While there is provision for up to 90m platforms Beechwood Sandyford things get really fun at say Harcourt where the track would need to be realigned to allow an extension

Of course if Stephens Green had been built correctly it would have two 100m+ platforms so you could stack trams up as is common in Europe

2 1/2 minutes is possible with 40m trams but 50m trams would suck more electricity out of the system

[Colm Moore]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

While there is provision for up to 90m platforms Beechwood Sandyford things get really fun at say Harcourt where the track would need to be realigned to allow an extension

I keep hearing 90m trams. Are people confusing 90m trams with 90 second frequency? I know Rod does.

Of course if Stephens Green had been built correctly it would have two 100m+ platforms so you could stack trams up as is common in Europe

I've seen 5 trams in Stephens Green (with another arriving, still on Harcourt Street). The problem is you can't add trams to the back of the queue, you would either need a turning circle or an extra set of points.