[article] Independent review of disruptive Luas project crucial

Mark Gleeson · 10-05-2006, 10:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Irish Times

Independent review of disruptive Luas project crucial?Garret FitzGerald

Back in 1997, I wrote about Luas in this column on several occasions, arguing that because of the volume of traffic that would be generated by the proposed rail line from Stillorgan (and eventually from Bray) to Stephen's Green, and onwards towards the airport, it should be designed and built as a full-fledged metro rail system, rather than as a Luas tram.

I based this argument on official traffic projections made in the early 1990s, modified to allow for the Celtic Tiger.
In early 1997, I met the consultants working on the scheme, whose team, most unfortunately, included no economist. To my absolute astonishment I found that they had taken no account whatever of the Celtic Tiger, but were still publishing - and also using for their own planning purposes - traffic estimates based on totally out-of-date data that had been prepared back in 1991, on the basis, as I recall, of the second-last census of population!

They were quite unaware of the fact that the growth rates both of employment and of cars in Dublin since 1991 had been 2.3 times greater than the increases projected six years earlier.

Taking that into account, any attempt to cater for eventual demand on this route with trams, even operating at very high frequencies, was clearly going to fail. And in continuing it on street to O'Connell Street would so congest the difficult Dawson Street/Nassau Street corner, as well as the narrow street between Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland - the only south/north street between Westland Row and Christ Church Cathedral. Dublin Bus tell me that two-thirds of all their buses run through College Green, and they are greatly concerned at the likely impact of Luas on the great bulk of their city services.

In 1997, there was immediate strong opposition to my suggestion that the Luas project should be reviewed in the light of these facts.

But, after that year's election the PDs, returning to government after five years, grasped the half of my argument about congestion in the city centre - but apparently not the other, even more crucial, element of my case about traffic volumes.

As a result the new Government was persuaded to adopt a short-sighted half-measure - stopping the Luas tram at Stephen's Green, instead of converting it into a metro running in a tunnel from just south of Ranelagh and onwards through the city centre.

As I predicted, Luas traffic volumes have already been much higher than planned. Indeed, despite the termination of the tram service at Stephen's Green, there have from the outset been problems of capacity shortage at peak hours, both between Heuston and Connolly Stations on the Red Line, and between Dundrum and Stephen's Green on the Green Line.

At this stage, and because the line has been stopped at Stephen's Green, this capacity problem has been met by adding a new short-distance tram on the Red Line, one that operates only between the two railway stations, and by also adding an extra peak-hour service on the Green Line, with more to follow.

But given the huge volume of residential building currently under way and planned for the foothills of the Dublin Mountains above Stillorgan, the Luas tram, even with much increased frequencies, will not prove capable of coping indefinitely with the traffic volume on this route - especially after it is linked at Stephen's Green to a metro running through the city centre to the airport and beyond.

A firm decision has recently been announced to build a metro now from Swords and the airport to Stephen's Green - stopping, however, at that point, instead of continuing as had originally been intended, along the present Luas Green Line to Stillorgan and beyond. Halting it at Stephen's Green means that for years ahead passengers between south Dublin and the airport will have to change and lug their bags between two different levels at Stephen's Green station - and Henry Street shoppers will have to do the same with their purchases!

Instead of taking the opportunity to create now a through-service metro between south Dublin, O'Connell Street and the airport, current plans involve spending money on the construction of two almost parallel Luas and metro lines between Stephen's Green and O'Connell Street. But duplicating the new metro between Stephen's Green and O'Connell Street, by extending the over-ground Luas even further into the city, will disrupt the whole south city centre for several years and, when completed, will slow the passage of two-thirds of our city bus services.

Is this a wise decision? And has it been independently evaluated, taking full account of the negative traffic effects of extending Luas through our most congested streets?

Such a crucial decision should clearly be taken in the context of the long-term commitment the Government has made to extend the new metro from Stephen's Green through a tunnel to just south of Ranelagh, whence it would continue over ground along the present Luas track to Stillorgan and Cherrywood, and eventually to Bray.

Instead, it is my understanding that the financial valuation of the currently proposed Luas extension, which is to parallel the new metro from Stephen's Green to O'Connell Street, has been based on a view of the situation limited to a period of only 10 years - a quite extraordinarily short time-scale for the evaluation of a major infrastructural project. Such a short-term evaluation could not adequately assess the economic relationship of this Luas extension to the parallel metro, which on present plans would not be developed until after 2016.

In the long-term, the key issue must be what impact this parallel Luas project would have on the much larger metro project that is to run eventually from Swords and the airport to Bray, rather than the other way around. Instead, the matter is being approached in an upside-down way, by a Rail Procurement Agency which currently seems very strongly Luas-oriented - because at present Luas is all they have to run.

It seems to me that a reassessment of this project by an independent body is needed - one that will not allow the Luas tail to wag the metro dog, and that will take full financial account of the social cost of disrupting our city centre traffic by running a Luas through the south city centre in parallel with the new metro.

Such a re-evaluation might lead to a conclusion that, rather than spending money now on two parallel rail routes between O'Connell Street and Stephen's Green, it might make better sense to bring forward the plan to convert the Luas Green Line into a metro. The metro tunnelling machine could be allowed to continue beyond Stephen's Green for the further mile and a half to a point south of Ranelagh - instead of letting it, as has been suggested, moulder away under Stephen's Green for more than decade.

Due to a technical error only part of this article was published last Saturday

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opi...P10GARRET.html
© The Irish Times

Mark · 10-05-2006, 11:21

Regarding the Luas link up I feel that it will be built. It is currently at design stage and I would say that Cullen will be making it a feature of his reign as transport minister.

An alternative as Sean pointed out is a bus link up. Perhaps branded to look like Luas trams and accepting of all central zone valid tickets. It would go back and forth from O'Connell Street to St Stephen's Green at a 5 min frequency. Run by the RPA perhaps or is that asking too much?

Once again tho there is considerable commercial pressure to see the link up and at a possible build time of 2 years and a cost of circa €100m I cant see it being pulled at this stage.

Government/DoT officials etc will announce it as an investment in transport in the city centre etc etc but what it really is is just them correcting their mistakes at the expense of the public and the taxpayer in both the guise of too late and now over cost.

Kevin K Kelehan · 10-05-2006, 12:00

Garret's position has always been that Luas capacity does not provide sufficient capacity or a diverse enough reach to justify the wholesale disruption to Dublin Bus routes if this route is selected.

Lets be honest if Luas enters Nassau Street it will for the first time have no segregation whatsoever from other road uses. Looking at the existing on street lines Harcourt Road to Stephens Green is clearly segregated as is Connolly to Upper Abbey St and St Mary's Abbey to St James' Hospital.

Analysing the traffic flows of Upper Abbey St there is solely the odd car who uses the route illegally and the odd delivery van who uses it to service either Jervis or local retail.

Upper Abbey St is no comparison to the number of buses who use Nassau St not to mention taxis and cars who use it illegally. There is also the issue of the pinch point between BOI 2 College Green and Trinity College; put simply there is a serious choice for Martin Cullen to make Change the favoured Luas route or change the Bus routes away from College Green/Nassau St

Mark · 10-05-2006, 12:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin K Kelehan

put simply there is a serious choice for Martin Cullen to make Change the favoured Luas route or change the Bus routes away from College Green/Nassau St

or drop the Luas link up?

Ideally I would like to see the central underground tunnel having two northern portals - One at DCU and one at Broadstone with the split happening at the top of O'Connell street.

It would then have two southern portals - One on the Kimmage/Tallaght alignment and one at either Adelaide Street or Beechwood (As discussed here: http://forum.platform11.org/showthread.php?t=435)

The southern split would happen under Iveagh Gardens.

Problem is as always, cost and politics.

Kevin K Kelehan · 10-05-2006, 12:13

Politically we all know this will not happen the government have to at least provide some road works pre June 2007 on this.

I however feel that a Luas link up if the route is carefully selected will attract sufficient passengers to justify the cost even after the arrival of an underground metro be it to Tallaght or Cherrywood.

The problem here is that neither route has been adequately addressed for the longer term and that the Luas link up is being presented as the end game. Which even prior to the Cherrywood and Citywest extensions looks inadequate given the rate at which densities are increasing on the line.

philip · 10-05-2006, 16:39

The simple solution is to allow buses to use the tram route too. Works all over Europe. The on street tram is always going to be useful, whatever happens with a metro. In the short term they should allow buses on the tram tracks and longer ter move away from so many radial bus routes altogether, in favour of orbitals feeding into radial rail routes.

Kevin K Kelehan · 10-05-2006, 16:50

I'm not so sure in relation to the Nassau St section given how narrow it is and the number of busses that use it

10 11 11A 11B 14 14A 15 15A 15B 15C 46A 46B 746 plus aircoach and most tour buses as well as international coaches inbound as well as the same plus all the Merrion Road Busses outbound

If Luas is routed down this stretch then alternative routes will need to be found for most of these buses as if one bus breaks down the Luas from Cherrywood to City Centre is down for the time it takes to get a tow truck in from Donnybrook

CSL · 10-05-2006, 17:18

I agree strongly with Kevin.
Dawson and Nassau College Green overground is a silly option, you are combining two of public service transport providers into one bottleneck and disrupting both. The buses carry far more people.

What is wrong with putting Luas underground anyway ?

philip · 10-05-2006, 19:57

I'm just comparing the situation to Munich. There are a few tram routes which have high requency metrobus routes on them too. It seems to work fine. Maybe they have higher reliability rates on their bus fleet, but it's a much older fleet so I doubt it.

It'd be a medium term solution of course. Ling term we don't want to be running so many buses into town.

I can completely see the argument you guys are putting forward and I agree that bus passengers MUST not be discommoded for the tram but I have no problem in discommoding car drivers by diverting buses onto other steets and banning/restricting cars from those streets.

We are going to be going through some rough times over the next decade. It's not all going to be painless unfortunately but I think an on-street tram is desirable for short hops across town. Munich has multiple routes where trams parallel undergrounds and they are still really busy, crush laden busy. People like the convenience of street level trams.

PaulM · 10-05-2006, 21:00

Kevin,

4,5, 7 (and variants), 8, 45 and 145 also use this route. There are a lot of buses on that road.

sean · 10-05-2006, 22:09

I've always felt that the Luas link-up was a dumb idea, quite frankly.

Yes, the Harcourt St. alignment was almost totally intact. Yes it should have been a DART/Metro from day 1. But it isn't - yet. The authorities made a mess of it by getting cheap and going with trams.

So now they're going to compound it by heaping one glorious waste onto another?

Whats going to happen when the Metro comes? We know what happens in cities like Munich and Berlin, they tear up the tramline.

But in Dublin, they'll leave it there at least until the St. Stephens Green - Cherrywood section is converted to Metro (i.e. has an M sticker applied to the trams) then what for the €100M extension?

Far better just to provide a free, integrated bus connecting Abbey-Green and use the money to bring forward the Metro, or to extend the Metro South so that it physically connects with the Luas at Charlemont or Ranelagh.

Derek Wheeler · 10-05-2006, 22:11

In relation the the general thrust of Garret Fitzgeralds article, the Luas is not up to the job of carrying the amount of people it carries. I'd base that on the already known lack of public transport systems in Dublin, which is why so many flocked to it. Packed trams are not a sign of success, they are a sign that public transport in Dublin is disasterous. For this we blame Governments. As presented, the original CIE light rail proposal that was inherited by the RPA, was a poor mans version of an actual train service. There is simply no getting away from this. For example, Tallaght has a population approaching over 100,000. Serving that with buses and light rail is, in my opinion, very lame. I believe that in Dublin, we expect a tram to do the job of a train. Engineers will disagree with me. But back in the 1970s, Tallaght was already identified as an area that would require a train service. (DART) The Green line works, to a degree, at the moment, because it has a very direct route (along a previous rail alignment) to the city centre. The extension to this line as planned will only serve to equate it to the red line and finally convert it to a "real" light rail service. As things stand, the only difference between Green line services and the previous "train" service is the units are shorter and at higher frequencies. New passengers further out in areas such as Cherrywood, will get a red line experience. If its extended to Bray, then the journey time will be excruciating.

So when is a tram a train and when is a train meant to be a tram????

Thomas J Stamp · 11-05-2006, 11:10

I thought that the RPA are eventually going to upgrade the Green line into metro anyway?

So, forgive me if I'm wrong, the plan as it is is this:

LUAS to Stephens Green. Off you get. Walk a few hundred yards, go downstairs, get on the Metro. Off you go.

Then later, get LUAS all the way into O'Connell Street (with all of the disruptions of construction and then running it) to get off beside a Metro Stop (and having gazed at the Metro/LUAS stop on the green as you went)

Later still, Green LUAs becomes Metro (lets call that the "Green Metro". Does this mean that the Green Metro will stop where the Luas now stops, or will it be an extenstion of the metro from Stephens Green north?

If is is such an extension then what happens to the LUAS link from Stephens Green to O'Connell Street/Red line? Will it still continue or will it be torn up? Is it intended to be as interim as Sherrif Street Station? Or will we have Metro from Bray (of somewhere closer) to the Airport and LUAS from Stephens Green being a spur off of the Red Line?

James Shields · 11-05-2006, 12:47

Quote:

Then later, get LUAS all the way into O'Connell Street (with all of the disruptions of construction and then running it) to get off beside a Metro Stop (and having gazed at the Metro/LUAS stop on the green as you went)

I think the BX link-up is intended to be present several years before Metro North. BX is supposed to be complete by 2008, MetroNorth is supposed to open in 2012. Four years is a long time to wait for the better solution, but I certainly think the complete duplication of routes is a mistake.

For what it's worth, at least part of the BX line would be used by the Lucan Luas line, so it wouldn't be a complete waste after the green line upgrades to Metro.

I still think that building both Luas and Metro on almost identical routes is at best a missed opportunity. Going east switched the duplication from the Metro to the Interconnector, so for a western route seems most logical. This would result in a line that would have more value after the completion of the Lucan Luas, as well as reducting the cost of both the Lucan and Broadstone lines by making them shorter.

Colm Donoghue · 11-05-2006, 13:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by thomasjstamp

I thought that the RPA are eventually going to upgrade the Green line into metro anyway?

So, forgive me if I'm wrong, the plan as it is is this:

LUAS to Stephens Green. Off you get. Walk a few hundred yards, go downstairs, get on the Metro. Off you go.

Thomas,
I would hope, and I believed that one of the metro entrances would be near the unitarian church and on would be near the top of grafton st. with the entrance near grafton st being an entrance to the interconnector train station with another entrance near merrion row/kildare st.

I don't think there'd be walks of hundreds of yards from the luas platform to the metro platform.

Ideally the rpa'd remove the railing from the east platform to allow access to a metro entrance about 3 metres from the luas stop.

alek smart · 11-05-2006, 14:50

Regarding Marks earlier point of a dedicated Bus Shuttle through the Central Corridor Zone....Is this the type of thing

http://www.goftr.com/view.php

It`s the ftr,which has just begun operations in York this week.
It has to be said that the start was shaky but this was largely due to poor coordination between Local Authority and Operator and also some unacceptable technical issues with individual vehicles..BUT its built in Ballymena and its available NOW !!

James Shields · 11-05-2006, 15:10

Any significant differences between that and the bendybusses IE (edit: that should, of course, be DB) already have?

I have said several times that the ideal route for a bus service would be Connolly/Spencer Dock - Stephen's Green - Heuston. As well as being a Luas link-up service.

The trouble is that ideally such a service should be free to anyone holding a valid ticket for any city centre bus/rail/Luas service, so there would be very little revenue for the operater.

Would it be reasonable to allow such a service to share Stephen's Lane with Luas?

Thomas J Stamp · 11-05-2006, 16:22

Actually Comd, you're right, dont know why i said a couple of hundred yards. I ment to say a few yards, which, of course, makes things worse!!!

alek smart · 11-05-2006, 17:21

There are no huge differences bewteen the Wrights ftp and the standard Wrights Bodied Volvo B7la of which Dublin Bus have 20 in service.
However the single biggest difference and the essential element which Dublin Bus AND The Dept of Transport singularly failed to grasp,is the single FLAT FARE payable on this route (Incidentally it`s £1.50 Stg.....Put that beside DB`s Fare Levels and the benefits of deregulation tend to pale a little).

The ftp Driver sits in a full width sealed,as with the entire vehicle,air conditioned cab and has NOTHING whatever to do with boarding passengers.

The on-board TIM is quite simple and issues 6 different ticket types.
It should also be noted that the TIM does NOT give change and First York do not entertain any oul guff about change tickets etc on the ftp service.

Having sampled ftp yesterday I would strongly recommend moving the ticket machine away from the front (Boarding) door altogether and placing it mid-vehicle for those who have to purchase on board.

Having taken the decision to introduce an "Honour Based" fare system there is no reason to delay the boarding process any further by obstructing the front door.

In fact I would have multi-door boarding also which would allow full utilization of the hi-capacity principle.

Dublin Buses major error with the Volvo Artics on the 10 route when introduced was to persist with the Shakesperian Theatrecality of endless face to face transactions between driver and passenger which essentially cancelled out any of the benefits which the hi-capacity vehicles could have brought to the route.

There are a wide range of sometimes very simple systems and innovations out there which would revolutionize and vastly improve Centre City Bus Movements,however as of yet our Public Transport Administrators are strongly wedded to the Historical rather than the Futuristic....?

11-05-2006, 11:10	#13
Thomas J Stamp Chairman/Publicity Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: The Home of Hurling Posts: 2,708	I thought that the RPA are eventually going to upgrade the Green line into metro anyway? So, forgive me if I'm wrong, the plan as it is is this: LUAS to Stephens Green. Off you get. Walk a few hundred yards, go downstairs, get on the Metro. Off you go. Then later, get LUAS all the way into O'Connell Street (with all of the disruptions of construction and then running it) to get off beside a Metro Stop (and having gazed at the Metro/LUAS stop on the green as you went) Later still, Green LUAs becomes Metro (lets call that the "Green Metro". Does this mean that the Green Metro will stop where the Luas now stops, or will it be an extenstion of the metro from Stephens Green north? If is is such an extension then what happens to the LUAS link from Stephens Green to O'Connell Street/Red line? Will it still continue or will it be torn up? Is it intended to be as interim as Sherrif Street Station? Or will we have Metro from Bray (of somewhere closer) to the Airport and LUAS from Stephens Green being a spur off of the Red Line? __________________ We are the passengers

11-05-2006, 15:10	#17
James Shields Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Drogheda, Ireland Posts: 1,275	Any significant differences between that and the bendybusses IE (edit: that should, of course, be DB) already have? I have said several times that the ideal route for a bus service would be Connolly/Spencer Dock - Stephen's Green - Heuston. As well as being a Luas link-up service. The trouble is that ideally such a service should be free to anyone holding a valid ticket for any city centre bus/rail/Luas service, so there would be very little revenue for the operater. Would it be reasonable to allow such a service to share Stephen's Lane with Luas? Last edited by James Shields : 11-05-2006 at 17:20.

11-05-2006, 16:22	#18
Thomas J Stamp Chairman/Publicity Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: The Home of Hurling Posts: 2,708	Actually Comd, you're right, dont know why i said a couple of hundred yards. I ment to say a few yards, which, of course, makes things worse!!! __________________ We are the passengers

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10-05-2006, 11:21	#2
Mark Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Northern line Posts: 1,311	Regarding the Luas link up I feel that it will be built. It is currently at design stage and I would say that Cullen will be making it a feature of his reign as transport minister. An alternative as Sean pointed out is a bus link up. Perhaps branded to look like Luas trams and accepting of all central zone valid tickets. It would go back and forth from O'Connell Street to St Stephen's Green at a 5 min frequency. Run by the RPA perhaps or is that asking too much? Once again tho there is considerable commercial pressure to see the link up and at a possible build time of 2 years and a cost of circa €100m I cant see it being pulled at this stage. Government/DoT officials etc will announce it as an investment in transport in the city centre etc etc but what it really is is just them correcting their mistakes at the expense of the public and the taxpayer in both the guise of too late and now over cost.

10-05-2006, 12:00	#3
Kevin K Kelehan Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: West Tower Posts: 355	Garret's position has always been that Luas capacity does not provide sufficient capacity or a diverse enough reach to justify the wholesale disruption to Dublin Bus routes if this route is selected. Lets be honest if Luas enters Nassau Street it will for the first time have no segregation whatsoever from other road uses. Looking at the existing on street lines Harcourt Road to Stephens Green is clearly segregated as is Connolly to Upper Abbey St and St Mary's Abbey to St James' Hospital. Analysing the traffic flows of Upper Abbey St there is solely the odd car who uses the route illegally and the odd delivery van who uses it to service either Jervis or local retail. Upper Abbey St is no comparison to the number of buses who use Nassau St not to mention taxis and cars who use it illegally. There is also the issue of the pinch point between BOI 2 College Green and Trinity College; put simply there is a serious choice for Martin Cullen to make Change the favoured Luas route or change the Bus routes away from College Green/Nassau St

10-05-2006, 12:13	#5
Kevin K Kelehan Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: West Tower Posts: 355	Politically we all know this will not happen the government have to at least provide some road works pre June 2007 on this. I however feel that a Luas link up if the route is carefully selected will attract sufficient passengers to justify the cost even after the arrival of an underground metro be it to Tallaght or Cherrywood. The problem here is that neither route has been adequately addressed for the longer term and that the Luas link up is being presented as the end game. Which even prior to the Cherrywood and Citywest extensions looks inadequate given the rate at which densities are increasing on the line.

10-05-2006, 16:39	#6
philip Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 632	The simple solution is to allow buses to use the tram route too. Works all over Europe. The on street tram is always going to be useful, whatever happens with a metro. In the short term they should allow buses on the tram tracks and longer ter move away from so many radial bus routes altogether, in favour of orbitals feeding into radial rail routes.

10-05-2006, 16:50	#7
Kevin K Kelehan Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: West Tower Posts: 355	I'm not so sure in relation to the Nassau St section given how narrow it is and the number of busses that use it 10 11 11A 11B 14 14A 15 15A 15B 15C 46A 46B 746 plus aircoach and most tour buses as well as international coaches inbound as well as the same plus all the Merrion Road Busses outbound If Luas is routed down this stretch then alternative routes will need to be found for most of these buses as if one bus breaks down the Luas from Cherrywood to City Centre is down for the time it takes to get a tow truck in from Donnybrook

10-05-2006, 17:18	#8
CSL Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 378	I agree strongly with Kevin. Dawson and Nassau College Green overground is a silly option, you are combining two of public service transport providers into one bottleneck and disrupting both. The buses carry far more people. What is wrong with putting Luas underground anyway ?

10-05-2006, 19:57	#9
philip Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 632	I'm just comparing the situation to Munich. There are a few tram routes which have high requency metrobus routes on them too. It seems to work fine. Maybe they have higher reliability rates on their bus fleet, but it's a much older fleet so I doubt it. It'd be a medium term solution of course. Ling term we don't want to be running so many buses into town. I can completely see the argument you guys are putting forward and I agree that bus passengers MUST not be discommoded for the tram but I have no problem in discommoding car drivers by diverting buses onto other steets and banning/restricting cars from those streets. We are going to be going through some rough times over the next decade. It's not all going to be painless unfortunately but I think an on-street tram is desirable for short hops across town. Munich has multiple routes where trams parallel undergrounds and they are still really busy, crush laden busy. People like the convenience of street level trams.

10-05-2006, 21:00	#10
PaulM Really Regular Poster Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 826	Kevin, 4,5, 7 (and variants), 8, 45 and 145 also use this route. There are a lot of buses on that road.

10-05-2006, 22:09	#11
sean Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Dublin Posts: 707	I've always felt that the Luas link-up was a dumb idea, quite frankly. Yes, the Harcourt St. alignment was almost totally intact. Yes it should have been a DART/Metro from day 1. But it isn't - yet. The authorities made a mess of it by getting cheap and going with trams. So now they're going to compound it by heaping one glorious waste onto another? Whats going to happen when the Metro comes? We know what happens in cities like Munich and Berlin, they tear up the tramline. But in Dublin, they'll leave it there at least until the St. Stephens Green - Cherrywood section is converted to Metro (i.e. has an M sticker applied to the trams) then what for the €100M extension? Far better just to provide a free, integrated bus connecting Abbey-Green and use the money to bring forward the Metro, or to extend the Metro South so that it physically connects with the Luas at Charlemont or Ranelagh.

10-05-2006, 22:11	#12
Derek Wheeler Registered user Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Kildare Posts: 1,555	In relation the the general thrust of Garret Fitzgeralds article, the Luas is not up to the job of carrying the amount of people it carries. I'd base that on the already known lack of public transport systems in Dublin, which is why so many flocked to it. Packed trams are not a sign of success, they are a sign that public transport in Dublin is disasterous. For this we blame Governments. As presented, the original CIE light rail proposal that was inherited by the RPA, was a poor mans version of an actual train service. There is simply no getting away from this. For example, Tallaght has a population approaching over 100,000. Serving that with buses and light rail is, in my opinion, very lame. I believe that in Dublin, we expect a tram to do the job of a train. Engineers will disagree with me. But back in the 1970s, Tallaght was already identified as an area that would require a train service. (DART) The Green line works, to a degree, at the moment, because it has a very direct route (along a previous rail alignment) to the city centre. The extension to this line as planned will only serve to equate it to the red line and finally convert it to a "real" light rail service. As things stand, the only difference between Green line services and the previous "train" service is the units are shorter and at higher frequencies. New passengers further out in areas such as Cherrywood, will get a red line experience. If its extended to Bray, then the journey time will be excruciating. So when is a tram a train and when is a train meant to be a tram????

11-05-2006, 14:50	#16
alek smart Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 144	Regarding Marks earlier point of a dedicated Bus Shuttle through the Central Corridor Zone....Is this the type of thing http://www.goftr.com/view.php It`s the ftr,which has just begun operations in York this week. It has to be said that the start was shaky but this was largely due to poor coordination between Local Authority and Operator and also some unacceptable technical issues with individual vehicles..BUT its built in Ballymena and its available NOW !!

11-05-2006, 17:21	#19
alek smart Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 144	There are no huge differences bewteen the Wrights ftp and the standard Wrights Bodied Volvo B7la of which Dublin Bus have 20 in service. However the single biggest difference and the essential element which Dublin Bus AND The Dept of Transport singularly failed to grasp,is the single FLAT FARE payable on this route (Incidentally it`s £1.50 Stg.....Put that beside DB`s Fare Levels and the benefits of deregulation tend to pale a little). The ftp Driver sits in a full width sealed,as with the entire vehicle,air conditioned cab and has NOTHING whatever to do with boarding passengers. The on-board TIM is quite simple and issues 6 different ticket types. It should also be noted that the TIM does NOT give change and First York do not entertain any oul guff about change tickets etc on the ftp service. Having sampled ftp yesterday I would strongly recommend moving the ticket machine away from the front (Boarding) door altogether and placing it mid-vehicle for those who have to purchase on board. Having taken the decision to introduce an "Honour Based" fare system there is no reason to delay the boarding process any further by obstructing the front door. In fact I would have multi-door boarding also which would allow full utilization of the hi-capacity principle. Dublin Buses major error with the Volvo Artics on the 10 route when introduced was to persist with the Shakesperian Theatrecality of endless face to face transactions between driver and passenger which essentially cancelled out any of the benefits which the hi-capacity vehicles could have brought to the route. There are a wide range of sometimes very simple systems and innovations out there which would revolutionize and vastly improve Centre City Bus Movements,however as of yet our Public Transport Administrators are strongly wedded to the Historical rather than the Futuristic....?