Ireland’s planning body, An Bord Pleanála, will determine later this year the fate of an ambitious proposal to build the country’s first underground railway. Residents of the Irish capital won’t be holding their breath, however. Since it was first proposed 25 years ago, MetroLink has been cancelled, revived and rebranded. The latest version of the plan, which involves just 18.8km of track, has been subject to delays, costs that have spiralled to five times the original estimate, and fierce opposition from homeowners, heritage bodies and businesses.
A wide-awake city of tech firms, theatres and tourist attractions, Dublin is one of the EU’s richest metropolitan areas; it is also the only large western European capital without a metro. No Dubliner would have been more frustrated with the situation’s absurdities, and MetroLink’s slow progress, than Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Fully autonomous taxis will be up and running before you even break ground on a metro. What in buggery are you doing?
It’s much harder to make the alternatives cost billions that can be stolen and carried off by cronies. See HS2.
You can walk to anywhere you want to go in Dublin.
And the places you don’t want to go to can bloody well stay there.
( Besides, Ireland used to have a massive rail network and trams and stuff in Dublin. Where are they all now ?)
Why not dig up the Glasgow Subway and transport it to Dublin? That would increase the wealth of each city (said some mad fuck in the Fens).
“it is also the only large western European capital without a metro.”
So fucking what?
The yes/no on metros isn’t about being a capital or “large”. It’s about population size and density. Do you have enough people who want to go from A to B all day that traffic would be intolerable? If so, despite the massive running cost, the volume pays it off, the city runs better.
Dublin has 600,000 people and the density of Reading. While the IDR can be a bastard at 5:30, Reading generally works fine with a mix of cars and buses. If you want commuting to work better, put in bus lanes. Let the market of Stagecoach, Arriva etc run some buses to meet the demands.
Metros work when you get to central London and central Paris levels of density. Transport choice is about density. It’s why rural buses are mostly stupid. Cars work best there. Small towns, cars, with a few buses. Large towns, more buses a bit less cars. Huge cities, metros and buses and try and minimise cars.
All of this is just people with a boner for choo-choos. The stuff about the environment tourism and industry is just cover for what they really want. Why they can’t just move to ffestiniog and have their fetish indulged and leave the rest of us alone, I don’t know.
Once Ireland starts importing pallys the tunnels will appear as if by magic.
Ottokring, Edinburgh is the very same, with no metro either (though Glasgow has the clockwork Orange.).
Martin has the right of it. Self-driving taxis and such do not create a pile of money to be looted. Don’t for a minute think this is about solving a transport problem.
Perhaps Ireland has run out of navvies? With the current population, having 9 different names for a shovel could delay things.
To be completely fair to this argument, fully autonomous self-driving robot taxis have been just around the corner for at least 20 years.
Indeed Julia
What Dublin needs is some extension of the DART or a DLR type connection with its airport. That’s about it really. All the employment is in business parks.
The Edinburgh tram is handy because it links the old town with Murrayfield and the airport, but at massive costs and delays for really just a bog standard service. The buses were cheaper and took the same amount of time and frequency, but are a pain with luggage.
I visited Dublin ten years ago, and they seemed to have a well working surface-level metro, aka tram. The only flaw in the transport I found is that there’s no connection to the ferry terminal in the middle of nowhere other than an hourly bus from an obscure departure point.
It is amazing how many cities are totally incapable of putting in functional train stations at their airports.
Heathrow, which by now should just be another stop on the lines out to the west (and arguably north) is also shit, unless you are coming from London.
Aberdeen has a station right next to it, only on the wrong side of the runway for the terminal.
I could go on.
It’s bad enough that I now firmly believe in a global conspiracy between taxi drivers and transport planning officials.
Even from London, your Heathrow options are overpriced “express” for unwitting tourists, infrequent and unreliable Elizabeth line, or slow but reliable and cheap tube.
I would guess its similar to the Metro in Pyongyang (such as I understand)- it’s for the WEF/UN appointed government to be able to get from home to work in Dublin and have their compliance with environmental directives monitored.
All these people talking about autonomous transport need to take a reality check. Noone on this blog will be permitted to travel independently. It is in every WEF conference, every Bilderberg group meeting , every UN Agenda 2030 summit. Independent travel will be severely restricted, if permitted at all and you will be expected to holiday in the Metaverse.
Do you think these people are just drawing these things up to fill time? We are dealing with hundreds of Cultists like Murphy on a global scale. The evil is eternal and unremitting.
BiG,
“To be completely fair to this argument, fully autonomous self-driving robot taxis have been just around the corner for at least 20 years.”
Waymo are operating them in the USA. But what I’m not sure about, and no-one is talking about is how much remote support they need. Can you operate these taxis at a lower cost with less humans, or is it a sort of mechanical turk thing and once they get big enough, they float the company to a load of suckers?
Also, the airport thing is what you get with governments in charge of railways. Rail links from airports are a no-brainer because you’re competing with the cost of airport parking. A week’s parking at Heathrow is bare minimum £70. So you can charge people in Reading £30 return to Heathrow and they’ll bite your hand off. You’ll make a profit on it. But because that would encourage people to fly instead of using a slow unreliable choo-choo to Edinburgh or whereever, they won’t do it.
Instead we build these high speed trains that no-one except politicians and train wankers want.
BIG,
Just to add on that, the fastest and cheapest way to get from Heathrow to Swindon is by coach. Because it doesn’t have to do all the pissing about with changes. And it’s more reliable than the trains.
The missed opportunity with the Elizabeth Line was not linking Heathrow with somewhere like Feltham or Staines, thus opening up links to the south via Clapham Junction .
I’ve only used the Liz once and spent more time walking through Bond Street station than in the bloody train.
Bloke in Ger-
Even better, the original Abdn airport terminal was next to the railway station.
The planners ( funded by the taxi Co’s?) got it moved in the 70s.
( There were plans for a pedestrian belt way tunnel to link the two a la Schipol, but as in usual in UK – that was shelved.)
It’s obvious what Dublin REALLY needs….
Well, sir, there’s nothing on earth
Like a genuine, bona fide
Electrified, six-car monorail
What’d I say?
Monorail
What’s it called?
Monorail
That’s right! Monorail
Monorail
Monorail
Monorail
Don’t know about other towns, but there is an hourly bus service from Camberley in Surrey, direct to T5, which takes about 35 minutes. My retired mate regularly uses it as a day out when he’s bored (these free bus passes for us old ‘uns do come in handy).
There was a regular bus from Heathrow to Egham, but like Heart of Gold it seemed to pass through every point in the Universe to get there.