Ireland is wasting a golden Green Line opportunity to appease misguided south Dublin fears
IRELAND HAS AN open goal. Rather than scoring, we're about to stumble, trip and faceplant.
Of course, what else could we be referring to, other than the Luas Green line metro upgrade?
We'll explain in more detail below, but essentially, this would upgrade the section of the Green Line running from Charlemont to Sandyford to metro standard.
This will allow far more trams to run on the line per hour. These trams will also move faster along a metro line compared to a 'standard' tram line.
The result? More people will be moved around in a shorter amount of time. In an area which desperately needs it – the Green Line is already operating near capacity.
Commuters are often packed in at peak hours in the mornings, and sometimes people can't get onto trams at all.
This problem is set to get worse in the coming years as the population living near the Green Line rises.
Upgrading to a metro would be a straightforward way to alleviate this.
Even better – the hard work is already done. When the Green Line was built in the early 2000s, it was constructed in a way which allowed for it to be easily upgraded to a metro.
If done as part of the MetroLink project, as intended, the upgrade would also be relatively cheap – it's estimated it may
only cost about €300 million
.
Providing a metro service for a decent section of the south of the city for just €300 million would be incredible value. For context, the northside MetroLink section is estimated to cost just under €10 billion, rising to over €20 billion in a 'worst case' scenario.
So a cheap infrastructure upgrade which will benefit thousands upon thousands of people. And yet – Ireland isn't going to do it.
The upgrade was originally shelved due to political pressure and local lobbying a few years ago.
Earlier this week, Fianna Fáil TD Shay Brennan
suggested this decision should be reversed
and the Green Line should be upgraded as soon as possible. Here's why he's right.
The Plan
Metrolink
Metrolink
The Green Line upgrade was originally meant to be rolled in with the MetroLink plan.
The proposed MetroLink involves building an entirely new metro line with 16 stations running from Swords, just north of Dublin airport, to Charlemont, in the south city centre.
This next part is where there has been confusion. The Green Line already runs from Charlemont to Sandyford, so why would the metro go along the same route?
Because – the metro on the southside section never involved building an entirely new metro line. It was always intended as an upgrade to the Green Line.
This is why the Green Line was built to Metro standard in terms of the track bed and track widths. So we could easily replace Luas trams with larger higher capacity metro carriages.
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The MetroLink northside project provides a golden opportunity to do this.
Once the project is finished with the northside section to Charlemont, it could continue and do the upgrade works between Charlemont and Sandyford.
This would also allow a full metro route to run between Swords and Sandyford, allowing people to rapidly cross the city.
This was the original plan, because transport officials recognise that the Green Line is already near capacity. It will have to be upgraded to a metro sooner or later.
This is an important point, so it bears repeating – the upgrade
*has to*
happen. Or the Green Line will be completely overwhelmed in the coming years.
Given that the upgrade has to happen, why not do it now, rather than later? A few reasons have been put forward.
Opposition to the plan
The key sticking point is fears around disruption to the Green Line. In 2019,
media reported that it may
have to be closed for up to four years to facilitate upgrade works.
Then transport minister Shane Ross
came out strongly against this
, both in the media and in meetings with transport officials.
Other prominent south Dublin
politicians also fought the plan
. These politicians tended to have constituents near the Green Line, who opposed metro works.
The end result was that the Green Line upgrade got removed from the MetroLink project. Transport officials cited the opposition to 'significant network challenges during the years of construction' as a driving reason for the change.
It was only later that it emerged that the entire Green Line would actually not have been shut. Instead, sections of the track would have been closed over a period of four years.
While this would no doubt cause significant disruption, it would not be nearly as much as a closure of the entire line.
For example, the initial 18 months of upgrade works would have been at the Beechwood station only. The Green Line could continue to function south of Beechwood and north of Ranelagh.
Consultants for the plan also suggested an alternative way of upgrading the Green Line, which they said could reduce the closure period by 'around 14 months'.
Now, obviously closing parts of the Green Line at all is not ideal. But what's the alternative? Leaving the line to run as is, until it gets completely overwhelmed with passenger demand?
All transport officials have recognised that the Green Line should be upgraded to a metro to improve capacity.
If this must be done, better to do it sooner rather than later, as capacity problems are only getting worse with more and more people living near the route.
Metro West
There have also been some suggestions that, instead of upgrading the Green Line to a metro, MetroLink could instead 'go west'. This would involve building a line
out towards Rathfarnham
.
Something like this has been proposed by several politicians, including the likes of former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan.
Honestly – this is just confusing two things which have zero relation to each other. This is because a western metro would basically be an entirely new project. The Green Line is already there and ready to upgrade.
By contrast – you can't just 'extend' MetroLink to west Dublin. You have to build an entirely new metro line.
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A western metro would likely have a similar cost to the northside MetroLink section – so, say in the region of €10 – €20 billion.
This means the €300 million to upgrade the Green Line would be 3% the cost of €10 billion to build a new western one. Or potentially, 1.5%, if building a new line ended up costing closer to €20 billion. The two projects don't even remotely compare.
A hypothetical western line isn't even a firm idea as things stand. It would have to go through rounds of design, public consultation and planning, just like MetroLink.
Given MetroLink was first announced in 2005 and building still hasn't started 20 years later, there's approximately a 0% chance a western route would be ready to go by the time the northern line is expected to finish up construction.
By contrast, the Green Line is there, ready to be upgraded cheaply. Trying to frame the Green Line upgrade as an 'either/or' compared to an imaginary western line makes absolutely zero sense.
20-year delay
Finally, let's come back to what transport officials said in 2019, when it was decided that the Green Line upgrade would be shelved.
They said a proposed upgrade of the Luas Green Line may not be needed for
'up to 20 years'
.
That announcement was already made more than six years ago. It was recently reported that the northern MetroLink would be
completed 'in 2035'
.
That would be 16 years from 2019 – not far off the 'maximum' of 20 years the Green Line could continue without the metro upgrade. And that's if the MetroLink timeline doesn't slip further, which it almost certainly will.
Department of Transport
/ YouTube
It's very conceivable that building work on the MetroLink could finish at Charlemont sometime in the mid 2030s.
And, rather than continuing south and doing the extremely straightforward Green Line upgrade, the MetroLink team would pack up and go home.
Then, with the Green Line undoubtedly heaving at this point, transport officials will have to do the upgrade as an entirely separate project to MetroLink.
The Green Line metro upgrade would have to go through planning hoops separately. All the tendering, separately. Then construction, separately.
Rather than costing €300 million, the price would soar, possibly into the billions.
And it would mean that people along the Green Line would have a much worse transport service for years and years more than needed.
This would all be unimaginably stupid. And yet, it is exactly the plan as things stand.
The politicians opposing the Green Line upgrade need to have a deep, introspective look at themselves.
They understand everything which has been outlined in this article. And yet, they still oppose the Green Line upgrade. They should have a think about why.
And if they want to be the ones held responsible when people spending their mornings crammed like sardines on the Green Line realise that they've been duped out of a metro service due to political wrangling.
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