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LAST UPDATE | 9 Nov 2021
PLANS FOR AN underground Dart line in Dublin have been shelved until at least 2042, according to a revised National Transport Authority (NTA) strategy.
Published this morning for public consultation, the Transport Strategy for the Greater Dublin Area will cost an estimated €25 billion over the next 20 years.
It sets out proposals for improving cycling and pedestrian infrastructure in the capital and transitioning the Dublin bus and commuter rail fleet to electric by 2035 in a bid to cut emissions.
It also includes proposals for the long-awaited Metrolink from Swords to Charlemont in Dublin 6, planning permission for which will be sought next year.
However, the scheme is not expected to be operational until after 2031, according to the strategy.
Meanwhile, proposals for an underground Dart line — linking Heuston Station to the Dart service — have been pushed out beyond the scope of the 20-year programme.
The scheme originally received planning permission in 2010 but was “not brought forward at the time primarily due to funding constraints and also due to the potential to utilise the Phoenix Park Tunnel for passenger service”, according to the NTA’s revised strategy.
“Since then, the Phoenix Park Tunnel link has been brought into operational service, providing connectivity from the Kildare line to the city centre stations of Connolly, Tara and Pearse.”
However, the NTA said it was “satisfied” that the need for an additional heavy rail line through Dublin City Centre will arise over the “longer term”.
As such, it said the plans will “be preserved and protected” to allow its future delivery after 2042.
Additionally, the strategy outlines plans to deliver four new Luas lines — to Finglas, Lucan, Poolbeg and Bray — between 2031 and 2042.
Design work will also commence on eight further extensions serving:
Commenting on the publication of the strategy, Anne Graham, chief executive of the NTA said, “As far as NTA is concerned, the single biggest step that can be taken to tackle climate change is to encourage as many people as possible to use public transport and other sustainable modes, rather than the private car.
“In broad terms, our Strategy will facilitate this by investing in services and infrastructure, now and into the future.
“We in the NTA want to play our part and we want to lead by example, and we will do that by transitioning our public transport fleet away from fossil fuel to low and zero-emission technologies. This process is already under way, and when complete in 2035 will result in a massive reduction in public transport emissions.”
Political reaction
There has been widespread political reaction to the strategy, with Tánaiste and Business Minister Leo Varadkar saying that it only represented the beginning of a public consultation which “has not been approved by government”.
He told RTÉ’s News and One that improvements to cycling and pedestrian facilities and increasing the frequency of existing rail lines was being prioritised over the forthcoming few years.
“In relation to Metro, this is a huge project it is going to take time and it is going to be expensive, our timeline is that it goes to planning and railway order next year,” he said.
We’d hope to go to tender and financial flows in ’23 and then beginning construction in ’24 or ’25 and realistically it will take five or six years to be able to test and commission.
Various opposition parties have criticised the new strategy in the context of last week’s Climate Action Plan which has targeted a 42-50% decrease in transport emissions by 2030.
“The government has failed at the first hurdle with regards to reaching the targets that were set out in the Climate Action Plan, which they launched just last week,” People Before Profit’s Paul Murphy TD said this morning.
Transport is our second biggest emitting sector, the targets are between 42-50% reductions by 2030. And yet many of the big public transport infrastructural projects are now being postponed, put on the long finger.
He added: “The ambition is simply to move people from petrol or diesel private cars into electric private cars, as opposed to the massive modal shift in terms of the nature of transport that people take.”
Labour’s Ivana Bacik TD said the longer timeline was a “grave disappointment” and that the government needed to provide details about how exactly Ireland will meet the cut to transport emissions that’s being targeted.
Catherine Murphy TD of the Social Democrats said that the continued expansion of Dublin and commuter towns needed to see a corresponding increase in transport services.
“There’s been over €200 million spent on Metrolink and Dart Interconnector, it’s well over €200 million without delivering anything. You can’t keep on expanding the footprint of a city, which has happened in the greater Dublin area without providing a comparable ability for people to move around,” she said.
- With reporting by Rónán Duffy
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Could anyone be surprised by this? We are promised the same things every few years and then they are shelved due to funding issues. Ireland has terrible public transport infrastructure and doesn’t get the funding it needs.
@Darren: Sure as the ould sayin’ goes: “Why do today what you can put off ’till twenty years on from tomorrow?”
@Sean May: Sure the Irish people keep voting the same people back in. What motivation have they got to change and actually make progress?
@Darren: It makes one wonder about the implementation of the National Development Plan recently mooted by FFG to much fanfare. Perhaps FFG should implement a National Procrastination Plan, I’m sure that would be a huge success for them.
Still no rail link to Dublin Airport…maybe one of the only International Airport in Europe with no rail link
@In the paper: sure can’t we just walk there from the city centre? It’s only about 10km?
@In the paper: wouldn’t want to upset the Taxi Drivers
@In the paper: This, in of itself, should be enough to turf out any incumbent TD in North Dublin in the next election. A total and utter joke of a set up.
The Government has very few topics that they actually control the destiny of and infrastructure is as high on the list as anything and they just keep failing on this.
@Gary Connolly: Are they the same ones who take you for scenic view of the City if you are on your first visit
@Lisa Jones: Or you could spare your your feet and get the bus ?
@Lisa Jones: Is there even footpaths al the way to the airport from the city centre?
We seriously need to look at governance in this country from the top right down to the bottom.
We couldn’t have designed a more inefficent, incompetent, self-serving mess of a system if we had set out to do so in the first place.
To have a hope of getting anything done apparently requires a series of committees and reports which all go out the window when a new government is elected with new agendas and new promises to be kept and of course most importantly the need to be re-elected in 5 years time.
Anyone who thinks we live in a democracy is deluding themselves as being lied to every 5 years and then being told when you complain about it that you can have your say on the issue again…in another 5 years… is not my idea of a democracy.
@Stanley Marsh: agreed. To my mind any infrastructure plan should be locked in place, like an international agreement, and can’t be replaced except in exceptional circumstances.
@john smith iv: they would always find or invent exceptional circumstances.
@Stanley Marsh: well then stop voting in the FFG muppets time after time and give someone else a go
@Stanley Marsh: So, just what IS your idea if democracy? And what country comes closest to your ideal?
@Official Irish CC: That’s part of the problem. Voting for someone else will change very little.
It’s the system that needs to change and as we all know ‘turkeys don’t vote for Xmas”.
@sean o’dhubhghaill: It would take someone far cleverer than me to fix our political system but fundamentally there would need to be far more accountability than at present.
At the moment politicians can say and promise whatever they want to get elected and then retort with basically ‘campaign in poetry, govern in prose’ when called to task and as I said before remind people with a wry smile that they can have their say again at the next election as they get in their car to drive up to the Dail.
That kind of carry on should be illegal and there should be a system in place to police it.
It’s also daft that the country is for the most part run by teachers, marketing men, farm managers and professional politicians with no more idea how to run a Department than you or me.
I also think that governance should be brought into the 21th centaury so that citizens can have an immediate say on the issues of the day through secure, online plebiscites.
We can do our banking and taxes online so why not keep our politicians in check as well?
What could be more democratic than that?
I’m not saying every little decision should be voted on by the people but we have the technology now to involve voters a lot more than in the past i.e. once every 4 to 5 years.
The current system exists because it has evolved that way and it suits some to keep it the way it is but it is a shambles and badly needs to be re-worked.
Need something for Airport
The amount of money wasted on failed infrastructure projects in Ireland in the last 20 years is incredible. The “ah sure what can we do” attitude costs us very dearly.
Jaysus, Amsterdam has 300k population and a public transport system that pisses all over Dublins.
@Seán Corcoran Antichrist: Netherlands also has a basic income tax rate of 37% and a higher rate of 49.5%.
It’s amazing what can be done when there’s public money available, isn’t it?
@Ajax Penumbra: With the higher rate coming in at about 68k, the marginal would lower in the Netherlands than for many Irish tax payers.
Infrastructure isn’t funded out if taxes anyway, it is funded from loans and bonds. And repayments are as low as they are ever going to be.
@Seán Corcoran Antichrist: The population of Amsterdam is believed to be around 1.15 million people
@john smith iv: and they still expect us to cut carbon emissions and be nearly fully electric by 2030 12 years before they even consider building mire public transport. Any money says in 2042 it’ll be delayed another 20 years
@Cian: oh I don’t expect to live to see it and I’m in my forties.
@Ajax Penumbra: and I bet they don’t waste as much money. Accountability is a great thing.
@Seán Corcoran Antichrist: it as over 800, 000 actually. Amsterdam is kinda like a suburb of the Randstad which has 8.3 million people. So it does not compare to Dublin at all.
@Jason Dawson: It’s amazing what the Dutch get done with their taxes – take a look at NotJust Bikes’ channel on YouTube – a Canadian who moved to the Netherlands, and his explanations of why he did so (hint: it’s not just bikes!). Watching his stuff, all of Irish local and national government should be ashamed of themselves.
@Type17: If you only watch one of his vids, look at “Do Your Buses Get Stuck in Traffic?”, and think of public transport in Irish towns and cities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQY6WGOoYis
@Type17: thanks, I’ll check that out.
@Type17: very informative clip that. Cheers
To put this in a nutshell, the country which has only built 53 km of electric rail (the Dart) since 1984 (a 1970′s project) and 42 km of light rail since 2004 – proposes to do absolutely nothing for the next 20 years, which means “never” in the limited minds of the mandarins in the Department of Finance. This is pathetic and embarrassing. It also shows these people can not deliver on infrastructure projects, nor keep a tight-lid on costs. Always remember, that the original Dublin Tramway system at its peak had 97 km of electrified rail..at the beginning of the 20th Century?
@fweed: According to the latest climate action plan. Electric rail is set to triple by 2030. Not sure if that means new infrastructure or upgrading intercity rail. So that’s 285 miles in 2030. Hopefully not all around Dublin.
Reliability will be a factor with diesel engines when B20 biofuel becomes the norm. Mixing diesel with 20% cooking oil may reduce emissions. At low temp its Velocity clogs up fuel lines. During high temp a slime grows that block filters.
FFS, all this blubber about sustainability and reducing our emissions and the very projects conceived to help us do just that all get kicked down the road!
Absolutely farcical.
@Tony Stanley: Exactly. And we’ll have Eamon Ryan heaping taxes and congestion charges on to us without any real alternatives for us to use.
These politicians wouldn’t know their arsenal from their elbows
@rolyat ecnal: *ar$e
There remains one problem though and that is that there is only one line to Tallaght and one line to Cherrywood, all extensions feed into these lines and so the service is slowed and over capacity with people squashed like sardines. Unless new and additional tracks are laid then additional services will be at the expense of the two over subscribed lines in existence.
@Honeybee: Plot twist: they don’t actually care about getting people to use public transport or move from their cars.
Honestly, who would rely on Dublin’s commuter rail or Luas service pre-COVID? It’s so expensive and poor compared to any other European city. We’re the only European country that uses diesel commuter trains in a city. Think about that.
@Tomo: exactly I can get a bus to Malaga, a one hour journey and back for 5 euro.
@Tomo: well I use the DART. However that was built on the 80s.
@Honeybee: at least you have trains to Tallaght etc. The Northside is seriously neglected by any public transport other than reduced bus services.
@Lisa Jones: @Lisa Jones: Agree 100% Lisa, it is unthinkable that after all these years that no provision was made to have a light rail system operating in the northside especially with all the development approvals in the last twenty years.
Every time we see a national plan being launched we have a transport minister making a statement that we will have metro going via Dublin Airport in five years, and the next five years on it goes. And would Be better to hand it over to a private company To build the metro and the state could lease it back
Unfortunately they got away with that once already – with our toll bridges. And we’re still paying tolls. That wasn’t in the plan.
To be honest, this can be applied to all public transport in Ireland. Light years behind our European neighbours.
Should have been done years ago. We should have another 5 or 6 luas lines in Dublin. A minimum of 2-3 tram lines in Cork, Galway and Limerick. These things always get more expensive, so the logic is the sooner you do it the cheaper it will be… Money is cheap to borrow for the last few years… Missed opportunities. This country is terrible at this forward planning stuff!!
Absolute joke. Is the DART+ plan that they spent two years working on, huge sums of money developing and unveiled just 12 months ago, going ahead? How is another quarter decade of doing nothing with the transport infrastructure going to facilitate the commuting needs of our growing population? The tree huggers will probably have us all commuting around on bicycles made of recycled chestnuts by then.
They are more interested in cycling lanes
“As far as NTA is concerned, the single biggest step that can be taken to tackle climate change is to encourage as many people as possible to use public transport and other sustainable modes, rather than the private car.” :’)… say one thing do another, Anne will go far methinks, lol!
No doubt some spin will involve the fact that they’re planning ahead for an increased population. Of renters with cars.
@thesaltyurchin: Definition of a ‘strategy’ is the ‘actions’ taken to achieve goals – thats why ‘hope’ is not a stratgy – someone needs to explain to NTA that mothballing something for 20 years is not a strategy either – it is merely NOT doing something – delaying metrolink is not a strategy either – not doing stuff is not a strategy – it is just waffling.
The Government obviously, very wisely, waiting the last 30 and next 20 years to see what happens with transport, probably to see how technology like hyperloops etc come along. Just like they did with trains and motorways in the 80/90s, be a laughing stock now to use trains in this day and age! Don’t want to go in head first, that would be silly. 50 years is a patient approach and the right way to do it. Imagine if they had taken action in the 90s, they’d look right fools now not having anything to promise anymore, or m to think up new improvements. It’s a great idea to stall further and do nothing about it, we could be the first with teleportation devices straight into town from the airport when the next plan is announced in 2030, where will the begrudgers be then? I know where I’ll be!
In all seriousness.. what have we left in this country? Fantastic scenery and people (most) but in terms of work, infrastructure, medical, education, etc… (i’m referring to the depts) why would anyone want to stay here?
@C: For the same reason that I smoke; our government needs the tax!
Should we not just have a bit of an old pray?
@John Hayes: Good idea or maybe a round of applause and a pay rise for the lads just to cheers then up
Neanderthals
20 years… sure, the Dart line will mostly be under water by then, will it not? Especially from landsdowne Road through to Shankill, that entire section will be flooded, with most of the remaining southside network being heavily eroded. Is this even referred to in these plans?
@Stephen Rogan: I’m glad someone’s awake to facts. By then, sure, Cork will have an overhead monorail, no doubt.
@Stephen Rogan: no. That’s the worst case scenario of the ispcc reports, driven by clickbait journalism. It might accelerate but the sea level change now is 3.4mm a year, maybe 2.5 inches by 2050.
@Stephen Rogan: Youre absolutely right. The smart money is in submarines!
… and London started their underground over 150 yrs ago
Shambles
Maybe we could get some Spanish politicians in to run the place.
@john smith iv: I could be wrong but I’d say we have too many Opus Dei control freaks in power as things are.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: neither country has Opus Dei, Ireland never had. Didn’t need them. What the Spanish do have are politicians able to build out high speed railways. They started relatively late too. In the 90s.
@john smith iv: Opus Dei have a centre in Dartry, played 5 a side football there for years. Apparently former Government minister and President Sean T O’Kelly was a member ‘the church’s man in the cabinet’
Time to GTFO of Dublin
@Johnny: A pity that involves the expense of having to run a car though.
Must be great drawing up all these plans full in the knowledge they will never be delivered upon
On a brighter note lads Cork is getting a Luas line and a convention centre I would think that’s been fast tracked and that’s why Dublin projects are pushed out…
@Ollie Egan: Grand so, we’ll all move to Cork.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: come down Fiona girl we would love to have you
Even if they started building it now, it would 2042 or later before it’s built between objections, delays and cost over runs?
@Paul Shepherd: The Port Tunnel came in on time and under budget. It’d be great if all other public projects could be finished.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: no it didn’t, came in at nearly twice the budget according to https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/port-tunnel-cost-804m-50pc-more-than-budget-26717361.html
What a joke…NDP my ar5e!!
Can anyone tell me what the speed limit on a Coastal cyclelane is and should the cyclist be using due care and attention to pedestrians while using it.
Ps its NOT a RACETRACK.
@Larry Rawson: pedestrians shouldn’t be in a cycle lane, they should be on footpaths.
@larry bird: the coastal cycle lanes are dual use.
@larry bird: well since they can’t fly like a bird over it what would you suggest Larry
@john smith iv: There is a line for most of it showing where pedestrians should be, if you stick to your side you’ll be fine, cross it at your peril.
@Larry Rawson: If pedestrians woke up and looked around them we wouldn’t have to shout at you.
If Sinn Fein want my vote for the first time then they should commit to getting these infrastructure projects build immediately.
Oh wait the children’s hospital
Postponed until we all get 40k loans to replace our perfectly functioning cars with ev’s
to be replaced by eamonn bike lanes, the future is bike
No surprise here but haven’t many developments been given the green light on the back of rail links etc now it’s just bus or bike alternative for most
@Hugh Mc Donnell: Bus? are you joking? we don’t even have a full time service. in over 35 years of work, I have never had a job where I could use public transport in Dublin to get to work. I don’t think they even realize people work weekends or shifts yet.
Something to look forward to
What do we pay these people for..
Straightforward really – cycle out to the airport and give your bike to a new arrival. Blue sky thinking. Who needs a metro system anyway.
Relax,there’s no panic
We need a National List based electoral system, so politicians don’t make long-term infrastructural decisions based on their short-term chances in the next election, and whether their constituents might complain about not being able to park their Range Rover outside the school
Meanwhile Hanoi opens its new skytrain line. Its similarly mothballed but at least its open and in existence right here, right now.
Might not be a bad idea to put off the underground for the moment at least. Just thinking that hyperloop infrastructure might be soon replacing train lines.
That’s some strategy.
have your say