Michael O'Leary: "Dublin Metrolink - Waste of Money"

Whats being spent on the m50? Agree with O Leary on metro, waste of money.

Mr O'Leary said that a twentieth of the money - €100m - would pay for 400 buses which "do the same job" as the Metro, a project he said Ireland "cannot afford."
 
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He is spot on in this regard . Not to mention the traffic disruption that will be part of the process .
The Chinese have built a tram that runs on rubber wheels not a track , its electric and tops up its batteries at every stop apparently .
This youtube clip shows it . Its just a matter of the right route that suitable for its size .
 
It’s crazy that you need to use the air coach or a taxi. I think a bus lane and a non stop service to city centre wouldn’t be as expensive and it could be done very quickly, quicker than building a tram line.

And another tram/train line that doesn’t link up with existing services is not needed.
 
Your right about the tram and rail links , there is also a big need for feeder routes off same with smaller bus routes , after all its just not practical to have a LUAS or Metro stop at every door step .
 
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I've mixed views on Metro North.

On the one hand, we definitely do need a rail link from the airport, with a regular, reliable and uninterrupted service.

It makes sense to me that there should be various stops along the way, rather than just a start and end point.

That said, I think its completely unnecessary to run most of it underground -this just seems like a slower and more expemsive way of designing the rail lines.

I also think it's insane to be bringing it through the city, to connect up with Dublin 6. The only thing that comes from this is a nassive additional expense, just to keep the good people of Rathmines and Rathgar happy. It should connect with Connolly Station, where there's a connection with Dart, Luas (Red line) and many suburban trains, incl. The Enterprise to Belfast.

We could also build an extension to the Dart line from either Howth Junction, Sutton or Malahide and connect that to the Airport. Again, no need to consider any underground options, it's too expensive and slow to deliver.

Anyone suggesting running lots of busses to and from the airport needs to consider limited road space, the need for drives, the likely pollution, potential for delays caused by road accidents etc. It's not the right answer, imho.
 
I'm sure in a few years these will be driverless.
Well that remains to be seen, but I don't think we can plan on the basis that they will be. Even if driverless busses do eventually work, there is the capacity to consider. A bus lane has a capacity of about 3,000 people per hour compared to a capacity of 20,000 for Metrolink. So we would need not one bus lane but over 6 to achieve the same capacity.
 
I'm afraid I don't understand how a service every 90 seconds could be achieved without putting it underground, nothing else would be able to move. Once it is open, I am sure the next step will be to convert the Green line to metro, that is the reason why it ends where it does.

The only service that uses Connolly that Metrolink will not connect with will be the Belfast service, all the other services will have connections at Glasnevin, O'Connell St or Tara St. If it was considered that a Belfast connection is essential, then the easiest way to obtain this would be a simple easterly extension of MetroLink to Donabate (or even Lusk if you wanted to be a bit more ambitious), which the Belfast trains could then stop at. This would open up even more lands north and east of Swords for development, which is one of the main aims of MetroLink. A link to the airport is only a small part of the plan.
 
We could also build an extension to the Dart line from either Howth Junction, Sutton or Malahide and connect that to the Airport. Again, no need to consider any underground options, it's too expensive and slow to deliver.
A completely crackpot idea that IÉ put out there about a dozen years ago because they don’t like TII. There is zero extra capacity in the northern line for an airport spur and it’s a convoluted way to the city centre.


That said, I think its completely unnecessary to run most of it underground
I get buses and the LUAS through the city centre and they are just SLOW. This is even when there is little vehicular traffic. At-grade running just means you can’t speed up due to other vehicles, pedestrians, etc.
 
I get buses and the LUAS through the city centre and they are just SLOW. This is even when there is little vehicular traffic
You can thank the NTA for that, they have RUINED public transport in the city. Ownership needs to be handed back to Dublin Bus and BE and let them run their own schedules.
The holding system doesn't work, all you have is slow buses that get you nowhere FAST, like waiting at the stop so they can regulate themselves utter madness.
The drivers hate it, the users hate it, they are loosing drivers hand over fist in all 3 companies due to the NTA.
 
Ownership needs to be handed back to Dublin Bus and BE and let them run their own schedules.
I was a heavy user of Dublin bus 25 years ago and the service is far better now than then.

The only people who care about bus ownership are communists and Dublin Bus drivers.

The rest of us just want a good service and it’s a lot better with the NTA in charge.
 
A bus lane has a capacity of about 3,000 people per hour compared to a capacity of 20,000 for Metrolink. So we would need not one bus lane but over 6 to achieve the same capacity.
That's something that never occurred to me but makes sense. 1 double decker carrying 100 people every minute is still only 6,000 an hour, far short of metrolink as you say.


There is zero extra capacity in the northern line for an airport spur and it’s a convoluted way to the city centre.
I took the dart through connolly recently for the first time in over a decade and was shocked by how extremely slow it was. It's ridiculous- must be the slowest train in Europe, and they still have wooden sleepers everywhere so i can only imagine how old the infrastructure is. It's a testament to the durability of rail lines but i can't believe there's any spare capacity there to be exploited by a link to the airport or anything else.

You can thank the NTA for that, they have RUINED public transport in the city.
???

As bad as public transport is in Dublin, it's awful but actually better than it's ever been since I first used it 30 plus years ago. There's no blaming the NTA for crappy public transport I'm afraid.
A link to the airport is only a small part of the plan.
Yeah, it's a metro which will have a stop at the airport ratherthan a metro to the airport. That said, I'll likely only ever use it to get to the airport if i ever use it at all!

My mind boggles that anyone actually objects to it to be honest. The cost will be monstrous but it'll be a once off (long run cheaper than bus & bus-lanes). Have the objectors never been to a city with functioning metros like Paris, Berlin, Prague etc? How could anyone travel on any of those, come back to Dublin and be thinking "god it'd be awful if they built something like that here?..."
 
The rest of us just want a good service and it’s a lot better with the NTA in charge.
You and @BIG-notorious are the first people I have heard in the last couple of years to say you are happy with the service. Genuinely not just saying that.
People in my team commute via bus for their office visit, constantly late due to buses being full and passing them out, not showing up or just going so slow to regulate their times.
I use BE and again not great, and they changed the route in town to cross O Connell street which has added nearly 30 mins to the home journey during rush hour.