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

Persia said:
Which the customer ultimately pays for.
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Metrolink will enable Dubliners who currently drive, get a taxi or get the bus to go one way there for €2 (based on the existing Travel 90 which Metrolink will fall in under).

This will literally be possible for someone from the likes of Bray where an off peak taxi costs €75 to the airport and the existing coach service has been discontinued. They can get the DART to Tara and connect onwards to Metrolink in about 65 minutes for most of the day. For €2. Yes many will still take a taxi or park the car (obviously considerations for families etc.), but you are not seriously going to suggest this is not competitive?!

Same if you live in Cherrywood, get the Green Line to Charlemount and Interchange. Similar journey time.

Same for someone from Maynooth getting the new DART line and interconnecting at Glasnevin.

Same for someone at Heuston Station. Get either DART+ to Glasnevin Cross Guns and then interchange with the Metrolink. Or get the Red Line to O'Connell Street and change there.

I can literally go on with the various interchange possibilities here, because basically everyone in County Dublin and other parts of the GDA will have a vastly superior option to get to the airport. And moreover whatever way you cut it, it will be significantly cheaper than existing transport modes.

And this is before we actually acknowledge that the Airport is actually about the 4th or 5th reason why we need to build Metrolink. If this was the mooted Airport spur from Clongriffin for €200m or whatever number I'd actually call that a waste of money, this is not even if it is 100 times the price tag.
 
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Connolly is out of the way and would have required it not going to O'Connell Street.

I'm not sure what the obsession with Connolly is. It is a quirk of history where we had private railways building terminus at the edge of city cores. In the next decade and a half it will reduce in importance.

ML already connects with our existing infrastructure very nicely.
 
I recall seeing a map of the plan and it didn’t seem to link up with any mainline services, glad that’s been addressed. Which stations? Pearse? Connolly? I think Tara Street was on the plan I saw but that’s not really much use for anyone travelling outside of Dublin.
But I guess a few areas that are Luas adjacent would be good. Need good signposts though if a tourist gets off in o Connell street, finding the red line Luas can be tricky, I often have to redirect them from the green line Luas stop outside the GPO.

And driverless is cool. Works well on the DLR, although it’s driverless it’s not staffless but it’s easier to train security and ticket checking than train driving. I love sitting in the front of the train there.
 
Your statement;

And another tram/train line that doesn’t link up with existing services is not needed.

I see because you showed ignorance, now you're trying to wiggle out of that and talk about "mainline" rail.

For the record, Sligo mainline will likely end up stopping at the new station at Cross Guns (along with TWO DART lines) along with existing Tara services.

No single rail service is going to link up with every service out there. To be clear on Metrolink, its purpose is not to ferry people from outside of Dublin to the airport. It is a Dublin Metro service primarily.

The purpose of Metrolink is;

1. Provide high capacity and rapid transit on a N-S basis through the city core, from the Phibsborough to Charlemount. This is not in place in Dublin currently and significantly limits the potential of the city core
2. Provides one stop interconnection of three of Ireland's universities with 2 Luas lines (three once Lucan is complete) and 3 /4 DART lines, along with direct connections for basically every bus service in the city.
3. Provides the same for the Mater Hospital
4. Provides the same for Dublin Airport
5. Opens up significant development potential in North County Dublin, transforming commutes of an hour to 20 minutes. This directly links Ireland's largest urban area (Swords) with zero existing rail link to the system
6. Removes significant constraints on our bus services. The "bus will do" brigade can tell us why it is that Dublin has more bus drivers than significantly larger European cities and how that is sustainable?
7. Allows for the removal of some through services from the city centre in time, as people will be able to undertake the aforementioned one change connection with Metrolink. This can dramatically improve Dublin City Centre as it currently is clogged with not just cars, but buses looking to cross the Liffey
8. The one change connection with something like the DART provides incredible opportunities for tourism in Dublin. Hotels along the coast will be licking their lips as they immediately come into view for tourists who want easy transit to areas.

All of these benefits also work in the opposite direction. So even UCD who will now be the only Dublin University not connected to rail will have a broader reach of people. Live in Ballymun? Get Metrolink and connect with another mode in the city to get to UCD at a significantly reduced time. Need a scan at Vincents? Same thing by linking in at Tara to the DART to Sydney Parade. Ditto the NCH...ditto anything.

And in terms of the "outside of Dublin" brigade, there'll be P&R facilities added in and you can also expect all intercity bus services to adjust their timetables accordingly once this is in place. Bus Áras as is is not the only Dublin stop for many service.

Michael O'Leary is not wrong in that a great many Dublin Airport passengers will still not use Metrolink, but he doesn't have a scooby doo on what the Metrolink is actually for. It's the most transformative project we'll see since Ardnacrusha.

€20bn for a 100+ year service that provides the above economic and QOL benefits is a no brainer and only an extremely disingenuous person denies it once the actual facts are laid out. This is not a Western Rail corridor boondoggle.
 
Dr Strangelove said:
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.
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Luas is good if you want to go about 1km-1.5km in the city centre. Advantage of the on street boarding means you don't have to go underground like with Subway or Metro stations. If we can get rid of more cars from the city centre (and buses), Luas can be even better.

Metro is ideal for travelling anything over that distance.
 
rungun said:
I see because you showed ignorance, now you're trying to wiggle out of that and talk about "mainline" rail.
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Yikes someone is having a bad day.

Cool yer jets it’s a chat about a proposed transport system not a personal attack on you.

Us southsiders are always accused of thinking that Dublin 2, 4 and 6 are all that matters. I was thinking outside that box. For once in my ignorant life

But whatevers.
 
Nothing personal but the level of press coverage on this infuriates me. We still have major publications calling it Metro North and posting renders 15 years out of date. Then we also have the irony of people with vastly different perspectives (Frank McDonald and Michael O'Leary from the "environmental" left vs. an ardent capitalist respectively) repeating absolute dribble on this project in the media unquestioned, which unfortunately comes into the public conscious. Why would an environmentalist question something that will quite clearly bring massive green benefits to Dublin? His reasoning is because of a block of flats off Townsend Street, it's utter nonsense and a microcosm of the "I have a minor preference for X or Y route and project and if it doesn't happen the people responsible are worse than Robert Moses!" school of discussion in urbanism. O'Leary is supposed to be an arch capitalist but appears to prefer to have a system relying on a heavily unionised sector for it to be barely passable. It's utterly ridiculous.

I am a southsider and would have little direct benefit from this project but can see how absolute critical this is for Dublin and Ireland as a whole. It's one of the best thought out plans we've seen in decades & the standard of "debate" surrounding it is embarrassing.

The fact we still have people talking about buses, honestly is this 1950? Buses are absolutely fantastic & will remain the backbone of our public transport but their limits have clearly been shown in Dublin. We have tapped every ounce out of them and need to take this step.

Just Google the plan before spouting off on it.
 
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