Metro North Route

[philip]

I don't think it's Scandinavian at all. I don't think it's an underground station either. Elevated or at grade by the looks of it. Seems to be quite a big interchange station.

[philip]

It's Rotterdam!

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Thomas J Stamp

if this becomes "where is this" mark3 there will be trouble.

Yes mother!

Well done Philip. Ive been there a few times but never used the metro. I couldnt find it, well done.

[Thomas J Stamp]

Originally Posted by philip

It's Rotterdam!

any chance you could maker that pic bigger, can hardly see it

[philip]

.....hang on I'll find the zoom button her somewhere......

[weehamster]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/1203/metro.html

Dublin business leaders are warning that construction works for the Metro North could put up to 5,000 jobs at risk.

But the Rail Procurement Agency says it will be drawing up a management plan to minimise disruption before the issue goes before An Bord Pleanála next year.

The Dublin City Centre Business Association claims people do not realise the extent of the disruption due from Metro North.
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It cites the fact that O'Connell Street will be dug up for 18 months and up to 200 trucks a day will be taking soil from the tunnel.

DCBA wants the RPA to stick to tunnelling instead of cut and cover and to consider a stop on Marlborough Street instead of two subway stations in the O'Connell Street area.

The RPA says it will consider tunnelling as much as it can but says the present route is the best available.

The RPA points out that An Bord Pleanála is due to consider the issue next March.

Yawn! Here we go again

Was it not Dublin business leaders who asked and got Mary O'Rourke to separated the Luas into 2 separate lines? We now know that was a bad idea.

The stop they want at Marlborough Street is at the Dept of Education. This would defeat the reason for the move of the Metro stop from the Gresham to O'Connell Bridge, which is to integrate the Metro line with the Luas Red Line and stop transfers of around a half of a kilometer, dragging their suitcases, possible through pouring rain heading to and from the airport.

Also we would have to build an extra stop at Westmorland Street to fill the gap so the 1 station instead of 2 is a lame argument.

If the line went up Marlborough Street, does that mean that the line would have to go under Trinity College? If so, thats a no no.

We heard the same moan and groans from the Luas construction, all doom and gloom, but I wonder how much since the opening has the Luas helped to increased their profits by?

But the bit that really annoys me is where they get the figure of 5000 jobs from. I bet you it won't cost a single job. I wonder how many jobs(or is that profits) were lost due to the terrible traffic congestion we currently have?
It looks like another scare tactic to me.

[Mark Gleeson]

With the exception of the Abbey Street O'Connell Bridge section there won't be any significant metro works on O'Connell Street

The station under the Liffey is to be mined

So what on earth are they talking about?

Metro plans will not be altered
Olivia Kelly

The Railway Procurement Agency has said it will not consider changing its plans for the Metro North despite claims from Dublin businesses that its construction in O'Connell Street will cost up to 5,000 jobs.

The Dublin City Business Association has urged the agency to abandon plans for two underground stops in O'Connell Street in favour of one stop at Marlborough Street under the Department of Education buildings.

The authority said it is confident that the proposed route and selection of stops is correct and it intends to make an application to An Bord Pleanála in the coming months based on these plans.

The agency is proposing to locate one stop at O'Connell Bridge and another at Parnell Square.

The association's chief executive, Tom Coffey, said this will cause massive disruption to the street over a four-year period and could cost up to 5,000 jobs.

"When the Luas was constructed along Abbey Street through O'Connell Street some 50 to 60 jobs were lost.

"This is going to take four years and, because they are using cut and cover construction, basically digging down from the surface, O'Connell Street will be completely unusable."

Locating stations in O'Connell Street, as opposed to just digging underneath the street to create the tunnel for the metro, would mean that there will be construction at street level, which would mean buses would have to be removed from the street.

"This is a seriously primitive engineering option for the city's main street.

"We are in favour of the metro, and we are in favour of the route but all we want is for it to be done in such a fashion that is does not take out all of the road space, it doesn't take out all of the bus space and doesn't remove the footpath," Mr Coffey said.

The agency said it would not be revisiting its selection of station sites. The RPA had engaged in a series of meetings with the DCBA as well as other stakeholders and the public in drafting its plans for the metro, agency spokesman Tom Manning said.

Plans had been put in place to keep disruption to a minimum and there was no suggestion that O'Connell Street would be a building site for four years, he said.

"There is going to be a traffic management plan in place. It is our objective to ensure that the centre of the city keeps open for business. The full construction phase will take four years but no one section will be disrupted for that long." Traders would benefit from additional "foot-fall", Mr Manning said.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ire...713197287.html
© 2007 The Irish Times

[eugene]

Couldn't help thinking when I read this article the situation with the Luas works on Harcourt Street and the traders giving out about all the disruption and how it would effect their business.

Then when the line is finally built, I hear terms like it was "Christmas in March" for these same people with the ability of people along the line to get into town to be the good consumers they are. This was before the Dundrum Town Centre was built of course.

A bit of short term pain for 100 years of gain (I hope)

[ofjames]

Scaremongering bull****. I wonder has the Irish Times as a whole bought into Frank McDonald's silly anti-metro stance.

From what is reputed to be a respected broadsheet, i find it remarkable that Ms Kelly couldnt take the few minutes needed to conduct proper research before writing this claptrap. A simple visit to the RPA website would show that the city centre part of the Metro line will be tunnelled using TBM's, not by cut and cover.

A piece of downright nonsense

[undo]

I don't see why any sort of digging on O'Connell St would have to disrupt bus traffic. With this wide a street, all surface traffic can be diverted to one side, the other one dug up and then the procedure repeated for the other half. This has been done plenty of times in other cities and really isn't rocket science.

Where does the idea come from that when building a metro, the entire stretch starting at one terminus and ending at the other will be one huge dig over years and years? Haven't people just witnessed the harbor tunnel go in without 5km worth of buildings being knocked down and the whole stretch getting dug up?

[Aphfaneire]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

Understood number 1

If he's number 1, who's Picard ?

On a more metro related topic. When are they going to start ripping up the city? Its "supposed" to have started but they have delayed it due to "studies" on traffic management and integration of the work at the same time as the luas so as to decrease the disruption to about 5 years instead of eternity.

I would love to see this done by someone compident, after all if we outsourced all of these projects half them would be under construction by now, hell we would probably allready be able to get a luas to the point and have free flow junctions on the m50, but no we have to use irish companies.

No one ever learns lessons from the past here do they, the luas green line could have been a metro, hell we could have built all the luas lines we were promised, but the government are just BLEH, and wouldnt do anything right.

Thats right i said BLEH!

[shamrockmetro]

has anyone seen that commercial on tv with butterflies??? for the RPA or CIE

your thoughts??? is cut and fill cheaper??? how much money and time would this save? and allow for better stations?

[KSW]

R.E shamrockmetro

Looks to me to be in the perfect place & central wise

[Aphfaneire]

IS there still no information on the final route or station layouts?


Is it too late to bully the a-holes to build a real metro system and stop D!cking us around with this underground tram milarcky?

In an ideal world, they would have announced the project with T21 and started ripping the whole city up within a few months and had it all planed out to have EVERTHING complete at the same time. Sort of a Boston Big dig thing, but hopefully not over budget and full of shoddy workmanship. Ok maybe not the Big Dig, more of an "Olympics is coming to town" kind of building frenzy. But this is Ireland, not an Ideal world

[luasifer]

The Boston Big Dig is surely not a good example to give as a suggestion of how something should be done. This project was 10billion dollars(including inflation adjustments) overbudget and years late.

This is an exact example of what we should not do. Having spent time in Boston this project also caused huge amounts of contraversy amongst the cities residents whose taxes paid for it - not to mention the one motorist who paid for the shoddy work with their life when the roof collapsed on them

[sean]

The Big Dig ... that thing went on for a decade or two, came in years late and was a financial black hole. And yes, at least one motorist paid the ultimate price for some crappy construction work in the tunnels. I'll take Bertie's and FFs mindless dithering over that any day.

[Colm Donoghue]

Sevilla Metro started in '99 still not open

http://www.metrodesevilla.net/ says
"Página en construcción"


These are the fast movers we are always compared to as being slow.

[Derek Wheeler]

Originally Posted by sean

The Big Dig ... that thing went on for a decade or two, came in years late and was a financial black hole. And yes, at least one motorist paid the ultimate price for some crappy construction work in the tunnels. I'll take Bertie's and FFs mindless dithering over that any day.

You may be doing the big dig a disservice. Yes it was way over budget. Yes a motorist paid with their life. But it was unprecedented and has improved Boston and its environs no end. Many books have been written and many TV documentaries made about it. Its a fully transparent project. Warts and all. But the results are astounding.

No pain, no gain. Dublin is in the mickey mouse factor compared to it. Metro North is a pea to the big digs' pumpkin. The philosophy is right, but the comparison is wrong.

[Derek Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Colm Donoghue

Sevilla Metro started in '99 still not open

http://www.metrodesevilla.net/ says
"Página en construcción"


These are the fast movers we are always compared to as being slow.

**** happens and it doesn't mean that excuses can be made for the "Irish angle". Madrid faired better. Ireland is still unmercifully overpriced and interferred with beyond reason. Germany and France do this thing all the time. We have overloaded the entire experience. Even the communists do it better.

[Aphfaneire]

Originally Posted by Derek Wheeler

**** happens and it doesn't mean that excuses can be made for the "Irish angle". Madrid faired better. Ireland is still unmercifully overpriced and interferred with beyond reason. Germany and France do this thing all the time. We have overloaded the entire experience. Even the communists do it better.

Well Mosco's beutiful subway was rebuilt by the war widow's in the 50's, so good work for hundreds of thousands of slaves instead of a building company.

I apologise for the big dig comparison, but it is a huge project that although disasterous got results. Maybe my idea of doing all dublin needs at once was a tad over zealous as it would mean a lot more opertunity for shoddy work and tax wastage. But either way we need all of it, every good idea should be built not consulted, we need relief soon, if we dont start building all of this within 10 years, the city will be impossible to commute too and decentralisation might actually happen, perish the thought!