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AS ANYONE WHO commutes into and around Dublin will have noticed, we are experiencing a return to levels of traffic gridlock last seen over a decade ago.
The cross-city Luas has added to the congested centre around College Green. Travellers on suburban rail lines must endure rush-hour journeys uncomfortably crammed into carriages. Even the Taoiseach is finding that his commute, presumably by car, from his Castleknock home to Leinster House is taking longer than usual.
There is no one magic bullet to solve our capital city’s transport issues, particularly in the face of market-led unplanned development which has seen the populations of peripheral counties swell massively in the past twenty years – the combined population of Kildare, Meath and Wicklow now exceeds that of the Dublin city area.
But there is one notable public transport project already on the drawing board, planned and costed, that would revolutionise transport for the whole metropolitan area.
This is the Dart Underground, previously known as the Interconnector.
Originally conceived of in the 1972 Transportation in Dublin plan, this project would build a twin-line railway tunnel, up to eighty feet beneath the surface of the city centre, for 7.6 kilometres.
Two separate electrified Dart lines
The new tunnel would connect an electrified stretch of rail track starting at Hazelhatch in north Kildare, to the existing northside Dart lines running out to Balbriggan and Howth.
In the city centre, Heuston Station would be linked to new underground stations across Dublin, at Pearse Street, the Docklands and St Stephen’s Green.
The existing southside Dart lines, meanwhile, would link up at Connolly Station with the commuter line that currently runs through the north west of the city out to Maynooth.
The result would be two separate electrified Dart lines intertwined at the middle.
One line would begin at Greystones and run continuously to Maynooth. The other would run from Balbriggan to Hazelhatch, but could eventually be extended further to Kildare town and Newbridge in one direction, and Drogheda in the other.
Passengers wishing to travel from Balbriggan, say, to Greystones, would change from one line to the other at Pearse Station.
Missing piece
The Dart Underground is the missing piece that would, for the first time, give Ireland’s capital city the joined-up network of commuter rail and light rail that it so badly needs.
No longer would mainline rail dump passengers in Connolly or Heuston or Pearse Street and expect them to find their way, by one means or another, across a busy city centre to the next link in a broken chain.
Tourists and occasional visitors unfamiliar with the city would be particular beneficiaries of a new, simplified transport map. Those coming from Cork for a football match, for instance, could take the train to Heuston, change to the new Dart line, change again at Pearse Street and get off at Drumcondra Station, only a few hundred meters from Croke Park.
A Mullingar resident working in Dundrum Shopping Centre could drive to a park and ride at Maynooth, travel on the new Dart Interconnector all the way to Pearse Street, transfer to the other Dart line, go one stop west to St Stephen’s Green and take the Luas to work from there.
’10 years of EU fines would cost more than Dart Underground’
The major objection to the Dart Underground project is cost, currently estimated at €4 billion.
Yet here we are looking at an opportunity not only to boost our economy through much-needed infrastructural spending, but also to improve our environment, our health and our work-life balance.
Ireland has made commitments under the Paris Accords and other climate change agreements to reduce its carbon and greenhouse gas emissions to a certain level by 2020. As things stand, those targets will not be met, and the EU will start levying annual fines until they are.
Questioned by me at a recent meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, a Department of Finance official said that Ireland’s fines for non-compliance with our environmental targets will be of the order of €600 million a year from 2021.
In other words, ten years of these fines would cost us one and a half times as much as building Dart Underground, with absolutely zero secondary benefit to the state.
Project still under consideration
Conversely, we can borrow now at historically low interest rates to build Dart Underground.
It is the single major infrastructure project which can be launched at short notice to make a clear and sure difference to our climate change objectives, to housing and planning, and to the lives of tens of thousands of people every day.
At present, the project is still under consideration by the National Transport Authority, which is to make its plans known in the coming weeks with the publication of the National Infrastructure Investment plan.
If there is one sure fire way to inhibit a recovery, it’s not to invest in it. For the good of the whole country, and not just Dublin, the Dart Underground should go ahead.
Catherine Murphy is the co-leader of the Social Democrats and a TD for Kildare North.
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To gruesome to show here??
Two.
Too
Thew
….one-eight-ninety…..
phew!
-97
2
Tew
Tu-tu
911
1+1=
Yoo hoo
Where is Frank? I miss Frank!
Chew
Choo choo
walla-walla-bing-bang!
Jaysus ya lost Me …
who
Tree
I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is
Marty Whelan shagged my sister!
KooKoo Kachew
Welcome to the real world of their twisted Ideology, thankfully he only snuffed out his own life and not any innocents.
As disgustingly gruesome as it might be..if it demonstrates to all these young people running over to Syria what will be their eventual fate, it might stop some of them going.
Amazingly the people in the restaurant only suffered minor injuries.
C’est bien fait pour lui, I say. Feed his remains to the pigs and guillotine all the rest of the Islamist dogs.
Mais oui bien sur..qui seme le vent….
Show exactly what these lunatics do ? Sure we cant be having that….
I’m amazed that nobody other than the bomber died in that explosion.
I cant be ar##d..ive seen loads of sunnis get atomised on youtube and liveleaks.
Pop goes the weasel
Terror gore.
Hopefully this doesn’t set a precedent for a ratings war of blood.
Just curious about the headline – “apparent” – who writes these headlines?
We don’t to see this,it’s exactly what they would want.
He was the only one that died. Everyone else only suffered minor injuries. I’d say that’s a good kick up the hole for them.
I would have assumed that broadcasting such footage would be counter-productive in efforts to prevent similar events.
If the motives of the people behind the attacks thrive on distilling fear, wouldn’t this be advertising their cause? Especially the prominence of fame amongst peers.
Yes, there will be queues of people in the streets tomorrow copying this.
Not quite what I meant, I’m talking about the deciding factor for people who are already involved with those groups, not the recruitment.
Essentially what these people are doing is trying to send a message rather than killing specific people. I’m not saying that a media blackout is possible, but hypothetically speaking if a blackout was to happen every time an attack like this happened, would they stop happening?
Not quite what I meant, I’m talking about the deciding factor for people who are already involved with those groups, not the recruitment.
Essentially what these people are doing is trying to send a message rather than killing specific people. I’m not saying that a media blackout is possible, but hypothetically speaking if a blackout was to happen every time an attack like this happened, would they stop happening?
Francis, You have a point sort of regarding fear but I think keeping people in the dark is always a bad idea and possibly causes more fear and as Jenni points out it may stop some people from acting.
That’s a fair point! I was calling out the extremes.
What I meant to establish was just the format of which it’s delivered, there’s no need to keep people in the dark with these events. But does releasing video footage have any benefits?
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