This article appeared in the Sunday Business Post yesterday (19/10/2003), and seems to confirm what we've been saying about the metro - Brennan's plans are deeply flawed.
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Metro plan ruled out as too costly
By Niamh Connolly
The Dublin metro project has been ruled out as too expensive in a confidential consultant's report for the Department of Finance, The Sunday Business Post has learned.
The Minister for Transport, Seamus Brennan, is facing a tough political battle to convince his cabinet colleagues that the ¤2.4 billion plan for the first phase of a Dublin metro system is viable.
The latest financial study deals a serious blow to Brennan's metro proposal. It argues for cheaper alternatives to the metro, such as a mainline rail spur from the Belfast line.
The transport minister will, however, present a final proposal for an airport metro to cabinet before Christmas. The airport line is the first phase in the ambitious Dublin county metro project.
An intense political debate is expected at cabinet level. Brennan is resolutely behind a modern integrated rail system for the capital that links up with Luas and can be extended to highly-populated commuter areas.
Abusiness plan has been submitted by the minister to the cabinet's transport subcommittee, based on the Railway Procurement Agency's proposals for a public private partnership metro contract. It involves repayments of ¤300 to ¤400 million over a 25-year leasing deal, to be paid when the metro goes into operation.
Brennan told this newspaper: "I am in favour of a metro - not as a one-off link from the airport to the city centre,but as phas e one of nine or ten phases to be developed countywide in the future.
"On its own, the airport route is not an economic proposition. But it is if it is completed on a city-wide basis that is fully integrated with Luas.
"I must convince the cabinet that in the current economic climate we should be building this.The Department of Finance is examining the submission we have made, and it is not going to write a cheque for ¤2.4 billion."
The RPA's latest metro plan revised initial estimates of ¤4.8 billion down to ¤2.4 billion by reducing the number of stops and design specifications.
In a related development, RPA chairman Padraic White said the board was taking no decision in relation to holeboring work for preliminary soil investigations until there was "greater clarification" in relation to the metro.The RPA has a budget of ¤9 million from the Department ofTransport to cover metro-related research work.
Geotech said last week that it expected to start work before Christmas.
BUSRAGE Discussions » Light Rail
Related: Metro plan ruled out as too costly
(5 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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As Gene Kerrigan wrote in Yesterdays Sunday Indo (19/10) It is now becoming a little clearer exactly why Charles J Haughey kept Seamus Brennan away from any real position of power for so long....CJH was and is a far better judge of Ministerial Horseflesh than Bertie Aherne will ever be !!!!Posted 4 years ago #
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Still focusing on this as light-rail I see. And what was Brennan’s previous comments about it being a big problem that Luas was not connected with the rest of the railway system…? and now he wants the airport link to be “fully integrated with Luas”. Which is it, one or the other…??
Didn’t the guard that pulled Brennan over and subsequently indicted him for not having a céadúnas tiománaí not do a breathalyser test on him also? Clearly, Brennan’s mind is not set in reality; he is making more blunders than the Shrub Administration over in the USA.
Of course, I am of the mind that the whole Luas thing should have been heavy-rail “metro” in the first place—no government spending on excessive new rail equipment or increasing of spare-parts inventories, equipment from the rest of the system could thenceforth be used on the new/old railway systems (I’d rather see DARTs on the former Harcourt Street Line myself)…but now that the whole mess has been thrown out there, it is high time to get at least something up and running (and oh yes, run the blasted south-side DART on the weekends, that is one of the greatest blunders of all time)…Posted 4 years ago # -
i think the way the government is acting in realtion to the metro' is disgraceful. dublin and the whole of ireland for that matter has never had a proper train network.but we deserve one.before the war of independence etc, etc, we had perfectly good rail connections. then devalera came along and ripped them up, because they were built by the brits! i have family in dungarvan who used to be able to get the train from dungarvan to cork. it was frequent and on time as well! there is no station in dungarvan since 1960's. need i say more?
[posted by: lorcan]Posted 4 years ago # -
De Valera was hypnotised by the US ideal, namely roads, roads and more roads. Now that the volume of automobiles in Ireland exceeds that of the USA per square mile, it's not working out very well, eh...? I stand by most of my comments from almost two years ago, BTW...
Posted 3 years ago #
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