Underground rail network planned for city
By BRIAN DOWLING and TREACY HOGAN
GOVERNMENT ministers will shortly be asked to
give the green light to a massive multi-billion pound
plan for a full-scale underground in Dublin.
Details of a major revision of Dublin rail plans will be
outlined to a special meeting of a key Cabinet
sub-committee in early April.
The centrepiece is a proposal for an underground
starting in Ranelagh on Dublin's southside and running
across city to Broadstone.
Then it will continue through Cabra, Mulhuddart and
Blanchardstown.
It will have two spurs: one directly to Dublin airport
and the other to the proposed Stadium Ireland.
The limited underground planned as part of the
current LUAS project running from Harcourt Street
to Broadstone has a price tag of some £300m.
But the massive extension now being mooted will
cost several billion pounds.
With such huge costs involved, the Government, if it
decides to back the plan, will try to seek significant
private sector funding.
While the plan amounts to a massive addition to the
existing proposals there were firm indications last
night that government ministers intend to give serious
considerations to the proposals.
One source said there was a growing concern in
government that the LUAS plans, substantially
enlarged in 1998, may still not be sufficient on their
own to cater for the rapid growth of the city.
FLEXIBLE APPROACH
No decisions have been made yet, but the Cabinet
sub-committee on infrastructure, chaired by
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, have set aside April 11 to
hear a detailed presentation from the Dublin
Transport Office and LUAS management team.
In addition, the ministers will be asked to sanction a
more flexible approach to the building of the LUAS
line running from Sandyford to the city centre.
That line was to run into Harcourt Street where the
underground would start.
However, the new version envisages the underground
starting in Ranelagh.
Ministers will be asked to consider building the
LUAS Sandyford-Ranelagh line in a flexible manner.
That would be to allow for a significant upgrading at
relatively little cost from light rail carriages to heavier
metro-style stock which could carry greater volumes
of passengers.
The proposed underground is based on electrified
metro-style carriages.
These new plans are seen as complementing the
existing LUAS scheme which will still proceed
including the proposed LUAS line from Dublin
airport to the city centre. Sources pointed out last
night that the LUAS Dublin Airport link will take a
different route to the underground connection
proposed via Blanchardstown.
The other spur that is proposed for the underground
will run to Stadium Ireland, the flagship sports
stadium, recently unveiled by the government.
The building of such a major underground will take
several years of development and given the sheer
scale of what is being proposed it will involve a major
public inquiry into the proposed route that is likely to
encounter rafts of objections.
However, last night sources pointed out that the
Judge Sean O'Leary has already completed three of
the inquiries for the LUAS lines and given the
go-ahead in each case.
But there is a rider on the location of a terminus for
the Middle Abbey Street - Connolly station line.
Judge O'Leary is now starting the inquiry on the city
centre-Dublin Airport LUAS line.
In another development yesterday the parliamentary
party of the PD's called in Public Enterprise Minister
Mary O'Rourke to use the resignation of the CIE
chairman Brian Joyce as an opportunity for a
fundamental restructuring of the company.
They called for competition in the bus market and for
the three operating companies of CIE, Irish Rail,
Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann to be established as
separate entities in their own right.