LAST UPDATE | 20 Feb
THE TERMINUS FOR Dublin’s MetroLink station should be moved from Charlemont to the city centre, Fianna Fáil TD Jim O’Callaghan has told the second day of an oral hearing into the project.
The Dublin Bay South TD called for the terminus to be moved to either the St Stephen’s Green or Tara Street station, saying that while it makes sense to link Dublin Airport with a city centre location, it is “highly unusual” that the MetroLink “doesn’t terminate in a city centre location”.
The proposed MetroLink will have 16 new stations running from Swords to Charlemont and carry 53 million passengers annually. Construction is set to begin next year, with an opening year of 2035.
The 18.8km route will have an end-to-end journey time of 25 minutes and serve residential areas including Ballymun and Glasnevin, as well as the City Centre and Dublin Airport, and will link to Irish Rail, Luas and bus services.
Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) lodged a Draft Railway Order seeking permission for the project last year and received 318 submissions in response, with An Bord Pleanála deciding to hold oral hearings to facilitate third parties expressing their concerns.
The oral hearings are scheduled to run for around five weeks until 28 March.
Addressing the hearing this morning, O’Callaghan said that Charlemont was chosen for the terminus for the sole reason that it could facilitate a potential upgrade to the Luas Green line.
Charlemont is a residential area in Dublin 2 between Ranelagh and Portobello. It is already served by the Luas Green line.
In 2019, the National Transport Authority (NTA) decided that the MetroLink would not continue past the Charlemont stop and that a proposed upgrade of the Luas Green Line would occur “at an appropriate point in the future”, although the NTA said this may not happen for up to 20 years.
O’Callaghan said that Charlemont is not a major rail hub, is not a city centre location and is a “minor Luas location”, deeming it “an unusual choice” for a terminus.
He said the area will not be capable of supporting the estimated 10 million people that will visit the Charlemont station each year, saying it will have a “detrimental impact” on the surrounding residential area.
O’Callaghan also said that TII has not substantiated the reason why Charlemont is being chosen as the city centre location, and argued that St Stephen’s Green would be a more suitable terminus for the project.
He said that as part of the Metro North project in 2011, An Bord Pleanála established St Stephen’s Green as an optimal city centre terminus and “some respect should be given to that previous decision”.
Metrolink project director Aidan Foley confirmed that the cost of bringing MetroLink from St Stephen’s Green to Charlemont would be €650 million.
“This seems an inordinate amount for 1km of tunnel,” O’Callaghan told the hearing, reiterating his point that the only explanation of spending this amount of money on it could be for the future upgrading of the Green Luas line.
Independent Senator Michael McDowell also said that it was clear that Charlemont was chosen as the terminus in order to integrate the Luas Green line in the future.
“I believe that the ulterior motive is to progress that particular project and that virtually everything that’s being done is being done with a view of its long-term implementation, even though at political level, it’s been interrupted on a number of occasions,” McDowell said.
Of the two road accesses to Charlemont, McDowell said that Grand Parade is “constantly traffic jammed at all times of the day” which would make it “virtually inaccessible” for through traffic to collect people to drop them off.
The other access point to the terminus is the Dartmouth Road, which McDowell said is quiet to the point of being “almost unused”.
There will be no taxi rank and no bus service close to the station, with a bus service on Ranelagh road “some distance away”, he added. TII said that their research had shown that people would mostly use bus and rail services to get to the station.
“Nobody with any degree of imagination would have selected Charlemont as the south city terminus if it were not for wanting to progress the green Luas line development. It’s the most unobvious place that you can imagine,” McDowell said.
Earlier this morning, Labour Senator Marie Sherlock told the hearing that it will be “near impossible” to drive through Phibsborough during the height of the construction of the MetroLink.
The Dublin Central senator told the hearing that she believes the impact the construction will have on traffic in the Phibsborough and Glasnevin areas had been “downplayed” by TII.
MetroLink estimates that it will take 105 months to build the Griffith Park station, while it also estimates that there will be over 100 heavy duty construction vehicles entering or exiting the construction site of the Glasnevin station on a daily basis over two years.
“I’m no engineer, but to my mind, it will be near impossible to get cars through Phibsborough at the height of the construction of the project,” Sherlock said.
While Matthew Foy, a traffic and transportation expert at Jacobs Engineering, told Sherlock that there would be “very minimal delays” as a result of traffic into the Glasnevin station site, Sherlock was not satisfied that the disruption would be minimal.
The senator also told the hearing of the “anxiety and trepidation” being felt by residents in Glasnevin who are concerned about the impact of tunnelling on their properties.
There is “very serious concern” about the impact on houses in Prospect Square and the surrounding areas, which are over 100 years old, she said.
She asked TII to revisit the parameters of the Property Owners’ Protection Scheme (POPS), a voluntary scheme available to residents whose properties lie within 30 metres of the edge of the MetroLink Tunnel Alignment, or 50 metres of station structures.
She also asked whether TII would cover the cost where damage in excess of €45,000 occurs to a house. But MetroLink project director Aidan Foley said they “have to draw a limit as to how much TII are willing to pay for this scheme”.
“You won’t find TII wanting in this regard. Obviously, we don’t want our project to damage properties, that’s why we put in this scheme. It can’t just be carte blanche to say that any amount sought by a resident for a property affected will be covered,” he said.
Labour TD Duncan Smith told the hearing that MetroLink will be “transformational” for all of Dublin, but particularly north Dublin “including my own hometown of Swords”.
He said that passengers arriving at Dublin Airport have to use a bus service which is “trying at best”.
It is a national embarrassment that we don’t have a rail link linking our national airport to Dublin city.
It followed a submission from Mark Finegan, the head of strategy and operations infrastructure at daa, who said the project would provide “an efficient transport link between Swords, Dublin Airport and Dublin city centre for staff and passengers”.
During his submission, Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin North-West Paul McAuliffe told the hearing that there is “huge excitement” in Ballymun to see the MetroLink completed.
However, he said that apathy to the project is “also huge” given that previous plans for Metro North, which would have served Ballymun, were granted approval in 2010 but shelved in 2011.
McAuliffe said that the main plaza in Ballymun remains unfinished as a result of the project being delayed and that key sites in the main street that have been identified for development have been held back “because of the question: ‘When will the Metro arrive?’”
He also questioned whether a larger discussion was needed as to “why a project granted approval in 2010 needed such a radical redesign when it recommenced in 2015”.
In the second half of the hearing, a representative of the Albert College Residents Association and Ballymun Road North Residents Associations raised objections to the proposed Collins Avenue station.
It is planned that the station will be located on the grounds of Our Lady of Victories Church in Glasnevin.
Paul Cusack described the church as “a hub of the community”, with parking at the church being used for weddings, funerals and by parents whose children attend the three schools across the road from the church.
A number of elderly people live near the church, and with the project estimated to take nine years to complete, Cusack said there’s a temptation to say that “many of them will not be around to see the benefit of it”.
He said the church and the schools opposite it have serious concerns about their ability to function in the future. “Who wants to send their child to a school that is in the middle of such difficult circumstances with major construction?”
Cusack argued that putting the station in Albert College Park, a ten-minute walk from the church, would be make more sense as the majority of people who would be using the station would be going to the main DCU campus, which is located next to the park.
But Dr Ronan Hallissey, the environmental impact assessment coordinator for MetroLink, told Cusack that while TII understands “the sensitivity of this location”, it had concluded that the location at the church was the best place for the station.
He said Albert College Park would not be an appropriate location for the station because it does not have the same capacity for interchange as the chosen location, which would “function as a hub for the broadest number of passengers for that part of the city”.
Hallisey added: “While we very much recognise your concerns, I would respond by saying that if MetroLink and Bus Connects go ahead, the traffic congestion – which is a major issue at that junction – would reduce significantly and hopefully the community would be enhanced as a result.”
The hearing will continue tomorrow, when it will hear from other residents associations and Lidl Ireland.
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