Luas ‘won’t reach target’
New line faces traffic delays
CONCERNS around the travel times of the new Cross City Luas have been raised, with the tram’s operator acknowledging that traffic volumes are causing delays.
Fianna Fáil’s Dublin spokesman John Lahart TD has told the Irish Daily Mail trial runs have struggled to meet the target of getting from Broombridge Station to St Stephen’s Green in 21 minutes.
Mr Lahart said this was because of city centre traffic. A spokesperson from Transdev – the Luas operator – last night said: ‘The journey time from Broombridge to Stephen’s Green is longer than anticipated because of traffic volumes.’
Mr Lahart also called for an increased presence of the Garda Traffic Corps around the 5.9km track in the weeks after it is opened on December 9. He said the Luas Cross City is going to be ‘positively transformative’ for Dublin but added: ‘There are a lot of unknown impacts that could affect commuter patterns, and we are sleepwalking into this to a certain degree.’
He continued: ‘The most significant impact will be on the private car user. At peak time, Luas Cross City will cross O’Connell Bridge every three minutes.
‘In theory, it should take a minimum of 50 seconds and a maximum of 90 seconds to make that crossing, and it must clear the bridge because the Luas is longer than the width of the bridge, so it could block traffic on the quays. My understanding is that in test conditions, it is not always achieving this, and is preventing traffic from moving.’
Mr Lahart said he didn’t think the transition has ‘been very well planned for’, adding: ‘I don’t get any sense that there is one single authority coordinating everything, and at the very least, Dubliners should expect intensive Garda Traffic Corps presence in the vicinity of the quays and O’Connell Bridge in the early teething stages of the cross city.
‘My understanding is also that set time targets to get from Stephen’s Green to Broomhill are not achieving their target of around 21 minutes.’
The news comes a week after the Government signed off on a raft of new – and longer – Luas trams. On Tuesday morning, Minister for Transport Shane Ross brought a memo to Cabinet outlining plans for eight new Luas trams on the Green Line.
‘Hasn’t been well planned’
FOR a modestly sized city, Dublin’s traffic problems are far worse than they should be. Much of the blame for this sorry state of affairs can be attributed to an inadequate public transport system.
It is worth noting, however, that the introduction of the Luas system more than a decade ago went some way towards improving the situation for commuters. But the ridiculous thing from the very beginning was that the Green and Red Lines weren’t connected.
Now we are finally to get a cross-city service that will link the two lines. The construction work started four years ago and, as anyone based in the capital will be only too well aware, has caused widespread disruption.
But we at least had the consolation of knowing that navigating the city would become far easier as soon as the work was finished. Now, however, it appears that this will almost certainly not be the case.
There are fears of hold-ups because the Luas trams are longer than the width of O’Connell Bridge and may not be able to cross in sequence with the traffic lights. The likely result will be cars and other vehicles delayed in their progress down the quays on either side of the Liffey.
If it wasn’t so serious and set to affect thousands of people, there would almost be something comical about such a fiasco. Quite how this was allowed to happen is a subject that needs to be investigated as a matter of urgency. The first thing those responsible for the project ought to be asked is this: do none of them possess a measuring tape?