Niall wrote: “For the record I’m not a Dub nor am I resident in Dublin, “misinformation” on your part.”

Apologies Niall, I just assumed that somebody posting on the personal experience of daily commuting times in Dublin and who was intimately aware of the population problems in Swords and who initially posted on my blog from a Dublin Institute of Technology registered IP address had potentially been living in Dublin. Again I posted on what I saw as facts in front of me but the truth appears to be that you were at least in DIT when you initially commented.

As for the rest of your post, we’re going round in circles now. I refer you back to my last comment and also remind you that you keep talking about the problems with population growth in Swords, etc and how this is entirely related to just a volume of people issue and how I said, repetitively, that the best solution is not to temporarily treat the symptom but to give people a reason to live elsewhere, create jobs in other parts of the country and perhaps envisage a future where Swords won’t have to accommodate X number of people above its current standing. That’s a much better future in my opinion. Dublin is successful, is developed and is now overflowing; it’s time to develop the rest of the country and reap a much better return on investment for the tax payers.

It’s hardly fair to compare developing two LUAS lines to repairing a section of the existing Iarnród Eireann rail line.

Just because it won’t serve the entire nation doesn’t mean it should be scrapped, it is needed for a sustainable Dublin which is needed to serve the entire nation.

It will provide 1000′s of jobs to the irish economy. The skills from more expierienced nations may be needed at the top end but we as a nation will never be able to provide a metro otherwise.

The LUAS might not have solved the traffic chaos but it has been an undoubted success. It was built to serve commuters and to be part of an intgrated rail system. METRO will not solve our traffic problms either but it will be a sccuess. Swords’ population is going to grow to 100,000 residents, The airport will grow from 20million passengers to 35m passengers. How will these people get from one end of the city to the other with realitve ease? The answer is an integrated rail network. People in Dublin are limited in where they work, socialise because there is an inadequate transport network. METRO is part of an integrated network.

Dublin suffers from traffic congestion as a result of awful town planning in the past, Developers were let build where ever thet wanted without having proper infrastructure in place to serve the new towns. The Metro should have been built in the 90′s but better late than never.

It’s hardly fair to compare developing two LUAS lines to repairing a section of the existing Iarnród Eireann rail line.

Just because it won’t serve the entire nation doesn’t mean it should be scrapped, it is needed for a sustainable Dublin which is needed to serve the entire nation.

It will provide 1000′s of jobs to the irish economy. The skills from more expierienced nations may be needed at the top end but we as a nation will never be able to provide a metro otherwise.

The LUAS might not have solved the traffic chaos but it has been an undoubted success. It was built to serve commuters and to be part of an intgrated rail system. METRO will not solve our traffic problms either but it will be a sccuess. Swords’ population is going to grow to 100,000 residents, The airport will grow from 20million passengers to 35m passengers. How will these people get from one end of the city to the other with realitve ease? The answer is an integrated rail network. People in Dublin are limited in where they work, socialise because there is an inadequate transport network. METRO is part of an integrated network.

Dublin suffers from traffic congestion as a result of awful town planning in the past, Developers were let build where ever thet wanted without having proper infrastructure in place to serve the new towns. The Metro should have been built in the 90′s but better late than never.

Well you’ve finally put your cards on the table now John and shown your true colours. I especially love the part where you say that Dublin people earn more and therefore deserve better than the rest of the country – really classy!

Quite frankly I cannot stomach much more of your, it suits me so to hell with the rest of the country, claptrap but first a few corrections to the things you have said.

Firstly, the very first poster on this article agreed with me. Since then there has only been 3 others. One, an ex-classmate of mine who now resides in the US for many years and then both yourself and Niall who are both Dublin resident and hardly surprising that the opinions expressed would be in favour of the project because of that association. So going on those stats it’s 3 vs 2 in favour of the metro – hardly a massive victory; not to mention the 20-odd people who joined the Facebook group in favour of aborting the project, from just reading my low readership blog.

Secondly, I never said that the country wouldn’t get a metro. That’s a blatant lie because it’s very clear for everyone to see in the above text that I said it was a very bad use of tax payers’ money that would not give a quality return on investment to the vast majority of tax payers.

Thirdly, there is no difference between saying one third of the tax base and one third of the tax take. This is the same as tax base is not the number of people but rather the revenue generated from the citizens of the entire country.

Fourthly, the Luas was completely different from the metro as the skillset is far greater than what is effectively repairing a section of the existing Iarnród Eireann rail line. Tunneling is a massive undertaking, especially when you are talking about huge distances underground.

Fifthly, I never said that any one capital investment would give back something to everyone but what I DID SAY was that this metro is a white elephant of an investment that certainly won’t serve the mast majority of Irish residents. That’s an indisputable FACT!

In sixth place we have your ill-informed rhetoric about the jobs provided by such a project. The reason that I didn’t give information about irrelevant past projects was not only because they were irrelevant but because I kind of hoped that you’d do a little research before spreading your own lies and misinformation – something that I have never done and I resent your accusation of such. Just to inform you a little, since you are so interested:

1) The Jack Lynch Tunnel was designed by an English architect and constructed by a UK construction company.
2) The Dublin Port Tunnel was mainly constructed by a UK construction company with Irish and Japanese offices and had site surveys and geological work carried out by a US engineering company.
3) The Luas is operated by a French multinational and was constructed by a joint venture between Italian and Australian contractors.
4) The same is true of any significant Irish civil engineering project – we don’t have the skills here nor the government support for local industry.

In seventh place, solving Dublin’s unfortunate traffic problems. Sure wasn’t the Luas the be all and end all to that issue – hailed as the saviour of Dublin? Over a billion Euros later and still traffic chaos and a number of collisions with existing traffic because it gets in the way or people get in the way of it. Then sure there was the Dublin Port Tunnel, again the second coming of Christ with respect to solving Dublin’s traffic problems. Nearly a billion Euros later and guess what, Dublin still has traffic chaos! The only way to solve this chaos is what I have been saying all along, decrease the number of people dependent on such a small geographical area and federate the investment to other parts of the country that can grow at a much better rate and maximise the return on investment to Ireland as a country and not just a capital city.

In eight place, my comment about the metro link not being used by a large number of Dublin central residents is again not fallacious. It is a FACT that many people live in Dublin central and have no need for this metro for daily commuting. It is a FACT that this metro line does not touch every Dublin residential area. It is a FACT that many people are better and more easily served by bus routes that do not traverse the city but still get to where they need to be. You cannot argue with the FACTS.

Finally, as for me being personally interested in this project not going ahead. You’re dead right; not because I own a bus company nor any other transport options but simply because I am an Irish citizen who actually gives a damn about the future of this country and not just what happens in my own backyard. I can see the billions of Euro of wreckless spending that goes on every year in this country and never do we get any better. Fifteen years of mismanaging a massive boom period, spending billions on white elephants that were supposed panaceas to all Dublin’s problems, still spending money on vanity bridges at a cost of at least EUR 15 million in a time of recession and many other things that do nothing to increase foreign investment, encourage entrepreneurial activity, nor simply just create jobs for our future generations and here we are – the black sheep of the EU. Cited by Nobel prize winning economists as a disaster zone and you still seem to believe that the governing forces of this country know what to do with our money and our planning strategy? I spread no lies, no misinformation and I never misquote nor intentionally mislead people to read something that is not a fact. Your attitude on the other hand typifies why Ireland is in a hole at the moment, turn the other cheek, don’t cut our losses, there can’t possibly be another solution other than investing in Dublin’s traffic problems, Dublin people earn more and deserve more, the rest of the country – where was that again? I live for a day that will see Ireland as a truly successful nation, one where my kids can have a choice of what part of the country they want to live in because jobs will be available – one where they won’t have to pay 700k for a 3-bed shack in Dundrum because land is so scarce. We have already lost a great deal of money, if this project proceeds, yes we will get a metro but no, it will not make any difference to the country. Dublin will still have traffic chaos, there will be no more land to develop in Dublin central for businesses to move in, the majority of the rest of the country will still be ignored on infrastructure, education, and societal needs making it a no-go area for any outside investor. If that’s the Ireland you want then I hope they build the first metro station in your back garden so you can use it every day.

Building the luas is not “completely different” from building the metro. Even the gague is the same to allow for a link-up later. If it is the difference of a tunnel you are referring to, how about providing some evidence that the Jack Lynch tunnel in Cork or the port tunnel in Dublin were built mainly by non-Irish workers.

I know that you cannot produce this evidence for the Port tunnel, DART, Luas etc… because you know very well that the majority of the workers on these projects were Irish and you’re just trying to gloss over your lie about non-Irish workers building the metro in your previous post.
You are being intentionally vague on something that there is a clear-cut answer for.

The fact is that you started this “Scrap the Metro” topic on the 3rd of December 2008 and none of the commentators who have bothered to respond have agreed with your sentiment. You have also attemped, unconvincingly in my opinion, to refute these commentators views.

Now you appear to be suggesting that the government will proceed with the project, pay the money and will not get the Metro delivered. Given that the project is a public-private partnership, the government is not bound to pay anything until the project is delivered (even then it’s cost is paid in 25 yearly installments). So unless we’re on the brink of an apocalypse or an unforeseen natural disaster, the government will have the Metro delivered and then begin paying for it.

I do not work for the government and have no links with the metro project other than it is being built in the city I live in.

Given that you appear keen to spread misinformation, fear, uncertainty and doubt about the metro project, my guess is that you have a personal financial interest in stopping this vital piece of infrastructure from going ahead. Are you the managing director of a bus manufacturer by any chance? or Dublin Bus?

jbwan quote:
“You have already said that Dublin has at most one third of the tax base for the country”

More misinformation by you, I said “They pay well over a third of the tax take of the state and deserve a reasonably good public transport system.”

Many of the high income professional jobs in Ireland are in the Dublin Metropolitan Region, so they would pay more taxes than the rest of the country.

Here is an income map of Ireland (100=Average Income)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Ireland_income_distribution_chart.gif

Your argument about most people not using the line is fallacious. Commuters in Dublin tend to use only one or two of the rail transport lines to get to work, not all of them. Yet if you remove any one of them you will have a lot of angry people on your hands.

This is about creating a comprehensive rail transport system for the entire Dublin area. The last three parts are the two metro lines and the DART interconnector. We shouldn’t be stopping at the last hurdle with a bunch of disconnected systems when completing these projects will connect the system together and make it far easier to get around Dublin.

Transport problems exist in Dublin, you just want to shelve the solutions to these problems.

No one particular capital investment project will “give something back to the vast majority of Irish citizens/inhabitants”

Building the luas is not “completely different” from building the metro. Even the gague is the same to allow for a link-up later. If it is the difference of a tunnel you are referring to, how about providing some evidence that the Jack Lynch tunnel in Cork or the port tunnel in Dublin were built mainly by non-Irish workers.

I know that you cannot produce this evidence for the Port tunnel, DART, Luas etc… because you know very well that the majority of the workers on these projects were Irish and you’re just trying to gloss over your lie about non-Irish workers building the metro in your previous post.
You are being intentionally vague on something that there is a clear-cut answer for.

The fact is that you started this “Scrap the Metro” topic on the 3rd of December 2008 and none of the commentators who have bothered to respond have agreed with your sentiment. You have also attemped, unconvincingly in my opinion, to refute these commentators views.

Now you appear to be suggesting that the government will proceed with the project, pay the money and will not get the Metro delivered. Given that the project is a public-private partnership, the government is not bound to pay anything until the project is delivered (even then it’s cost is paid in 25 yearly installments). So unless we’re on the brink of an apocalypse or an unforeseen natural disaster, the government will have the Metro delivered and then begin paying for it.

I do not work for the government and have no links with the metro project other than it is being built in the city I live in.

Given that you appear keen to spread misinformation, fear, uncertainty and doubt about the metro project, my guess is that you have a personal financial interest in stopping this vital piece of infrastructure from going ahead. Are you the managing director of a bus manufacturer by any chance? or Dublin Bus?

jbwan quote:
“You have already said that Dublin has at most one third of the tax base for the country”

More misinformation by you, I said “They pay well over a third of the tax take of the state and deserve a reasonably good public transport system.”

Many of the high income professional jobs in Ireland are in the Dublin Metropolitan Region, so they would pay more taxes than the rest of the country.

Here is an income map of Ireland (100=Average Income)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Ireland_income_distribution_chart.gif

Your argument about most people not using the line is fallacious. Commuters in Dublin tend to use only one or two of the rail transport lines to get to work, not all of them. Yet if you remove any one of them you will have a lot of angry people on your hands.

This is about creating a comprehensive rail transport system for the entire Dublin area. The last three parts are the two metro lines and the DART interconnector. We shouldn’t be stopping at the last hurdle with a bunch of disconnected systems when completing these projects will connect the system together and make it far easier to get around Dublin.

Transport problems exist in Dublin, you just want to shelve the solutions to these problems.

No one particular capital investment project will “give something back to the vast majority of Irish citizens/inhabitants”

The solution is to provide employment in other areas of the country so that unsupportable population masses do not accumulate. We might be a small island but the country isn’t so small that we have nowhere else to encourage business to develop and communities to thrive, rather than just treating a symptom of a much greater problem.

@John

At this stage John I’m led to believe that you either work for the government or are some other way entangled in this project. I can appreciate Niall’s arguments and also your initial gambit. However, asking me to prove that the workers on the metro project will not be from foreign companies, drafted for the duration, by examining past and unrelated projects with completely different skill sets is not only pointless but completely unrealistic.

The government may get a metro if the pay for it (don’t see what the point of you saying that is) but my analogy stands up as this is a massive gamble. You have already said that Dublin has at most one third of the tax base for the country, therefore two thirds of tax payers are not being served by this at first glance. On further glance, taking into consideration the Dublin central population and the complete lack of their need for this system bar one or two occasional trips that are not time constrained adds even more tax payers who are not being served by this system. The fact is that this system will solve the needs of very few tax payers in this country, it only addresses the symptom of a much greater problem and will not help business development as Dublin is already massively overdeveloped and the law of diminishing returns is now active. The rest of the country is crying out for investment, jobs development and infrastructural development that will have a much greater return on investment for IRELAND and not just resolving the commuting needs of a much smaller fraction of the population who are overly centralised in a poorly planned mess of a sprawling city. Again I’m not arguing that a metro is pointless in general but given the current economic climate and what the ENTIRE country needs, this is a white elephant of a project that is not giving anything back to the vast majority of Irish citizens/inhabitants.

I will believe this statement when jbwan provides evidence showing that “nearly all” of the Luas construction workers were not Irish.
The same goes for the workers employed during the creation of the DART and Commuter rail services.

Dublin is still the only major capital in Europe that does not have a rail link to its Airport. North Central Dublin still has no rail access despite having a population that would merit a high capacity rail transport link.

Eg:

Swords,
Dublin Airport,
Ballymun,
DCU,
Drumcondra rail interchange (Croke Park Stop),
Mater Hospital (Phibsboro Stop)

These are only a few of the stops on the line.

” I would not approve of this project in any city in Ireland, in the current climate. ”

Most countries only invest in this kind of infrastructure in a recession as doing so in a boom results in massive cost overruns. They then pay for these projects when the economy recovers. This is the best of both worlds. For example, all the Scandanavian countries follow this build-in-recession pay-in-boom policy.

If we proceed we get a metro line, if we cancel we get a bill for the costs so far and nothing to show for it. The comparison you have used is invalid, a gambler has no guarantee of any return. The government and the electorate know that they will get a metro.

I will believe this statement when jbwan provides evidence showing that “nearly all” of the Luas construction workers were not Irish.
The same goes for the workers employed during the creation of the DART and Commuter rail services.

Dublin is still the only major capital in Europe that does not have a rail link to its Airport. North Central Dublin still has no rail access despite having a population that would merit a high capacity rail transport link.

Eg:

Swords,
Dublin Airport,
Ballymun,
DCU,
Drumcondra rail interchange (Croke Park Stop),
Mater Hospital (Phibsboro Stop)

These are only a few of the stops on the line.

” I would not approve of this project in any city in Ireland, in the current climate. ”

Most countries only invest in this kind of infrastructure in a recession as doing so in a boom results in massive cost overruns. They then pay for these projects when the economy recovers. This is the best of both worlds. For example, all the Scandanavian countries follow this build-in-recession pay-in-boom policy.

If we proceed we get a metro line, if we cancel we get a bill for the costs so far and nothing to show for it. The comparison you have used is invalid, a gambler has no guarantee of any return. The government and the electorate know that they will get a metro.

Do we not need a rail link between the Airport and the City?