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[Thread] Not upgrading the Green Line to metro as part of #Metrolink will be bad for pedestrians, cyclists, bus users, Luas Red Line in the city centre. Instead they are proposing to run 55m trams every 2 minutes on city centre streets, which is ambitious to say the least. 
Competition for space in the city centre is always going to be high. We should be prioritising pedestrians and cyclists ahead of public transport. However, running 55m trams at every 2 minutes, sounds like we're going to be prioritising public transport.
It sounds like many Green Line trams will be turned around at Stephen's Green in order to avoid the mix traffic zones in the city centre. This makes the Green Line less useful for passengers.
The Luas Green line running 55m trams at 2 minute intervals means a 55m tram will pass a point in the city centre every 1 minute. There are going to be literal walls of steel moving through Dublin's core. Because we didn't want to connect the Green Line into a tunnel
Luas Green Line at 55m is already one of the longest on-street tram systems in Europe. We're pushing the definition of tram pretty far to be honest. If you want to keep a tram moving at 2 minute frequency in the city centre you need lots of traffic priority for the trams.
This traffic light priority will be at the expense of pedestrians, cyclists and other public transport users like buses, who will have to wait for more trams to pass by. This is not sustainable development.
The most troubling part of abandoning/delaying the Green Line tunnel connection is that they say we don't need it for 20 years. I'd love to see that modelling. The Luas is already bursting at seams. That's before Cherrywood or a Luas extension to Bray. The other big question...
NTA says no Green Line metro upgrade is needed for 20 years. Did that consider:
* Connecting the GL to metro will make GL more useful so more people will want to use the it
* Building height limits have been removed. Sandyford & Cherrywood will be higher density than anticipated
* Connecting the GL to metro will make GL more useful so more people will want to use the it
* Building height limits have been removed. Sandyford & Cherrywood will be higher density than anticipated
The NTA/TII have said connecting Green Line into @MetroLink_ie tunnels will be phase 3. However, they have not said how that will be done. This strikes me as exactly the same as Luas Green Line and Red Line not meeting for a decade because some future team was to that figure out.
Fundamentally the road space in Dublin is limited and 100% utilised. In order to provide more capacity to the Green Line (instead of the #Metrolink upgrade) then space and time will be taken from pedestrians, cyclists, bus users and Red Line users. Those users should be upset.
.@MetroLink_ie website only has two reports: on the results of the first public consultation; and on this round of public consultation. The last round included 1,000s of pages of engineering reports. Where are they? This makes me skeptical of reasons behind abandoning Green Line.
I've written another Twitter thread on the proposed changes along the northern section of #Metrolink. There are some good improvements that will limit the impact of construction or operation.
They have since posted a 4 page explanatory note on the future capacity of the Luas Green Line with some further minor capacity improvements. I'm still not convinced they can wait until 2037 before needing metro south: metrolink.ie/assets/downloa…
