It utilises the existing infrastructure.
There are many misconceptions about the tunnel under the park. One is that it is unsuitable, that it is only a works tunnel. If it is a works tunnel, it is perhaps the most important railway works tunnel anywhere because, without it, to move a train between Connolly and Heuston Stations would involve going from Connolly Station to Wexford, from Wexford to Waterford, from Waterford to Limerick and from Limerick to Dublin. It is obvious how vital that line is to the national transport system in terms of rail. It was used very extensively for freight until the freight services were downgraded in recent times. However, it is still used for transporting freight from Dublin Port, mainly from Midland yard at the side of Spencer Dock to Cork and elsewhere. It is also used for rolling stock transfers - trains being removed from the Belfast-Dublin line to be repaired in Inchicore are brought through the tunnel to the yards there. It is a double-track railway line.
The picture shows platform ten at Islandbridge on the outskirts of Heuston Station. The arrow points to the tunnel entrance at Conyngham Road. At the upper right-hand corner is a picture of a signal. I took that photograph from Conyngham Road, looking in the opposite direction. Down below is an orange arrow where the line of the Spencer Dock is and the Dublin-Belfast line is underneath it. That is its course.
Another misconception about the tunnel is that it is too narrow for modern trains. This is totally false. Until the 1980s, coaches were much wider than they are now. The Park Road coaches which were eliminated in the early 1990s were ten and a half feet wide and they were the tallest and widest carriages ever to run on British or Irish railways. Since then, carriages have become narrower. The top one in the picture is the new 2900 series rail car that has been delivered. These care measure nine and a half feet, as do DART and Arrow cars. The carriages are smaller. The tunnels are the same size. The inter-city coaches are smaller again. Many are only just over nine feet in width.
Another problem that is touted - it may be legitimate - is that the tunnel may be too low to run catenaries to provide electric power to DART trains. It is claimed that some of the solutions, such as, for example, widening the tunnel, would cost a lot of money. It would not be necessary to widen the tunnel. The track bed could be lowered as was done at Dalkey. This lowers the train. The green image represents the DART and the overhead electrical equipment is connected to the roof of the tunnel over the train. There is now room for it because the train has been lowered. It requires excavating the track. The orange train represents the current diesel stock. We have not been able to trespass on that land and go down on a ladder with a measuring tape to ascertain whether that tunnel is too low. Even if it is - and it might already be tall enough for catenaries - it is not a major engineering problem to overcome. It has been done in the past at Dalkey.
It is also claimed that the severe curvature of the line would be a problem. I have some satellite pictures here that were taken of the Phoenix line. The yellow arrows point to the main curve. The large grey area in the middle is Prospect Cemetery. Below that is the Dublin-Maynooth-Sligo line. The black band is the Royal Canal. The curvature is approximately similar that in the centre picture, which is the loop line across the river between Tara Street and Connolly Stations. Liberty Hall can be seen on the left and the Custom House on the upper right. There is an even more severe curve at Glenageary, just north of the train station. Such curves in urban areas are common all over the world. Speed would be restricted anyway and if a new station is built at Phibsborough, trains will be either starting or stopping. This is very much an urban rail project. It is not for high-speed express trains across long distances.
On the proposed station at Spencer Dock, there is already a site there. It was the former Midland and Great-Western freight yard. A few years ago, the land was sold to Spencer Dock Development or Treasury Holdings which are building office blocks on the half of the site south of Sheriff Street. The north side of that yard still exists. I will show the committee pictures of it later. It is still being used for freight trains, although in many ways it is not suitable because the number of wagons that can be assembled restricts the length of freight trains they can assemble there. It probably would be better to develop it into a passenger station. If the proposed Luas line down Sheriff Street and the docklands development are included, it has the potential to be to Dublin what Liverpool Street station is to London.
Essentially, it is not a main line train station but gets passengers in and out from the outer suburbs quickly, to give them multiple connections to the DART, Luas and, perhaps, the proposed metro, but also to the bus service. It is not an inter-city train connection; if someone is going from Portlaoise to Waterford or Wexford, though that would be possible, the station is designed more for commuting. Existing rail freight facilities might be moved to the docks and to the more appropriate and under-used facilities at the Point Depot, where there is a larger yard, and at the coastal container yard further down the docks towards the Alexandria Basin, which is unused at present.
There is a brown field site at Spencer Dock which the railway company has ready to go. There is a possibility that the docklands business community can be brought in to help finance the construction at Spencer Dock station as a public private partnership project. Equally as important, in terms of its overall viability, it could kick start the docklands region in social, cultural and economic terms in the same way that docklands light railway in London drove the social and cultural development of Canary Wharf by making it a more socially accessible and culturally desirable place to live, work and visit. I refer the committee to various photographs of Sheriff Street bridge looking north-east. What is left of the current rail freight container line can be seen in the photograph, which looks in the direction of the Dublin-Belfast main line which crosses over in the distance. Wagons can be seen being made ready for transfer to various parts of the country. Another photograph shows the other half of the yard, which is currently being developed into large office buildings and private apartments. The IFSC is just to the right. It can be seen that the area is not as isolated as many people think, certainly not in the context of developments in the area. With regard to where the photograph is taken, if there was a Luas station at that point the city centre would also be accessible.
One of the most under-utilised and under-appreciated parts of the Irish rail network is at Phibsborough, a place known as Glasnevin Junction. The committee can see a photograph which details the importance of this area. There is one line that goes to Maynooth and Sligo and commuter areas in that direction. The line on the upper right of the photograph is the one that curves around the cemetery and enters the Phoenix Park. On the lower right is the line to Connolly Station and Spencer Dock, both of which connect with the docks. The other line is the lower line along the canal, which runs south of Croke Park, though several sections of it are currently disconnected.
If this area was redeveloped, it would be possible to build a station that would be impressive in terms of connections. If the track layout was altered and new platforms installed, there would be a facility that would not only serve as a commuter station within its own heavily populated and commercially strong area, but from which it would also be possible to connect with anywhere on the national rail network. There is enough room to build a station and the track connections are in place. It would be expensive, but not outrageously so, and would not cost anything of the order of €1 billion. It would take a proper engineering evaluation, but I could not see it taking any more than, perhaps, €25 million to build the station and alter the existing layout, including signalling.
On the use of Islandbridge, platform ten at Heuston Station was built as a temporary platform while the redevelopment of the existing train station was ongoing. Commuters from the Kildare line were being dropped off and buses were taking people to the main station and to the city centre. As soon as that platform was built, it opened up new possibilities for a train service which could run between Heuston and DART access between Connolly and Pearse, and perhaps down to Grand Canal Street, using the Phoenix Park tunnel. That station was developed in the context of a relatively modest layout of a passing loop, an island platform and two platforms on either side. An airport-style moving walkway could also be put in to get passengers to Heuston Station and the Luas. Between there, Phibsborough and the end of the tunnel, there is serious connectivity and integrated transport within the city and nationwide. The connections in place at present are unheard of or are difficult to use, such as getting off at Heuston and having to take the number 90 bus to Connolly Station. This would eliminate that.
There is enough room to build a direct route from Heuston to Islandbridge instead of a moving walkway. The problem with that is that the yard in question has been recently redeveloped; it is used for loading kegs of beer and is also a major car park. It would be very expensive and self-defeating in that it would be to rip up new track work. An airport-style moving walkway would probably be the best solution. However, even without that, the station is a very viable project.
If the Islandbridge station was developed, it might be possible to have a DART line running east-west and we have named this the "cross-town shuttle" for the moment. If it was possible to run trains in the slots between the existing inter-city, commuter and freight train services, extremely useful urban transport would be provided. Trains could rattle back and forth all day between Heuston and Pearse and that would truly represent what urban rail is supposed to be. In major cities around the world, whether New York, Paris, Vienna or otherwise, a train, subway or metro is like a watch; it is a part of city life. Passengers simply show up at a station and the service comes along. With suburban trains moving on this line and the cross-town shuttle filling in gaps, there would be a fairly intense frequency of service along that axis.
I work on Grand Canal Street and many people with whom I work live in Hazelhatch and along the Kildare commuter line. When I ask them why they drive into Dublin, they say it is because the train is useless and that is because it only takes them to Heuston Station. Most people want to go to the main business district in the city along the axis between Connolly, Pearse and, increasingly, Grand Canal Street. This would solve that problem and would open up a new world for people living in Kildare - who do not like the idea of getting off at Heuston and who prefer to drive or take the express bus - as it would for people arriving in Heuston who wish to go to Belfast. The day of the bus transfer would be over.
This is not just a quick fix. The DART utilised existing infrastructure at a time when the economy was not in such good shape and when the same resources were not available for transport. What CIE achieved with the DART was visionary for its time and the city would cease to function in many ways without the DART. It was built on the ethos of taking existing infrastructure and developing it to the best potential possible. The d-Connector solution is very much in that spirit.
The new station at Spencer Dock, if constructed, will bring other benefits to the rest of the rail network, a very important aspect of this project. There are tremendous capacity problems on the line through the city centre, mainly because of the loop line which has two tracks going over the city. There are other ways by which the railway company could solve this problem, such as by changing its timetable and making better use of unused platforms, etc., at stations. One of the proposals in the SSR was to either triple or quadruple the track between Howth Junction and Connolly. This would be very expensive and, aside from the question of railway infrastructure, would involve buying a lot of land in high property price areas.
With regard to Spencer Dock, I am talking predominantly about the Maynooth commuter service, which is growing as anyone who has seen recent property supplements will know. There are a lot of developments along that line in Ashtown and other areas, and advertisements for those areas usually show a picture of local train stations.
The station at Spencer Dock would be like Liverpool Street station and would shuttle huge numbers of people in and out; we have worked out that there is enough room for six platforms there. If the trains currently going into Connolly were diverted to Spencer Dock, it would bring the Maynooth commuter service into its own and would also alleviate the pressures on the northern suburban route by freeing up those vacant slots to increase the frequencies along the Drogheda-Connolly axis, and a Dublin-Belfast enterprise hourly service would be possible. We call this the final link in the heavy rail solution for Dublin because Dublin, for a city of its size, would be more or less complete with regard to heavy rail at this point.
Other services such as Luas will be provided in parts of the city centre and elsewhere that are currently inaccessible by train. The system in Dublin will be similar to that in Vienna, where the inter-city train network is complemented by a tram and metro network between the stations and in the business districts, which ties the city together. There is no reason a similar network cannot be put in place in Dublin and the Luas project can be a good start to that process.
Platform 11 is not just concerned about rail services in Dublin, as it is also involved in the development of the rail network outside the city, in accordance with the aims and mission statement of the national spatial strategy. The €1 billion needed to build the tunnel under the River Liffey could be saved by utilising the existing infrastructure and by putting together a system like the d-Connector. Better value could be provided for all Irish taxpayers - not just those in the Dublin area - by redirecting the money to restore railway lines in places where they are needed, such as the Sligo-Limerick and Derry-Letterkenny axes. Commuter rail services should be provided in Sligo, Limerick, Waterford and Galway, where taxpayers have the same problems as those in Dublin. The problems experienced in Dublin can be avoided in such places if we invest in rail transport now.
CIE's proposed tunnel would be a further validation of the "Pale rail" agenda, which involves all lines running to Dublin. Such a rail system is geared to fight the national spatial strategy,but our plans will address that matter. Thed-Connector is more than just a Dublin project, as it will serve the entire Irish railway network.
