The real test for Luas is whether it will reduce peak-time car commuting between Sandyford and the city centre, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
The faces of the car drivers on Harcourt Street tell it all. They just can't resist looking at the Luas trams gliding down the street towards St Stephen's Green, and most of them are probably wondering why they themselves are stuck in yet another traffic jam.
It was the notion that Dublin needed to take a quantum leap in the quality of its public transport to entice motorists to leave their cars at home that drove the light rail project from the outset - long before the late Michael McDonnell, chief executive of CIÉ, borrowed the Irish word for speed and named it Luas.
Tramways were all the rage in the early to mid-1990s. Nantes and Grenoble had become the first two cities in France to install modern light rail systems and Strasbourg quickly followed. But it was the fact that Manchester was also bringing back the trams that made policy-makers here sit up and take notice.
The French showed that building a street-running tramway could lever major improvements in the urban environment. This was most dramatically illustrated in Strasbourg, where traffic on its main square, Place Kléber, was reduced from 50,000 vehicles a day to zero when it was turned into a pedestrian plaza.
Building a tramway from Dundrum to Tallaght, running on-street through the city centre, was one of the key proposals made by the Government-sponsored Dublin Transportation Initiative in 1994. Quite apart from everything else, it was seen as cheaper than building a partly underground metro.
This was in the era of the belching bus, those diesel monsters that spewed out tiny particles of soot (known as PM10s) which can be dangerous to people suffering from asthma and other respiratory ailments. Buses were also unreliable and the services provided by Dublin Bus seemed to be in terminal decline.
Increasingly, the bus was seen as a residual service for those who couldn't afford to buy their own cars. It was always said that businessmen with pin-striped suits wouldn't be caught dead on a bus. But that was before huge improvements were made by quality bus corridors, plus more and better buses.
Luas is a long time coming. Montpelier in the south of France decided to install a tramway in the same year as Dublin did, and it's been up and running for three years now. But there is something fitting in the fact that it's opening just after the centenary of Bloomsday, when Dublin's trams ran everywhere.
Like other major projects, Luas has been controversial. Most of the complaints focused on the huge disruption caused by its construction to businesses on the affected streets, but there were also beefs about the escalating cost and about whether light rail would make a real difference to transport in Dublin.
Had the original plan been implemented, the city would at least have a fully integrated light rail line. Instead of terminating at St Stephen's Green, Luas would have run on down Dawson Street into Nassau Street, Lower Grafton Street, College Green and Westmoreland Street and then across O'Connell Bridge.
But the Government decided in May 1998 that it would have to go underground, despite the advice of independent consultants W.S. Atkins to proceed with the original plan. At the time, chauffeur-driven ministers just couldn't imagine taking road space away from cars and dedicating it to public transport.
Six years on, the situation has changed following the imposition of a left-turn ban at the end of Dawson Street, except for buses, taxis, cyclists and motorcyclists. Thus, it was ironic to see Fianna Fáil election posters on the street with pictures of Luas under the slogan: "Delivering for Dublin".
Inevitably, there will be a public demand to connect up the two lines - to "join the dots" in the city centre, as the Green Party has urged.
Contrary to some reports, both lines have been built at the same gauge, making such a connection possible. But whether this happens will depend on the Government.
The Luas bridge at Dundrum has become the project's architectural icon - though nothing has been done so far to implement an urban design scheme that would integrate its undercroft with the village's main street. That should come with the redevelopment of its early 1970s shopping centre.
Gaps in the urban fabric caused by the construction of Luas that need to be filled in include the corner of James's Street and Bow Street West, at the top of Steevens' Lane, and Arran Quay Terrace, where the residents fought a spirited campaign to save their houses. The site was cleared and nothing built.
Initial fears that the "wirescape" would be ugly and obtrusive have not been realised. Yes, there are steel poles at the terminus on St Stephen's Green West and all along the Naas Road, coming in towards Inchicore, but the suspension of the catenary on city centre streets has rendered it almost invisible.
Will Dubliners take to Luas? The livery of the trams may be in Wexford's GAA colours, but their sleek appearance is smart enough to attract new customers for public transport from the upmarket suburbs along the Sandyford line. On the Tallaght line, however, it's more likely to be a switch from buses.
Connex, the French multinational which will operate Luas, is understandably anxious that a degree of integration beween trams and buses be achieved. But here again, nothing much is happening, with Dublin Bus resisting any reorganisation of routes to complement Luas instead of competing with it.
The new service will certainly be attractive. Each of the 40-metre trams on the Sandyford line has 80 seats and an overall capacity of 315, with most of the passengers standing - about four times the number a double-deck bus can carry. Trams will run every five minutes in each direction during peak periods.
Luas should make a dent in the levels of car commuting between Sandyford and the city centre. On the corridor it serves, the "modal split" is likely to shift towards public transport - as it did on the DART line and, more recently, the Stillorgan Road QBC where bus use has more than doubled.
No doubt there will be casualties. The reintroduction of street-running trams after an absence of more than half a century will take a while to get used to. But the arrival of Luas should have a marked calming effect on the streets through which it passes, making them surprisingly more civilised and pleasant places.