News that Dublin’s long-awaited MetroLink has been given the green light by An Coimisiún Pleanála will be welcomed by many. Too often mischaracterised as just an “airport train”, by linking Dublin Airport with Irish Rail, Dart, bus, and Luas services, MetroLink will form part of a fully integrated public transport system in the greater Dublin area and beyond.
It will involve 15 stations, running from north of Swords at Estuary through Swords, Dublin Airport, Ballymun, Glasnevin, and the city centre, to Charlemont at the Grand Canal. The journey time from Swords to the city centre will be around 25 minutes. A large portion of the 11km route will be underground, including under the city centre area and at Dublin Airport.
First mooted in 2001, and not due to open for another decade, it is projected to cost €23.2 billion, almost double the 2021 estimate. Even at this price, not alone is it still worth it, it’s “essential”, says Richard Guiney of Dublin Town, a lobby group that represents city centre businesses.
“I think it’s essential, the reason being that the MetroLink will carry 20,000 passengers per direction, per hour. That compares with the Luas which, even with all the extensions, carries around 11,000, and the buses, even with Bus Connects, of around 3,500. So in terms of getting the kind of volumes we need into the city, MetroLink is absolutely necessary,” he says.
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Focusing on the airport element alone does it a disservice, Guiney reckons.
“It’s about commuters; it’s about dropping students to DCU. I’ve felt for a very long time that we’re trying to do too much above ground, with all the conflicts between the buses and the Luas, and the reduction of vehicles in the city. We still need vehicles for things like deliveries but the city is too large to be trying to transport the kind of numbers it has. On a daily basis we have around a quarter of a million people in the core city centre. We need transport modes that carry high volumes of people,” he says.
“There will be some disruption, but I don’t think it will be oppressive and, when you look at the return on investment in terms of people being able to get to the city efficiently by day and by night, it will certainly be worth it.”
Footfall in the city has never returned to its pre-Covid levels and is currently around 15 per cent lower. Guiney sees MetroLink as an opportunity to revive vast swathes of the city, particularly on the north side.
Not every businessperson agrees, with financier Dermot Desmond reported as reckoning that autonomous vehicles will do away for the need for it, and of Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary dismissing it as a waste of money.
Dublin Chamber, another business interest group, disagrees, viewing MetroLink as a way to tackle congestion, improve connectivity and sustain the capital’s long-term economic growth.
The chambers’ head of public affairs, Stephen Browne, is sanguine about the disruption involved in its construction phase. “It’s short-term pain for long-term gain. I don’t think anyone is talking about the disruption the Luas Cross City caused, now that it is in the rear-view mirror,” he says.
His hope is that there will be no more planning delays that might hold up delivery of the project even further, not least because that would inevitably result in the price going up.
“It’s important to get the best deal for the Irish taxpayer, but these things are a public good for all of us,” says Browne.
David Broderick, director of the Small Firms Association, part of employer’s group Ibec, is equally enthusiastic about MetroLink. “It’s a vital part of our infrastructure. If you look at our retailers and our tourism sector, we need to do absolutely everything we can to help them,” says Broderick.
“We only have to think back to September of this year, when the traffic came back with a bang, to know all about traffic congestion and understand how it impacts on businesses too, in terms of their ability to move from job to job and to host events.”
Indeed, the SFA itself recently relocated an event it was hosting from Dublin city centre to Kildare because of feedback from people “finding it difficult to come into the city”, he says.
