New LUAS line opens in Dublin, Ireland

-
Tranzwatching light rail in Ireland

 The city of Dublin, (metropop 1.6 million) capital of Ireland  previously built two separate light rail lines, disconnected from each other, operating their light rail under the traditional word for "speed" LUAS.  (If you visit this site check out the interactive map to see when the next tram is due at any particular stop!).

Ignoring capital costs, the light rail has exceeded expectations and is operated without subsidy generating an operating surplus. It is  considered a great success, carrying around 30 million passengers a year.  Extensions to lines were in opened in 2009 and 2010

This weekend a further extension has been opened to one of these lines on the LUAS network. The extension has been built as a Private Public Partnership and has cost Euros $150 million (NZ$262 millions) to travel 4.5 kilometres - NZ$59 million per kilometre to build. The extension is expected to carry 2 million passengers a year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Proof that the future doesn't exist? Or is it just a very long wait?

-
Image
" Girl on a wall" Sculptor Clemen Pasch; Photographer Turelio. Installed 1979 Aachen, Germany. Wikimedia Commons Unbeknownst to the wabbit, his concern about the lack of designated mass rapid transit strategy in Christchurch (and therefore the inability of the present administrations to protect future busway and rail corridors) is being echoed in Auckland. Ok ok, the fluffy one's ego is big but not quite that big. Echo?? The flutter of a butterfly's wing made reverberate around the whole world but he doubts if the wave of his fluffy paw does. He won't even try to pass it off as "great minds think alike". Reality is you don't need an echo chamber or a big brain to see that the future must be planned and the bigger or more extended (including linear) the project is the greater the run up time must be. A week may be a long time in politics but a decade is a mere weekend when planning major infrastructure. The event to which I refer is reported in this ...
Read more

Our public transport good. Really? Compared to what...?

-
Image
....they have no idea how appallingly bad public transport is in New Zealand if measured against any genuine vision of reducing car use in New Zealand Most bus systems are still running 1950's style, many places around the world.  Here a Christchurch example, on  weekend hourly bus services, these two serving adjacent locations, common key points, and the same broad suburban area of Christchurch,  by different routes running five minutes apart (yeah right!!).**   This typical waste of resources by bizarrely named Environment Canterbury reflects outdated and dis-integrated planning in this age when bus lanes, computers, computer chip cards, GPS should be offering "go any direction" effective interactive grid pattern networks.  Updated June 8 & October 2 2013  This is the second most viewed posting on NZ in Tranzit - 17, 452 page views to Feb 2018.  Imagine if school committees by law had to be run only by people who had neve...
Read more

Happy New Year - Despite Everything!!

-
Image
Last New Year's greeting from NZ in Tranzit included a photo of rather pensive and doubtful Charlie Chaplin in front of one of Christchurch's venetian gothic style buildings . I like to think it summed up a mood of our city, still getting severe after-shocks, such as on Boxing Day following the 7.1 richter scale earthquake on September 4th 2010. Nobody died and so few were injured in that first huge pre-dawn quake it seemed too good to be true. And alas it was. On February 22nd 2011  a smaller but far more violent, intensely localised quake, hit directly under the city itself in the lunch hour, causing massive damage and injury and killing 182 persons, most of these in two older high rises buildings that suffered catastrophic collapse. The building behind Chaplin in the aforementioned photo , suffered irreparable damage and has since been demolished, as with many other historic buildings, almost all in fact, destroying much of the city's strong heritage character. Ov...
Read more