Metrolink hit with further delays

The Metro North was first announced in 2000 by then-Minister for Transport Mary O’Rourke, but it is now more likely that the MetroLink project won’t be completed for at least another decade based on current estimations.

The pipe dream of getting a metro from O’Connell Street to Dublin Airport is likely to remain just that, as a leading travel journalist told Newstalk that the process is likely to be delayed even further by submissions received by An Bord Pleanála.

Travel Extra Editor Eoghan Corry told the station that he still believes the MetroLink is “a long, long time away,” with the proposed Government target of having the Metrolink up and running by the early part of the 2030s now looking ambitious by comparison.

“What they’re doing at the moment in gathering up a lot of submissions about the route, about where the stations should be, what temporary land should be bought while it’s being built,” he said, and that this was a factor in ABP not being able to issue an inspector’s report before Christmas. 

“They (ABP) say the volume of the submissions is one of the reasons that it’s being pushed back.”

“We were expecting some sort of release of planning in the coming weeks, but it does look like it’s going to be pushed back three or four months.”

He said that a ‘logjam’ in the statutory body was likely to lead to more delays, saying that they are “straining under the pressure of the oversight on all the other projects they’re doing at the moment.” 

Minister for Transport Éamon Ryan specifically cited the Metrolink as a priority of this current Government, stating after October’s Budget “it is significant that we secured adequate funding to keep moving at speed and scale with our transformative public transport ambitions, and to help with that, Metrolink will enter the next phase bringing it ever closer to construction.”

Speaking last July, Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley, Cathaoirleach of the Public Accounts Committee said “the need for a Metro system for Dublin was first proposed in the Platform for Change strategy published in 2000 and was due to be in operation by 2010. Planning permission for the Metro North line was granted in 2011 but was later suspended by the then Government due to the economic downturn.”

One economic downturn and four Taoiseachs later, the idea was formally revived in March 2018 when An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced that the project would be renamed the Metrolink and would finally connect the Northside of Dublin and Dublin Airport with the city centre.

“A new Metro North project was announced by the NTA in September 2015, with services due to commence in 2026. Metrolink succeeded that project and according to correspondence from the Department in April 2023, Metrolink services are currently projected to commence in 2034. The Committee is frustrated at how long it has taken from the initial proposal for a metro system in Dublin, to the most recent date for completion,” Stanley said last year.“According to that timeline, Metrolink will be delivered 23 years after planning permission was granted to the original Metro North project and 34 years after it was first proposed in Platform for Change.”

Luke Corkery, a Fine Gael local election candidate from Swords succinctly stated “just build the bloody thing.”

Speaking to Northside People, Corkery said that the Metrolink is “badly needed” and would serve as a form of upward mobility for workers in his constituency of Swords.

“In my hometown of Swords, just under half of all workers commute to Dublin City. Swords also has the highest proportion of commuters travelling by bus, at 18%. As we patiently await BusConnects, the vast majority of Swords-based commuters rely on private (and more expensive) providers like the Swords Express, in the absence of reliable, frequent public bus routes for one of Dublin’s biggest commuter towns.”

“A significant handful of those commuters bought their homes with ‘Metro North’ a key selling point in the advertisements for all of those shiny new housing developments that popped up during the Celtic Tiger. Twenty years on (which, I should add, is most of my lifetime), they are none the wiser. Re-announcement, re-announcement, re-announcement. Delay, delay, delay.”

Corkery said “the people of Swords need Metrolink, as do commuters throughout Dublin’s Northside. So do third level institutions, like DCU and Trinity College, and hospitals, like the Rotunda and the Mater.”

Dublin Airport boss Kenny Jacobs told members of the Oireachtas that Dublin Airport was “ready” for Metrolink, and the Metrolink would compliment Dublin Airport’s aspirations to become a leading Western European airport.

It is estimated that the Metrolink would exceed its target of serving 24 million passengers a year within its first year in service, much like how the Luas blew past expectations 20 years ago.

Current plans for the Metrolink would see Estuary Station serve as the terminus point for the Northside, and make its way through Seatown Station, Swords Central, Dublin Airport, Dairdstown Station, Northwood, Ballymun, before going all the way to Charlemont Station on the Southside.