The first Luas tram carrying the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, and more than 300 invited guests rolled into St Stephen's Green from Sandyford at 1.35 p.m. yesterday - one minute ahead of the scheduled 22 minutes for the journey. Tim O'Brien reports.
Twelve years after it was approved by the Cabinet in 1992, and at a cost of around €770 million, the Luas had finally arrived to a hugely enthusiastic welcome. People converged on vantage points and lined adjacent streets to see it go by. At least 30,000 people travelled on it during its first day of operation - the numbers boosted, perhaps, by it being free up to and including Sunday.
The level of interest was such that the intended 3 p.m. launch of public services was brought forward by an hour after the Minister's tram was mobbed by enthusiastic sightseers in St Stephen's Green.
The operators had to increase the number of trams from five to 11 by five o'clock as the evening rush got underway.
A spokesman said passenger numbers had far exceeded expectations. At one point in the afternoon, the frequency exceeded the intended one tram every five minutes, he said.
The day did not go entirely without a hitch, however, with one of the first trams to leave Sandyford running into problems closing its doors at the Kilmacud stop. The tram had to be evacuated and there was a 10 minute delay as passengers waited for another one. The Railway Procurement Agency later said a bottle had become jammed in the door.
Passenger services resume at 5.30 a.m. this morning - but morning commuters will have to wait until early August to enjoy the promised peak service of a tram every five minutes.
Between now and the end of July services are to be restricted to one every 10 minutes - a "running-in period" to allow drivers and passengers as well as other road users to familiarise themselves with the service.
Commenting that it was "an exciting era for infrastructure and public transport in Ireland", Mr Brennan said: "There were those who said it shouldn't be done; there were those who said it wouldn't be done; and there were those who said it couldn't be done. But it has been done. Luas is the foundation stone on which to construct in phases a city and county-wide metro system".
He said comments by the Taoiseach in the Dáil yesterday that the city's metro could not be developed immediately related to the full metro network and did not reflect on plans for a metro to the airport.
Mr Brennan said the Luas was just one element of the transport agenda.
He instanced the Dublin Port Tunnel, the completion of the M50, the DART expansion, the expansion of suburban rail services to Kildare and the development of additional quality bus lanes as "initiatives which are being rolled out aggressively" to address congestion in the city centre.