Sir, – If you were to vox-pop a group of people on the street in Swords, or Santry, or Ballymun, or Glasnevin, and ask them about Dublin’s long-awaited Metrolink project (Metro North, in a previous iteration), what do you imagine they’d say?
Indeed, what we now call “Metrolink” has been talked about for years, even decades. So, of course, you can expect to hear the odd “Ah, not in my lifetime” or a jocular “I’ll be pushing up daisies by the time they get around to that”. Such is to be expected from people who have been let down, time and time again.
But for the tens of thousands of Northsiders who will come to depend on Metrolink, it is very real, and eagerly awaited. I am one of those people.
A significant handful of current Swords 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. Reannouncement, reannouncement, reannouncement. Delay, delay, delay.
It’s frustrating, to say the least. But what’s equally frustrating is what happens every single time there’s a Metro-related announcement. The anti-Metro battalion – a small but vocal minority – go on their march. The self-proclaimed experts, sitting in their studies (usually on the other side of the Liffey), bolt to their desktops and are at pains to tell us all how great a waste of money Metrolink is. How we should scrap the whole thing. How we should start thinking up alternatives, etc, etc.
Respectfully, they all need to get their facts straight.
The fact is that Metrolink will represent one of the single most transformative, and sustainable, pieces of public transport infrastructure ever constructed in our State.
It is so badly needed, the conversation really should be about fast-tracking it, rather than seeking to pull the brakes.
To be frank, I’m gobsmacked that anyone would seek to trivialise the project. But I suppose, if you’re in the privileged position of never having to rely on something, why would you view that thing as important?
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. Not to mention the number of passengers who pass through Dublin Airport, which reached 28 million in 2022.
An opinion piece by Michael McDowell referred to a “Metrolink juggernaut” becoming “an irreversible money pit” (Opinion & Analysis, December 27th). His argument in relation to ballooning construction costs on a number of Irish infrastructure projects is likely a fair one. His argument around finding “alternatives” to Metrolink, to my mind, does a disservice to Northsiders.
Close to €300 million has been spent on successive Metro proposals for Dublin, from the first “Metro North” iteration recommended by the 2005 Transport21 Plan, to the most recent Metrolink blueprint that forms a crucial part of the National Development Plan, launched as Project Ireland 2040 in 2018.
Constant delays, redesigns and money spent throughout seemingly endless planning phases have, naturally, led to a significant price tag. But wouldn’t more delays only increase that price tag further, while it becomes even more unbearable to commute to town from the Northside amid traffic chaos, and while Dublin continues to be among the only capitals in Europe with no rail link to its airport?
At this point, it seems apt to return to the initial question. If you went asking the views of people in these parts on Metrolink, the refrain would be quite a simple one, and one I would reiterate to Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan and the powers that be in our transport and planning sectors: just bloody build it. – Yours, etc,
LUKE CORKERY,
Swords,
Co Dublin.