SEVERAL MINUTES could be shaved off Luas journey times, especially on the Tallaght Red Line, if traffic lights were tweaked to give trams more priority passing through junctions, according to the director of the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO).
In an interview with The Irish Times, John Henry said there was no reason why the computer-controlled traffic lights could not be altered to detect the approach of a tram. "We were already doing that 15 years ago for buses", he added.
"If a Sandyford tram carrying a full capacity load of 200 passengers is held up by 90 seconds at, say, Hatch Street and Cuffe Street, that equates to a delay of five person hours. So what's needed is a 'hurry call' on the traffic lights at these junctions".
Mr Henry said the DTO favoured "optimising the movement of people, rather than vehicles" and believed that the same rule should apply at pedestrian crossings, where people often have to wait for four minutes or more to cross a street legally.
The DTO chief also suggested that Dublin Bus should replace all of its double-deck buses.
"Double-deck buses ruin the city - you can see a whole 'wall' of them on O'Connell Street - so I'd say get them down to single-deckers." Mr Henry favours "bendy buses".
"Articulated buses carry up to 120 people, but double deckers only 90," he said.
Asked if the "BX" Luas line in the city centre, connecting the existing Green and Red lines, had been shelved in favour of a metro link, he said it was "still on the cards as far as we're concerned" and should go on to serve Broadstone, Liffey Junction and Finglas.
Referring to Metro North, the proposed 17km line from Swords to St Stephen's Green costing an estimated €6 billion, Mr Henry said it should not be viewed as a "stand-alone" project, but as the first phase of a metro line running as far south as Bray.
Although the Sandyford Luas line was built to carry metro-style trams in the future, extending Metro North into the southeastern suburbs would mean tunnelling between St Stephen's Green and Beechwood, "and that's the bullet nobody wants to bite", he said.
"Our analysis shows that it is going to be up to capacity very quickly, even if it stops at St Stephen's Green, with a peak of 20,000 per hour. It has to be continued [ southwards] because Dublin needs a network. You have to start somewhere and build a bit of it." So Mr Henry supports Metro North, which was derived from the DTO's Platform for Change 1996-2016, but he said that if the line could be built on the surface with Luas-style trams running at frequent intervals, it would be "all the better".
"I agree with the principle of having a high capacity network on the surface, if that could be done. But what if demand is much higher? Then you have to switch to another mode [ metro]. The 2006 census also showed very significant growth in Fingal." Any line would need to have the capacity to cater for projected passenger numbers, he said.
"Our forecasts for passenger numbers on the Sandyford Luas line were double what the RPA [ Railway Procurement Agency] expected, but we were right".
Mr Henry said the road network in Dublin reached capacity 15 years ago. Since then, with more people commuting by car to and from work, the transport problem was "300 per cent worse".
"We had a demand for 200,000 trips at peak times, but now it's 600,000. And though there's been a drop in car traffic across the canals, the peak has spread from one hour to three and people are getting up earlier to arrive in work at the same time."
Mr Henry said the original (1994) Dublin Transportation Initiative, which recommended Luas, was wrong. "It was prepared at a dismal, gloomy time and didn't see boom coming. But after the Government adopted it, the boom started and the forecast was wrong."
He said Iarnród Éireann's plan for an underground link between Heuston station and Spencer Dock "wouldn't achieve its purpose if we don't have four-tracking on the northern line and electrification of the Kildare line at least to Sallins".
He said the DTO's latest strategy review would be "looking at land use option of exploiting railway lines".
The proposed Dublin Transport Authority "could be very powerful in achieving this. Even the NRA [ National Roads Authority] will come under its jurisdiction".
According to Mr Henry, the review (accessible at www.2030vision.ie) will be considering "anything that's not committed in Transport 21. It will be taking a fresh look at things, not incrementally adding. We need to ensure we're not going in the wrong direction," he said.