Sir, - The LUAS project as it stands has one major, fundamental flaw - it does not link up with the DART
Look at any European city with effective public transport and it is obvious that it must operate as an integrated system, not separate disjointed entities. The Amsterdam trams radiate out from the Central Station, the Zurich trams likewise from the Hauptbahnhof, and the really heavy traffic on the Paris metro is at the interchange stations with the SNCF. Why then is the LUAS planning to avoid connection with the DART? Hopefully the next set of consultants will spot this fundamental flaw and rectify it. Dublin needs a transport system and that means that the parts must connect!
Of course CIE has a fairly spectacular history in not being able to integrate a transport network. The buses from West Cork to Cork city have their terminus well removed from the station - just in case anyone wants to continue their journey on towards Dublin, through ticketing for bus and train is minimal right across the country, and at Rosslare the trains are not meant to connect with the boats! (I wonder why that station was ever built?)
It looks like this part of our national heritage is alive and well and ready to take a bound into the next century. Just think in five years' time of the nurse from Raheny working her way towards her job in Tallaght Hospital. As she walks through the cold winter rain from Connolly DART station to the LUAS at O'Connell Street how she will castigate the visionaries who could not anticipate how the system would be used. - Yours, etc.,
Foxrock,
Dublin 18.