Sir, – I wish to address some of the points made by John Stafford in relation to the Metro North project (July 29th).
The fact is that the National Transport Authority is absolutely right to continue to stress the importance of the Metro North and DART Underground projects as the only lasting solution to Dublin’s traffic congestion problems.
Congestion is one of the main urban transportation problems faced by almost all cities and incurs significant costs in terms of wasted time, wasted fuel, lost productivity and high accident rates.
In its report Smarter Cities for Smarter Growth, IBM estimated the annual cost of Dublin city's traffic congestion to be €4 billion in 2008. Congestion also makes Dublin less attractive for vital inward investment.
The business case for Metro North, which has been independently audited, demonstrates it delivers a net benefit to the Irish economy of well over €1 billion per annum.
Mr Stafford dismisses the passenger forecast as “a mere 34 million”. In fact, this level of patronage will make Metro North the busiest railway line in Ireland by some margin, outstripping the existing hugely successful Luas and DART lines. One only has to look at the destinations being served to understand the importance of Metro North: the high density population centres at Swords, Ballymun and Northwood; four major hospitals; two universities; Croke Park and the retail and business districts in the heart of Dublin’s city centre as well as Dublin airport.
These are all major destinations which generate high levels of transport demand.
Mr Stafford assumes the fares will be set at a high level in order to repay the cost of building the project. This is not the case, and fares on Metro will be similar to those on the rest of the public transport network. – Yours, etc,