The disclosure in yesterday's Irish Timesthat Dublin's first metro line, from St Stephen's Green to Swords, will cost at least €5 billion and probably much more by the time it is finished is quite stunning. The 17km route, much of it underground, would be the biggest single investment in public infrastructure in the history of the State.
Yet the staggering price tag for Metro North has only surfaced because one of the figures in documents released to this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act was not blacked out sufficiently to obscure it. And this was nearly two years after the request for access to the documents was first made, a day after the government unveiled its Transport 21 programme in November 2005.
Serious questions must be asked about the priority being assigned to the metro project, as opposed to other schemes in the €34.4 billion investment programme, such as the strategically important underground rail interconnector between Heuston Station and Spencer Dock. The real danger is that Metro North and Metro West, which would link Tallaght with Ballymun via Clondalkin and Blanchardstown, will gobble up so much money that there won't be enough left to fund the interconnector, which alone offers the prospect of integrating Dublin's disparate transport "system" by linking suburban rail services with the Dart and Luas lines.
The cost-benefit analysis of Metro North, as a stand-alone project, is not impressive. Even with "value engineering", such as the no-frills stations currently proposed, the benefit-to-cost ratio is put at 1.31:1 - nearly three times lower than the equivalent calculation by the Railway Procurement Agency of a city centre link between the Tallaght and Sandyford Luas lines. Yet why should Dublin settle for underground stations with bare concrete walls, no canopies over entrances and only a lift and staircase from street to concourse levels? If the metro is to be built, it should be built well. As architect Norman Foster said in a recent television programme on his breathtaking Millau Viaduct in France, the things that make connections - bridges, airport terminals, stations - are more important than buildings in forming people's perceptions of the public realm.
Metro North would only make sound economic sense if it continued southwards from St Stephen's Green to Ranelagh, Sandyford, Cherrywood and Bray - in effect, supplanting the Luas Green Line. Pursuing it as a discrete project is highly questionable, particularly as it would do little or nothing for people living on the extremities of Dublin's commuter belt. And it has never been adequately explained why a metro is needed at all rather than, say, an extensive light rail network - such as in Bordeaux, where the city has been transformed by a tramway system that will end up costing only €1 billion.
Whatever about the sensitivities associated with public-private partnership (PPP) projects, the public is entitled to know, at least in ballpark terms, what major pieces of infrastructure are likely to cost. It is wrong for the Government to keep taxpayers in the dark.