Luas Cross City Railway Order welcomed by RPA
RPA welcomes the granting of a Railway Order today for Luas Cross City, a new Luas line running from the Green Line terminus at St. Stephen’s Green through the city centre, Phibsborough and Cabra to Broombridge. The Luas Red and Green lines will finally be connected and interchange with the Maynooth Line will be provided at Broombridge. The new line will also directly serve the new DIT Campus at Grangegorman which was recently given the green light to proceed and which will accommodate more than 20,000 students. This represents a very significant milestone in the creation of a high quality, integrated public transport network for Dublin.
It is expected that the construction of the line will generate 800 jobs. The cost of the project will be in the region of €370m and passenger services are planned to commence in 2017. The new line, which is approximately 6km in length, with 13 convenient stops, will offer an end to end journey time of just 24 minutes and is expected to attract an additional 8 million passenger journeys on Luas each year – a 25% increase. The scale of this increase underlines the vital importance of linking the Luas lines and opening up new options for Luas passengers and suburban and mainline rail passengers.
Luas has bucked the trend - despite the recession Luas passenger numbers have remained very high with 29 million passengers carried in 2011. RPA has always aimed to operate Luas without a subvention and to date this objective has been achieved. The implementation of Luas Cross City will serve to further consolidate the performance of Luas and enhance considerably the options for public transport users in the capital.
Welcoming this decision Michael Sheedy, RPA’s Director of Light Rail, said: “This is great news for Luas and for commuters in Dublin. Luas Cross City is RPA’s most important project. It will form the foundation of a high quality integrated network which will significantly reduce the current high reliance on the private car. We will now be working closely with our colleagues in the National Transport Authority and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to progress the delivery of this much needed infrastructure”.