The government has approved the Dublin MetroLink and is to proceed to the detailed tender stage.
The Dublin MetroLink aims to travel from Dublin Airport to Tara Street in under 20 minutes, Lorcan O’Connor, CEO of Transport Infrastructure Ireland, said on The Hard Shoulder this evening.
“The government's approval of the updated business plan today allows the project to go to tender to procure services of the tunnelling experts, the station and the operational experts that we need for this service,” Mr O’Connor said.
The estimated cost for MetroLink ranges from €14.44 billion to €17.49 billion, with a central estimate of €15.75 billion. The estimated cost of this project in 2022 sat around €9.5bn.
Mr O’Connor said there is no specific number on how much the price goes up per year it is delayed.
“It is certainly a very expensive project. Rather than focusing just on costs, I would suggest that we should be looking at the investment return,” he said.
“The benefit that we have identified in today’s business case shows that there’s a benefit return of between €1.10 and €1.80, that means for every euro we’re going to spend on this project we could potentially get €1.9 back,” he said.
The MetroLink will be 19km long and will span from Swords, Dublin Airport, Dublin City Centre down to Charlemont with easy connections to the Luas, Dart and Dublin Bus.
Dublin's 19km metro will cost an average of €830 million per kilometre, according to The Hard Shoulder presenter Ciara Kelly. This cost is significantly higher than other European cities such as Paris or Madrid.
Paris aims to develop a 200-kilometre metro costing between €38- €42 bn, which is €210 million per kilometre. Madrid is constructing a 7.2-kilometre extension costing them €880 million, putting their cost per kilometre at €122 million.
When asked why Ireland's metro is so much more expensive than equivalent European projects, Mr O’Connor said that it's due to the specifics of the project.
“For example, nearly all of the metro is underground, and we have 16 stations within 19 kilometres. That’s actually quite an intense number of stations by metro standards. All of those lead to costs and so on,” the CEO told The Hard Shoulder.
“There is so much wider benefit; it’s not just faster journey times, reduced congestion, reduced CO2 emissions and so on. There’s so much wider benefit,” he said.
Mr O’Connor said the potential for housing north of Swords where the MetroLink will run is “hundreds of thousands”.
