Quote:
Originally Posted by Colm Moore
The KRP is underused because the passengers are dumped at Heuston, instead of D1/D2. Build the interconnector and those stations will be successful.
Assuming Bray DARTs end up in Maynooth, trains from the Interconnector need not have a negative effect on the northern line. In fact, it would give northern line passengers a choice of destination. It is only when you start adding more termini (the airport, Balbriggan) that the northern line becomes problematic.
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The northern line is already problematic, you cannot run a slow inner suburban service such as DART, a decent outer suburban service and an intercity service on two tracks. It is already a mess due to the lack of physical track capacity, laughably poor track layouts and bad timetable design.
The intended absence of turnback facilities at the eastern end of the interconnector means that all trains departing Heuston will have to run onto the northern line. Either the frequency on the inter-connector will be way below design capacity or alternatively the northern line will be so congested as to make it impractical to run worthwhile outer suburban services, intercity services or fast airport trains. Everything will have to proceed at the pace of the slowest service (DART) with an inevitable decline in patronage and revenue as the service becomes only viable for journeys of a few kilometres.
As currently designed DART inter-connector will be hugely expensive and deliver little of what has been promised.