Was in a few conversations the last few days about Dublin’s planned transport infrastructure. Came up a number of times that Dublin needs a ‘Circle line’ the equivalent of the London tube line which executes an inner orbit around the city intersecting with radial routes. We absolutely do need this but the good news is it’s coming.

Here’s a diagram of the planned route infrastructure by 2015:

Click on the image to view full size.

It’s a pretty good map. You can see how the Interconnector connects the Kildare line, Maynooth line, Northern and Southern DART/coastal lines also the red and green LUAS and the planned Navan line.

The Metro(s) provide a form of outer circle line providing connectivity to the outer suburbs and allowing for example a Sallins commuter travel by Arrow as far as Clondalkin (new station Fonthill), switch once to Metro West, travel onto Metropark (new station Northside) and board Metro North for airport. A few changes but allowing more direct route. Once proper public transport routing is in place switching a few times is no big deal.

It opens up connections not only locally across the greater Dublin area, but nationally too, so you could start on the Rosslare line and end up on the Galway line for example. The LUAS lines haven’t been apart for long and lets get them connected but my personal view connecting the rail lines is far more important.