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DISCLAIMER
Trains: You've probably heard of them, can and will follow in the subsequent article. (Which you rather curiously chose to read) Forgive the gratuitous use of pictures in this piece, they disguise my lack of content with humour, nothing more... And yeah, so I own a Railway, probably should have mentioned that earlier... Really...
TRAINS*TRAINS*TRAINS
This is literally my train Now before you get upset, it’s important I stress I do not own my Railway outright, I hold a mere 100 shares of what I presume is several million so that’s 0.1% of 12AD?!11%? THAT SAID, for that 100 shares I receive annual reports, free tickets, stickers, a map (in case I lose my railway) and more information then anyone could ever be bothered to read.
Combo Ultima: Trains+Tiggers Its no secret that I like trains, It's one of those childhood irrational love affairs that little boys have. Some Bigwigs like diggers, for others its things that go bang, for others still its transforming robots (guaranteed universal male pant-wetting when Michael Bay works that one out, leading to a gun toting digger in the next Transformatrons) However, for me Trains have to be my oldest unhealthy obsession, Tiggers and Thai food coming in at a joint 2nd... There's something about the contradictory complex yet simple mechanical inner workings that must have appealed to my young mind. Come on - They eat coal, spit out steam, and shite fire - what more could a kid ask for?
Thomas is my friend, attendees of my recent 21st will I'm sure attest to this. Perhaps I like trains more then cars because of their simple literally straight forward function of travel down predetermined track rather then road. Perhaps it's all that damn Thomas and Bloody Ringo Starr propaganda. Maybe its hereditary - like a form of Cancer, or maybe it’s just because no matter how drunk you are, trains can't kill you during your commute.
Ignore this photo
Diggerland just doesn't hold the same allure for me. The reason I own shares in the Bluebell Railway is that as child I was so train sick that my Dad's good friend Roger bought them as a joke gift for little Luke, a joke among friends, but it’s not a joke. It’s deadly serious, I was now the proud owner of the coolest Train set a child ever received. The Irony is that despite the fact I own the railway I haven't been since I was this size:
Happyness is owning a Train that can kill a house On the issue of all things Train, I am admittedly very biased - hence my long intro explaining my back story of Steam and debauchery. Call me naive, I really do look forward to some beautiful far off, unattainable day when you can get anywhere in Dublin by Train and a short walk. Londoners bemoan their Tube but here’s an artist’s rendering of what London would look like after a week's Tube outage:
I think the main reason the notion of a Dublin Metro meets with hostility is Ireland's Infamous 3 M's Mess, money, and M-uisance Irish society was of course built on their solid foundation, and the notion of drilling into our values with a big noisy digger is about as appealing to an Irishman as actually enforcing the drinking age. Every major state building project always ends up being grossly mismanaged, hopelessly underquoted, and takes appallingly longer to come to fruition then even the best government estimates misrepresent. Inevitably choking itself into bitter life, long after its sell-by date, often to the point it no longer meets demand and is immediately criticised and torn down (at least metaphorically) by the Irish public. It is for this reason that the Irish are such a casually determined, cynically motivated bunch. Let’s remind ourselves of the Irish Rail Slogan:
' We're not there yet, but we're getting there ' - Are you f**king serious?
It immediately encourages commuters to lower their expectations, yet reluctantly acknowledge that progress is slow but ongoing. - Ah sure that’s grand. The Government fecked it a bit when they ripped up all of Ireland's railways, Dad gleefully recounts travelling all the way to Glaslough village Monaghan by steam train, the madness isn't so much that they betted on cars and lost, but that they're now wasting money re-building Tram networks that were in place 100 years ago, and now face the logistical nightmare of reconstructing rail lines that have see a century's worth of development along their routes. With the Celtic Tiger now stuffed and mounted on the bathroom wall of a fat Wall St Banker’s Hamptons beach house, State development projects are going to feel a squeeze, others a kick, and for the rest - a lethal injection. The public is asking themselves do we really want to turn Dublin into a building site for best part of the next century?
The Futuristic Dublin Riviera / Utopia is, 'regretably' a longway off... Boyd will be most put out. Firstly let’s get the idealist argument over with, my personal observation is that Dublin is a divided city, and that should change.
I've never even heard of most these places... why? - Because I can't get there. Nearly all the reasons for this are rooted in our history. Predominantly Viking areas in the North, by both fear and allegiance, took against foreign Normans setting up shop to the South. Mixed further of course is everyone’s wealth and background, factor in the last few hundred years of British rule, and our now emerging identity as a modern European city which somehow attracted Africans, Asians and Eastern Europeans and you end up with a very mixed, divided and cluster-pocketed city. Cluster Fucked. Can we not learn from Los Angeles? - More roads does not equal more fun. Down that road lies 100 miles of car park, down that road lies death.
YES. Win. LA is a new city - they laid it all out on a pretty grid, they had everything going for them, yet like Dublin it sprawled, and sprawled, and sprawled and ate up every little town it came across. Now it’s choking from a terminal lack of Planning, a gross lack of Infrastructure, and divisions that inspire albums like Rage's The BATTLE for Los Angeles. I highlighted the important word. Let’s be idealists, let’s imagine a city where you could travel anywhere and everywhere within 30 minutes - now getting to Tallaght isn't such a trek, now we can start discovering places outside the narrow experience of childhood and the city centre - Now we can integrate - Now we can grow. (Even that’s better then the current slogan) When people can travel freely, development frees up too, things start to un-cluster-fuck themselves. My grasp of basic geography informs me that people cluster around hubs: centres of infrastructure, retail, housing and most importantly: Transport
Remember these? The M50 encircles Dublin, but doesn't penetrate it, the Dart barely skims its side before retreating to the relative safety of Howth and the southside. All Bus Routes bring commuters to the centre, but not to each other. The only major government initiative in the last 10 years to further integrate Dubliners has been the LUAS, (The Port Tunnel does the exact opposite, though it does so exceedingly well) The LUAS - which has been egged, chastised and heckled from day one for its inadequacy, low capacity and gauge incompatibility with the pre-existing heavy rail network - has actually been a relative success. People use it. When given has the option to commute by alternative means both speedily, conveniently and at good value, people do so - and why wouldn't they? The problem is, we've been so hardened by a city with such poor public transport we've grown sceptical that it can ever work. We need only look to Europe for guidance, every major state took into account future growth and built an underground for their capital, often before demand necessitated it. For us - the demand is there, yet still we wait...
Must we let it come to this?
Here's what they propose....
Looks scary doesn't it? The scary thing really is that currently all the places on those colourful routes have nothing connecting them, indeed about only half the green LUAS is complete, The DART as it stands connects the Posh people to the south to the Posh people in the North. Upgrading the existing Suburban Rail to DART in the North and South West is a scheme that should have happened long ago. But most ambitious is the Metro - which will connect all those places you've never heard of, and under the ground too, (ground level presumably where permitting).
Trust me, there are sillier schemes out there... Now I could waste 10 minutes listing all the arguments for this new Transport 21 funded scheme, the environmental reasons to encourage alternatives to cars, finally connecting Houston by Dart, encouraging development along Rail lines, improving commute times, the airport link, etc etc, however I have given you my driving argument which is integration, and the official website lists more tangible more 'Real' benefits plus pretty pictures of Metro stations and smiling children from stock photo galleries for the naysayers. Plus - it's pretty much already underway so unless you want to call up Save our Seafront, you’re gonna have to deal with our new commuter utopia some time in the next century.
Mark my words ... Trains are coming back. They're just doing so in the only way the Irish Government know how ... late - but sure didn't they arrive eventually? - Blame the 3 M's...
And knowing that makes me happier then waking up to a stream train made from Snow... so you can imagine...
:) - Luke 3 September 2008
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