€300m to be spent on replenishing Luas fleet

Passengers wait around at the Luas tram stop outside Heuston Station.

Dublin’s light rail transit system is to spend €300m replenishing its fleet of trams for the first time since the network’s inception more than 20 years ago.

Transport Infrastructure Ireland has sought proposals from prospective contractors for the procurement of replacement trams and the “sustainable decommissioning” of the vehicles already in service on the network.

Luas was introduced to much fanfare in 2002 as a solution to some of Dublin’s commuting woes, with initially two lines running broadly east to west on the city’s northside, and from St Stephen’s Green into Dublin’s southside.

Some 81 trams are currently operational on the 44km network, which now connects the north and south of the city following expansion works in the latter half of the last decade, with that connection going live in December 2017.

TII said 40 of those trams have been in service since the Luas first went operational and as such “are approaching end-of-life".

Key requirements for applying contractors include an adherence to sustainable, low-carbon practices, and novel thinking in terms of applying safety solutions to the use of light-rail vehicles — the latter on foot of TII’s stated goal of reducing the number of injuries and deaths across the Luas network.

Expansions

Any new trams will be expected to be backwards compatible with both the existing Luas infrastructure and future plans, including a new route expansion into Finglas on the city’s northern limits.

Further potential expansions include south of the city towards Bray in Co Wicklow, east towards Poolbeg, and west to Lucan near the Kildare border.

The body said it intends to award a single contract to a rolling stock manufacturer to satisfy the requirements for the supply of the new trams and the decommissioning of the old ones, and to that end would be consulting with interested parties across the final quarter of 2023 to appraise itself of recent “technological and safety advancements within the light rail industry”.

Also name-checked in the consultancy document for the Luas replenishment are the plans afoot to expand Luas into Cork, with some €1.8m spent on the development of that project up to June of this year.

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The proposed €1bn Cork light rail system, which has been in gestation for several years, is one of the most significant elements of the ambitious Cork Metropolitan Area Transport Strategy through to 2040.

The intended route for the new system had been due for unveiling in July of this year prior to a public consultation on the subject.

However, that announcement was eventually delayed at the last minute to an unspecified date in the final quarter of 2023.

The 17km east-west route, which was expected to be announced last summer, would serve 25 stops including Ballincollig, Curraheen, Munster Technological University, Cork University Hospital, University College Cork, Cork city centre, Kent Station/Cork North Docklands, Cork South Docklands, and Mahon.