The Dublin City MetroLink is now expected to cost up to €17.5 billion and to take at least a decade to complete.
The updated price tag and timeline for the long-anticipated piece of transport infrastructure represent significant increases on the last official estimates. In 2022, the final cost was projected to be in the region of €9.5 billion, delivered and operational by the early 2030s.
The revision comes as Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien today received Cabinet approval to progress the project to the tender stage, which involves seeking bids and selecting partners to build and operate MetroLink.
Significant “enabling works” are to start on site from early 2027, followed by heavy tunnelling and station construction.
According to the State, MetroLink will be the largest single project in Ireland since the construction of the Ardnacrusha hydro power plant in the 1920s. It is planned to provide 19km of new metro railway, mostly underground, spanning the capital.
It will connect Estuary/Swords to Charlemont, with stations in locations like Dublin Airport, Ballymun, Glasnevin, Dublin City University, the Mater and Rotunda Hospitals, and the city centre.
MetroLink will be a “high-frequency service with 64 metre trains operating every 3 minutes at peak in each direction on opening, with 16 accessible and high-quality stations on the route,” a release from the project read today, adding that it is being designed to move “up to 20,000 passengers per direction/hour, over double the carrying capacity of the current Luas Green Line”.
Commenting on the development, Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien claimed that MetroLink would support the delivery of “approximately 77,000 new homes” along its route, and “up to 200,000 new homes across the Greater Dublin Area” as a result of the upgrade to Dublin’s public transport network.
The milestone came following a joint review by the Department of Transport and National Transport Authority (NTA) of a Detailed Business Case (DBC) as part of the national Infrastructure Guidelines.
Details revealed today include the planners’ estimate that for every €1 spent on the project, MetroLink will return between €1.13 and €1.95 to the economy.
The median delivery cost estimate is €15.75 billion, excluding VAT, between a “best reasonable case” estimate of €14.44 billion and a “prudent planning case” of €17.49 billion.
Higher contractor costs, design development, the impact of the planning process, inflation and a “conservative approach to risk” are listed as the “primary drivers” for cost estimate changes since the last stated projections.
Meanwhile, passenger services are now estimated to begin between 2036 and 2038, a delivery schedule benchmarked against 16 other metro projects.
It was announced last week that Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) had awarded construction and engineering leaders Jacobs and Aecom the Programme Delivery Partner contract.
A MetroLink spokesperson said on that occasion that Jacobs-Aecom will be responsible for managing, overseeing, and coordinating the “complex construction, integration, and commissioning phases of Ireland’s first metro system”.
Head of Public Affairs at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce Stephen Browne welcomed the progression of MetroLink, but said that the focus now had to be on delivering the project and avoiding delays.
“The focus now must be on maintaining momentum, securing value through the procurement process and getting MetroLink built.
“The answer to rising infrastructure costs cannot be to delay essential infrastructure indefinitely. Dublin’s population, housing needs and economy continue to grow and the cost of congestion and inadequate transport capacity grows with them,” Browne said.