McDowell’s views on MetroLink is populist brainrot dressed up as intellectual thinking

— Sadly, it feels like I have to say: The ‘deep state’ is not planning a railway line in Dublin.

Comment & Analysis / Long Read: Quango this and quango that — in his latest rants on MetroLink, Michael McDowell, claims the project is a “quango-driven catastrophe”. In his latest Irish Times column, he mentions the National Transport Authority (NTA) six times and the word quango twice. But something is strangely missing.

In McDowell’s latest attacks on MetroLink — a mix of his contribution to a Seanad debate, his Irish Times column (free to read on his own site) and an appearance on Newstalk afterwards — he’s obsessive about the NTA.

The Government and its Ministers are ultimately responsible for public spending on the project, which is planned to be a railway line between Swords and Dublin City Centre. So, how many times is ‘minister’ mentioned in terms of responsibility? Zero. Two ministers are mentioned but in a more abstract way. Politicians are apparently just observers.

The lack of mention by McDowell of politicians or even politics generally in any terms of responsibility hints at the NTA being some kind of deep state body pulling all of the strings.

Senator McDowell, as a former government minister and as former Tánaiste, bears more responsibility than most.

The NTA — like anything — is hardly without flaws, but it has become a punching bag. Let’s be clear: The NTA was created by politicians, and ministers approved its transport strategy for Dublin, and MetroLink is something that is generally wanted by politicians and the public.

The NTA is not some kind of rogue agency. The government has approved the planning of a metro railway between Swords and the city centre. Will it approve MetroLink if the price tag is close to or above €20 billion, as it is viewed to be possible? That’s another question.

Cutting metro short — you don’t always get exactly what you want

In one case, McDowell mentions the now Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan as being part of the campaign to cut MetroLink short and not undertake a much-needed upgrade of the Luas Green Line.

And, of course, O’Callaghan is mentioned as if politicians are looking for a major redesign of live projects that will have no impact on the cost of a project.

It’s a democratic right for the public and politicians to want to object to or adjust projects. However, democracy comes with responsibilities as well as rights, and there needs to be some level of acceptance that delaying a rail project or any major will increase its costs.

In some cases, delay will be fully justified, but is it for people who are hyper-focused on the cost of everything and dismissive of the value?

McDowell also takes great issue with MetroLink being planned to end at what he calls a “back road in Ranelagh”, but while one point of access will be from Dartmouth Road, the metro station will be linked to the Charlemont Luas Green Line stop at the Grand Canal, allowing passengers to swap from Luas to Metro. There’s also quite a large walking and cycling catchment area around the station.

This cutting short of the project is because of those who objected to the Green Line upgrade (including McDowell). They wanted it to end at St Stephen’s Green, but you don’t always get what you want.

In McDowell’s case, an underground railway might be cut short but will still finish up close to your house when you apparently didn’t want it anywhere near you.

It’s not an airport-only project

In the Seanad and on Newstalk, McDowell admits the project is from Swords to the city centre before doing the classic thing you get from many metro objectors — focusing on the airport. He focuses on the smaller time savings from there (compared to express buses at less busy times) and disregards the time savings from any other metro station.

So, sadly, it has to be said again: MetroLink is about more than the airport, which is just one stop, and metro routes are mainly built for capacity, with speed being a secondary benefit.

In a version of this he outlined on Newstalk, he claimed that a direct rail link from the existing coastal Dart line to the airport would be an alternative to MetroLink. He uses the fact that Irish Rail have outlined that they could build such a route as cover, but many cities similar to Dublin have both heavy rail and metro links to their airport.

Besides the issue of such a line not serving places like Swords, Ballymun, DCU, Glasnevin and the north city centre, there are a few issues with the idea.

Irish Rail’s Northern Line from Clongriffin to the city centre is already congested. Expensive three- or four-tracking is proposed but is still a long way off, but such upgrades would be needed to make a link to the airport work, and there are other rail projects ahead of it (such as the Dart+ programme). Combined, it would likely take longer or as long as building MetroLink.

A link from the Northern Line at around Clongriffin or Portmarnock would be a 6km line mainly via fields in a Dublin Airport flight path (ie not great for high-density development).

Build a Luas not a metro, or was it a metro and not a Luas?

Another apparent alternative touted by McDowell in the last few days (as well as others previously) is the suggestion to build a load of surface Luas lines instead.

There is value in this idea independent of MetroLink, the NTA even has them listed as a future idea. But McDowell’s objections to BusConnects, the Dublin City Centre Traffic Plan and Active Travel routes based on them taking space and priority from cars, it suggests he would not really be supportive of modern tram routes on streets with measures to give trams priority that would cause even more disruptive to cars.

You’d never guess who said: “I support the principle of a rail-based public transport system for Dublin. It would have been possible, with decent planning, to have had a system which would have been placed underground — I still believe it is possible.”

It was McDowell in a Dáil debate in 1996.

Isn’t it strange that he objected to Luas when it was proposed using a metro (or underground Dart?) system as an alternative, and then when a metro line is proposed, he started advocating for surface tram lines?

NTA, TII, CIE and “You get the picture”… do we?

I should further say that it is a possibility that McDowell might just be confused about the details of the project as he is about the agencies involved. In The Irish Times, he wrote that the Railway Procurement Agency “managed to escape incorporation into the National Transport Authority” while the “old CIÉ companies” are “legally obliged to accept NTA direction in Dublin”.

Then he wrote: “Transport Infrastructure Ireland is a brand name adopted for certain purposes by the National Transport Authority. You get the picture.”

But, no, I really don’t get the picture here. It’s often said that there are too many transport bodies, and it’s understandable that most people confuse them. But I’m not sure that forgiveness should be afforded to a Senator writing about quangos in a national newspaper.

Transport Infrastructure Ireland is the result of the merger of the Railway Procurement Agency and the National Roads Authority. It is separate from the NTA. And, like the CIÉ companies, TII also has to follow directions from the NTA on light rail projects in Dublin.

Errors, misinformation and misdirection, but experts are “self-appointed experts”

As well as saying that MetroLink as a project is being driven by “agenda” in the NTA (again, as if they don’t have government-level approval), McDowell on Newstalk even took issue with the NTA being experts. He said: “They are not experts. NTA are a group of people who ordained themselves to be experts.”

As humans, it seems that we all, to some level, construct our own version of reality. In society, there is broad agreement on some basics. But in recent years especially, some have tried to attack that shared reality by claiming science and factual things are not such.

McDowell’s claim that the NTA are not experts should be seen in this wider context. An expert is defined as “a person with a high level of knowledge or skill relating to a particular subject or activity”.

McDowell’s view here is not just an abuse of the English language but also an attack on our shared reality.

To try to back up his claim that they are not experts, he used the fact that plans have changed over time (imagine that!) and used the example of Dart Underground being shelved as to why the NTA are not experts. Yet again, this is another example of McDowell confusing the actions of politicians and officials. Politicians — namely the government — were responsible for shelving Dart Underground.

All of this is made worse by McDowell’s repeated list of errors, misinformation, and misdirection on transport issues, yet he has the cheek to attack experts.

Just to be clear: People can disagree with experts. There’s no need to attack their expert status to do that.

So, what about the cost?

McDowell writes: “Before a shovel is put in the ground, the present version, MetroLink, will have cost us between €400 million and €500 million in planning, engineering and other costs involved in securing approval for the scheme.”

This, again, is a dressing up of the project as if it is separate from politics. A large chunk of the costs to date are political in nature.

The sunken costs related to Metro North, the somewhat different route which proceeded MetroLink and was cancelled after the 2008 economic crash, and the costs related to restarting the planning nearly from scratch are due to political decisions.

Some say that the best time to build such a project is during a crash because it’ll be cheaper than at any other time, and it gives an economic boost. However, the reality is that the austerity policies that were so dominant would see such construction as unthinkable at the government level and would provoke a backlash from people suffering under austerity.

So, while I don’t think it was realistic to jump headlong into building Metro North during the worst of the downturn, there was the opportunity to have the project ready to go before the economy heated up too much again. It was a political decision not to do this.

And there’s a string of political decisions that have delayed the building of a metro, leading to increased costs.

McDowell also claimed: “When MetroLink was first proposed in its latest form (which abandoned the twin tunnel plans in favour of a cheaper single-bore model), the NTA estimated its cost to be about €3.5 billion.” While it’s true that single-bore tunnels can have a cost saving over twin tunnels, by repeating that at this stage McDowell is continuously avoiding the fact that a delay in building a large project can cost a lot more.

‘Sure, the Japanese said they’ll pay for it‘

McDowell points to the Unified Proposal, which included the Mitsui Corporation, which he said would build more than one metro line “at its own expense, bar a small initial injection of funds from the State”.

This was made in the late 1990s when Luas was progressing and when McDowell’s former party, the Progressive Democrats, was a junior party in Government. His then-party leader, Mary Harney, served as Tánaiste at the time and was on a cabinet sub-committee that looked at the Unified Proposal.

For better or for worse, it was a collective political decision not to go with the Unified Proposal.

There is little firm critical analysis of the proposal besides that from Judge Sean O’Leary, who led the inquiry into the Luas routes. The Unified Proposal, along with another alternative proposal called the Circle rail option, were submitted as alternative plans while Luas routes were being planned.

Judge Sean O’Leary said that the two proposals were “no way comparable to the route options details produced for the current application”.

He said: “Neither of these proposals is anything other than an idea which its promoters think is good but on which no detailed work of any kind has been carried out… Neither have progressed beyond the very first blueprint stage and cannot be compared to the application which it is the Inquiry’s duty to consider.”

In both transport planning and political circles, it is not seen as credible to try to interject a completely different commercial idea at the planning process. Before Luas, it was really a political decision that should be made separately from the planning process of any one project. Yet that’s what the Unified Proposal tried to do and more recently, it’s what the part-follow on proposal, ‘Dublin Metro’ attempted.

Ironically, the Unified Proposal team is reported to have wanted to take over the Luas project and upgrade the green line into a metro to the airport — something McDowell greatly objects to, describing the long-planned upgrade as cannibalisation of the line. He talks up the worse case of a two-year closure of the tram line (which the NTA would likely never have allowed).

What about the value?

On Newstalk, presenter Ivan Yates was trying to put forward the idea that at the starting point of any large public transport project like this, including with Luas and Dart in the past there are always people who have said the cost was not worth it, but those arguments fade once the projects are built and the benefits are clearer.

McDowell dismissed that, but on the same programme, he used the Elizabeth line — aka Crossrail — as a project which is more extensive but which cost less. Crossrail was more extensive, that’s true. But that’s largely because a significant part of the project included upgrading existing lines.

The price tag is also based on 2009 prices, and the project was beset by delays and price increases. Even before those issues, people with similar mindsets as McDowell claimed the project was not worth it. Since the project opened in 2022, the Elizabeth line usage even surprised supporters, with people expecting less travel after Covid.

McDowell, in the Seanad, said: “I may be the only person who is deeply suspicious of MetroLink. I remain deeply suspicious of it because I regard this single line as a vast money pit and I do not believe it will be ‘transformative’, to use Senator Clifford-Lee’s word, of public transport in this city. I do not believe it will have that effect. It will have a very marginal effect and it will be vastly expensive.”

The idea that he thinks the project will only have a “marginal effect” is just not credible when it will have 16 new stations along the nearly 19km line, with trains up to every 90 seconds. Even for those not on the line, connectivity improvements will be significant with connections with existing and future Dart upgrades, the Luas line, city buses and intercity coaches.

It echoes some of his views on Luas before it was built. McDowell is clearly not an expert on transport, so, why is he so comfortable repealing myths and mis/disinformation again and again? How can The Irish Times keep printing it and continue to claim to support MetroLink?