We might be able to make progress on rail using new light rail cars that are battery powered. This is easier to deploy than traditional electric trains with heavier rolling stock that also require the line itself to be electrified.
Ireland really needs to double down on master planning. Local authorities must have the resources for this. The OPR’s submission on the Broombridge-Hamilton (🙄) site is quite critical of DCC’s minimalism in master planning the site. This article is good, but it is rather light on the need to devolve power and resources to local authorities. In this, Ireland is an absolute outlier for the worst. It should be far more on the agenda.
It seems to me that if local authority planners spent less time on adjudicating individual cases and more time on masterplanning, we might have sufficient resources for quality masterplanning
Infilling on the west side of the proposed tram between Ballincollig and Bishopstown should also be priority - there are currently 2km of farmland on the route! Room enough for an entire planned town.
This is a really great list! Some extra context below about recently local changes to the Maynooth Dart+ depot plans that are relevant to the "Hand-and-fingers" point.
From what I was told over Christmas, the Dart+ line to Maynooth is going to have to electrify to Kilcock now too as the new depot just beyond Maynooth was recently rejected planning permission for being in a flood-risk zone and the new proposal puts the depot just west of Kilcock.
I grew up in Kilcock and saw it grow from 2k/3k to nearly 10k people today, which has brought a lot of advantages (eg. all three primary schools have been rebuilt to larger capacity). But the town still only gets about 7 trains to Dublin per day (avg. once every 3 hours), which is criminally low volume for a fast-growing commuter town. Also like 70% of the core town centre within walking distance to the train station is either derelict, unused for years, or industrial warehousing that should be moved to the peripheries.
Overall the town severely lacks more of an actual master plan for future development (rather than the current approach of infinite low-density sprawling semi-d housing estates that place people 20-30min walk from literally any shop, café, service, restaurant, bus stop, etc).
So much underutilised potential for it as a town, but so much low-hanging fruit there for big improvements -- a bit like the entire Kilcock-Connolly train line, eg. so much greenfield immediately north of Leixlip Confey train station too. Hopefully some more progress to come 🤞
Thanks Daniel! A problem is that the investment is happening piecemeal. There's not a big plan that starts with 150k homes along the line and works backwards to what needs to be done.
It feels a bit like everything is piecemeal really... Looking at the greenfield gaps on the trainline between Kilcock and Connolly, there's so much opportunity for major progress with some strong central planning for the likes of the Kilcock/Maynooth greenfield gap, Maynooth/Leixlip gap, the area north of Leixlip-Confey station, and the Confey/Clonsilla gap. You could easily drop a couple of Ashtown-equivalent new town projects into each of those gaps and you'd be hitting 150k with plenty of room to spare.
mean while, limerick junction has a master plan from transforming it from a barren area to a functional residental and commuter zone, because since Irish Rail is going to make trains faster by or after 2030, limerick junction will become a option for commuters as the time for commutting will cut down really well https://altuarchitects.ie/project/limerick-junction/, and recently Irish Rail has announced upcoming line improvement works https://www.irishrail.ie/en-ie/news/irishrail-engineering-works
We might be able to make progress on rail using new light rail cars that are battery powered. This is easier to deploy than traditional electric trains with heavier rolling stock that also require the line itself to be electrified.
That sounds interesting. What's the best use case for them? Lines with lower volume than fully electrified lines, but more volume than....?
Ireland really needs to double down on master planning. Local authorities must have the resources for this. The OPR’s submission on the Broombridge-Hamilton (🙄) site is quite critical of DCC’s minimalism in master planning the site. This article is good, but it is rather light on the need to devolve power and resources to local authorities. In this, Ireland is an absolute outlier for the worst. It should be far more on the agenda.
It seems to me that if local authority planners spent less time on adjudicating individual cases and more time on masterplanning, we might have sufficient resources for quality masterplanning
Cork expanding along the existing rail lines north to Mallow and east to Midleton is an open goal for planning. Irish Rail has a great expansion plan for the commuter network: https://irishcycle.com/2025/06/18/irish-rail-reveals-locations-and-details-of-8-new-cork-station/.
Infilling on the west side of the proposed tram between Ballincollig and Bishopstown should also be priority - there are currently 2km of farmland on the route! Room enough for an entire planned town.
Very doable! just need a big vision and a few tweaks to rules.
This is a really great list! Some extra context below about recently local changes to the Maynooth Dart+ depot plans that are relevant to the "Hand-and-fingers" point.
From what I was told over Christmas, the Dart+ line to Maynooth is going to have to electrify to Kilcock now too as the new depot just beyond Maynooth was recently rejected planning permission for being in a flood-risk zone and the new proposal puts the depot just west of Kilcock.
I grew up in Kilcock and saw it grow from 2k/3k to nearly 10k people today, which has brought a lot of advantages (eg. all three primary schools have been rebuilt to larger capacity). But the town still only gets about 7 trains to Dublin per day (avg. once every 3 hours), which is criminally low volume for a fast-growing commuter town. Also like 70% of the core town centre within walking distance to the train station is either derelict, unused for years, or industrial warehousing that should be moved to the peripheries.
Overall the town severely lacks more of an actual master plan for future development (rather than the current approach of infinite low-density sprawling semi-d housing estates that place people 20-30min walk from literally any shop, café, service, restaurant, bus stop, etc).
So much underutilised potential for it as a town, but so much low-hanging fruit there for big improvements -- a bit like the entire Kilcock-Connolly train line, eg. so much greenfield immediately north of Leixlip Confey train station too. Hopefully some more progress to come 🤞
Thanks Daniel! A problem is that the investment is happening piecemeal. There's not a big plan that starts with 150k homes along the line and works backwards to what needs to be done.
It feels a bit like everything is piecemeal really... Looking at the greenfield gaps on the trainline between Kilcock and Connolly, there's so much opportunity for major progress with some strong central planning for the likes of the Kilcock/Maynooth greenfield gap, Maynooth/Leixlip gap, the area north of Leixlip-Confey station, and the Confey/Clonsilla gap. You could easily drop a couple of Ashtown-equivalent new town projects into each of those gaps and you'd be hitting 150k with plenty of room to spare.
With the lines fully maxed out, you could fit about 10k homes every km. And as you say there are many kilometres.
mean while, limerick junction has a master plan from transforming it from a barren area to a functional residental and commuter zone, because since Irish Rail is going to make trains faster by or after 2030, limerick junction will become a option for commuters as the time for commutting will cut down really well https://altuarchitects.ie/project/limerick-junction/, and recently Irish Rail has announced upcoming line improvement works https://www.irishrail.ie/en-ie/news/irishrail-engineering-works
Limerick is so well served by rail. Three rail approaches for a city of 100k is good going