A metro service between Dublin city centre and the airport will carry 80,000 a day and will remove 41,000 cars from the capital's streets when completed, Minister for Transport Martin Cullen claimed today.
Minister Cullen made his comments at the launch of the public consultation phase for Metro North, the project to build an 18km metro line from Dublin city centre to the airport by 2012.
The public and interested parties are being asked to submit views on three proposed routes as suggested by the Rail Procurement Agency.All three routes begin in St Stephen's Green.
The West Route runs through Broadstone, Cabra Road, Tolka Valley, Finglas, the M50, Dublin Airport, Swords and Lissenhall.
The Central Route takes in D'Olier Street, O'Connell St, Mater Hospital, Botanic Rd, Dublin City University, Ballymun, Dublin Airport, Swords and Lissenhall.
The East Route passes Hawkins Street, O'Connell Street, Mater Hospital, Drumcondra, Griffith Ave, M1/M50 interchange, Dublin Airport, Swords and Lissenhall.
The Government has already identified the Central Route as its preferred option, although it insists the final route could be a mix of all three options.
The planning, design and procurement stage of the project start this year and are expected to last until 2009, while it is hoped construction will be finished by 2012.
The tunnel will be 18km in length and up to half the route will be underground with the diameter estimated to be approximately half the width of the Dublin Port Tunnel. It will operate in a completely segregated line using a mix of underground, cuttings and elevated structures.
It is planned that the service will operate more like a light rail service in the less congested outer suburbs, where less capacity is required.
Fine Gael Transport Spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell TD welcomed Cabinet approval for the metro, but said Transport Minister Martin Cullen was stretching credulity by claiming it would be finished by 2012.
"Unfortunately, Martin Cullen's timetable for the project looks as unrealistic as Mary O'Rourke's," she said.
"It is highly unlikely, if not impossible to get the metro finished within six years by 2012. This would involve round the clock construction work on a problem-free project. It would also require all the staff and management to be in place by the end of this week."
Labour's Roisin Shortall welcomed the proposal the Metro would serve Ballymun Road, in her constituency but said it should run underground in the area.
"The elevated track will be a major eyesore, and the visual amenity of the area around Dublin City University will be destroyed.
"The people of Ballymun itself have had to suffer through years of disruption and inconvenience while the area is being rebuilt. Just when it looks as if the work is to be completed, we hear that they want to rip the main street up again and subject the people to more upheaval as the track is laid."
The Dublin Chamber of Commerce cited a number of measures it believed were necessary to instil confidence in what it called the project's "damaged credibility after several false starts."
Chamber spokesman Cian Connaughton said: "While the launch of Transport 21 has helped raise the profile of projects, much remains to be done if sufficient international interest is to be generated in the Metro project. Without great efforts to market the opportunities presented by the plan, projects run the risk of attracting few competitive bidder, with value for money and efficiency suffering as a consequence."
Speaking at the launch of the consultation process in Dublin today, Mr Cullen said: "We need and deserve a first-class transport system. We have the resources because of the hard work and enterprise of the Irish people and a Government that works with them".
"We are one of the few European cities without a rail link [to the airport]. Metro North corrects this and by going to Swords, achieves more."
