THE government is planning to join Dublin’s two Luas lines by running a new track from St Stephen’s Green to O’Connell Street.

Martin Cullen, the transport minister, will bring plans to cabinet before Christmas for a €70m spur to link the red and green Luas lines from Tallaght and Sandyford.

The move is an important shift in the government’s public transport priorities. The taoiseach said last week that a metro would not be built linking Dublin city centre to the airport before 2007.

Department of Transport officials are now finalising proposals for the 1km track, which would include at least two new Luas stops, at College Green and Westmoreland Street.

The line would go from the Luas terminus on the green, down Dawson Street, around College Green and over O’Connell Bridge via Westmoreland Street. The Sandyford line would then join the Tallaght line at Abbey Street.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Cullen said: “This is something I think would make an important, realistic and positive contribution to the internal dynamics of the transport system within the city centre area.”

He told a Dublin Chamber of Commerce dinner last week that “joining up the Luas lines is the obvious start” to integrating transport in Dublin.

The current 24km of Luas cost about €800m — or €33m per km — but those costs were skewed by the fact that much of the 9km Sandyford line was built along the preserved route of the Harcourt Street rail line.

Had he survived the recent cabinet reshuffle, Seamus Brennan was committed to bringing a memo to cabinet proposing a €3.4 billion metro link from Dublin airport to Pearse station. The former transport minister had no plans for an overground link-up of the Luas lines and did not envisage the Sandyford line being linked to the rest of the rail network until the airport metro link was complete.

But Bertie Ahern told opposition parties last week that the programme for government commitment to built a metro link from the airport could not be met by 2007.

“The preliminary figures for the next phase of a metro are enormous,” he said. “Even if that project is cleared, it will take several years.”

Cullen has worked closely with the taoiseach and Brian Cowen, the finance minister, and has kept them briefed on his unfolding plans, though final decisions on the precise mix of Luas, metro and other options have not been taken.

One government official agreed the metro could drop to third place in the list of government’s rail priorities in Dublin, behind the Luas link and the €1.3 billion underground link from Connolly station to Spencer Dock, Pearse Street, St Stephen’s Green and Heuston, the so-called “interconnector”.

Instead of a €3.4 billion metro link to the airport, Irish Rail favours a Dart link estimated at €300-€440m, branching off the existing line between Howth junction and Portmarnock.

The company also proposes a rail spur from Clonsilla on the Maynooth commuter line to Clonee, which would provide a park and ride option for N3 car commuters.

One senior government source said: “It would be wrong to read into this that the metro is dead, but it is not coming down the tracks any time soon.

“One of the things that went wrong with the perception about the metro was that this was all about an airport link, and it’s not.

“The airport link is only a small bonus. The real thing is how you open up the whole of north Dublin in terms of land becoming available, housing development, a whole range of things.”

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