DART Underground - Application for Railway Order Lodged

DART Underground  is a 7.6 kilometres twin tunnel deep under the city connecting the Northern Line to the Heuston Station mainline that will facilitate two high capacity DART lines. These will operate without the conflicts and restrictions that currently limit services.

The Railway Order Application for planning approval was lodged with An Bord Pleanála on the 30th June 2010. Construction by the main contractor is anticipated to commence in 2012 and that the system will be operational in 2018. 

The tunnels will run through the heart of the City with underground stations at Spencer Dock, Pearse, St. Stephen’s Green, Christchurch and Heuston as well as a new surface station at Inchicore. It will link all rail systems together into an integrated and cohesive network – DART, Commuter, Intercity, Luas and Metro.

Two tunnels, each containing a single track, will be excavated using Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM’s). The tunnel entrances will be on Iarnród Éireann land at Inchicore and in the Docklands, and the average depth of the tunnel is estimated at 24 metres, over 80 feet, below ground level.

DART Underground is set to be developed with a capacity for up to 20 trains each direction per hour, allowing up to 64,000 commuters to use the line hourly. With capacity for DART services to operate up to every 3 minutes, the line - a tunnel from the Docklands to Inchicore - will complete the transformation of the Greater Dublin area’s rail service capacity from up to 33 million passenger journeys annually now to over 100 million passenger journeys.

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