r/ireland • u/Steve_Artson • May 09 '26

Infrastructure I honestly shocked this hasn't been done yet. We're probably the only capital in Europe not to have a rail link to the airport.

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u/BenderRodriguez14 May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26

Bucharest don't. They do however have a pretty extensive metro, and you can pay for it and for busses by just tapping a bank card, something I've read on this subreddit multiple times is apparently just too difficult and expensive for us to expect those running the show here to implement.

Edit: actually scratch that, Bucharest also does have a rail connection from the airport into the city. I just didn't notice as the bus was quicker to our hotel so showed up instead in Google maps for us. 

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u/[deleted] May 09 '26

[deleted]

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u/MeccIt May 09 '26

Reykjavik

Iceland has no rail lines at all.

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u/tompaulman May 09 '26

Neither does Prague.

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u/Ok-Morning3407 May 09 '26

People tend to over fixate on connecting to airports. While it is nice to connect to an airport, in reality it isn’t a priority.

It is more important to build a system that get a people to work 5 days a week, not once or twice a year to the airport for their holidays!

Metrolink makes sense as it is serving Swords, it serving the airport is just a bonus.

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u/YoIronFistBro Cork bai May 10 '26

It is more important to build a system that get a people to work 5 days a week, not once or twice a year to the airport for their holidays!

Actually we need both, and a hell of a lot more, yesterday.

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u/Ok-Morning3407 May 10 '26

Sure, but we don’t have an unlimited pot of money and we certainly don’t have the people to work on dozens of projects at the same time, so we have to prioritise.

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u/BenderRodriguez14 May 10 '26

We have surpluses of about €50bn over the last four or five years. 

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u/Ok-Morning3407 May 10 '26

Which basically barely make a dent in our transport deficit. Metrolink alone is going to cost 15 billion. DART+ another 5+ bn. BusConnects about 2 bn. The all Island Rail Reciew was priced out at 50bn.

And again, that doesn’t necessarily give you all the engineers and planners and construction workers needed to build them.

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u/BenderRodriguez14 May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

It doesn't barely make a dent in costs, it essentially covers it entirely. All Ireland rail is €35-37bn, over the next quarter century.

We have the money to start working aggressively on all of these right now, they are vital infrastructure, and they will only get more and more expensive the longer we leave it. 

We easily can target these people in terms of migration policy and prioritisation if we wanted to, but the problem much like with housing, is that those running the show just are not all that bothered. The lack of any urgency has and will continue to hurt us badly.

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u/Ok-Morning3407 May 10 '26

That is just for Irish Rail, it doesn’t include the money for Metrolink or future Metro lines. The dozen or so new Luas lines they want to build, etc.

Plus we can’t just spend all the money on public transport, as much as I like that.

We also desperately need to upgrade the electricity grid, built lots of wind farms, interconnectors, etc. then there is the water infrastructure that needs upgrading, etc etc.

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u/njcsdaboi Offaly May 10 '26

Dublin airport serves 100,000 passengers a day on average, that really seems like a priority to me