The Dart+ South West project may get underway before 2030

The Dart+ South West project may get underway before 2030 despite the Government’s postponement of the rail extension in November.

The Dart+ South West extension was pushed back to at least 2030 in the Government’s National Development Plan Review for Transport, published in November.

The project has had planning permission since November 2024 and was expected to begin construction next year before the review was published.

Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien has said that the extension is “a critical project” and that it has not been placed on the back burner.

The Minister for Transport said: “It is committed to, it is through planning which I’m glad of. We have flex within the NDP with regard to delivery time frames which are indicative.

“It is a scheme that I would like to see us advance, and I think that we can advance it.”

Dart+ South West is intended to run between Hazelhach & Celbridge station and Heuston Station and then further north via the Phoenix Park Tunnel Branch Line.

The new service would cater to areas like Clondalkin/Fonthill along the way, double the current number of trains per hour and quadruple the capacity to cater for rapidly growing populations in budding areas like Adamstown.

The extension would travel from Kildare into Adamstown, onto Kishoge and then Clondalkin/Fonthill, before reaching Park West and Cherry Orchard and then continuing on towards Heuston and a proposed Heuston West station.

20,000 passengers are expected to make use of the project’s final product per hour per direction, up from 5,000 approximately, with 23 trains planned to run per hour per direction to service them.

Several local councillors sent a letter to the Minister for Transport before Christmas to express frustration with the postponement.

Councillors cited increased housing targets placed on councils and the growing populations of already existing areas as reasons for the urgent need of the rail extension.

Councillor Madeleine Johansson noted that the new housing that will be built in the coming years in trategic Development Zones like Adamstown and Clonburris, and in future zoned land needs adequate public transport infrastructure to complement it.

The Palmerstown/Fonthill Councillor cited discussions about Clonburris prior to the pandemic that placed the Dart+ South West project at the forefront of the SDZ’s future.

Cllr Johansson said: “There’s no objection to this project whatsoever, quite the opposite. We need the Dart+ in order to serve all the housing that’s being built in our area.

“Both SDZs, Adamstown and particularly Clonburris – all the discussions we had around here about Clonburris SDZ in 2018 was about Dart+ South West.

“Because there was no other way that we were going to be able to build all those houses without having that kind of transport infrastructure to service those houses.”

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.