Building the metro out of gold?

So the Metro North is going to cost us over e5 billion. Yes, that's 5,000,000,000 euro.If you laid all those euros side by side it would go around the world twice. Or something. Anyway, it's an incredible amount of money.Even at a quick glance it is very difficult to see how this kind of figure can be justified. Especially in a building downturn.It's not quite clear how exactly how much of Metro North is going to be in tunnel but if it is from town to north of the airport it is going to be in the region of 12km out of a total of 17km, which will indeed make it expensive. The whole thing, overground and underground, will cost some e294m per km.By comparison, the Metro Sur underground extension in Madrid which opened in 2003 worked out at e45m per km. That's quite a difference.It's such a difference that when the Rail Procurment Agency (RPA) came up with their original estimates there was a huge kerfuffle, Madrid was mentioned in dispatches and they were asked to think again.What they thought about is unknown because, like the proverbial bad uncle, price has never been mentioned again. The new figures were only found out when the Irish Times received some documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The prices were blacked out but not enough for the intrepid Frank McDonald who held them up to the light and discovered all the noughts.The RPA say that they will not release figures because they are commercially sensitive. This is completely at odds with the idea that we should live in an open society. Why aren't the figures published? Why not insist that large contracts like this are put to public tender and open them up to public scrutiny?The history of the world shows that when secrecy is involved people get things wrong. The contact with NTR was not released to the public when the second bridge was commissioned on the same grounds of commercial confidenciality. The public did very, very poorly indeed out of that contract. We are suffering every day, in fact.The danger here is that these huge estimates will undermine the case for the Metro, forgetting that this is a lifetime project of national importance because it links Dublin Airport to the city centre.There's one thing I still can't understand. Why are we talking about Metro? Why aren't we talking about DART? I don't see why we need a new intermediate technology between Luas and DART.I think it has something to do with the metro's lower floor which may be used when it's on the street. If that is so then it doesn't apply to Metro North which will be completely segregated.Whatever the problems they should be sorted out ASAP. The northside has had the sticky end of the stick when it comes to public transport. Whatever the cost Metro North has to get moving soon.