Comment & Analysis: A lot done. More to do was a famed 2002 FiannaFail slogan. For the current coalition Government, it feels too little too late when it comes to the development of Luas in Dublin, Cork, or other cities.As TCD Professor in Transportation, Brian Caulfield, tweeted yesterday: Planning started in 2020, with accelerated development in 11 years we can deliver 4km of Luas line! In 2031, it will be have been 14 years since the last Luas extension opened!The Great Dublin Area Transport Strategy has the Luas to Finglas set to be finished by 2036. Transport Minister Eamon Ryan said earlier this year that he wanted accelerated development. We now know that means by 2031 for a 4km tram route that was at its preferred route stage at the start of this Governments term in 2020.A Department of Transport press release said yesterday that Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan, has secured agreement from the Cabinet today (22nd October 2024) for the Luas Finglas project to enter the planning system.The day before, Minister Ryan was tweeting about progress on the route options for Cork Luas. Meanwhile, former Taoiseachand former Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar has tweeted his support for former TD turned lobbyist and now Fine Gael candidate again Noel Rock as a champion for Luas Finglas. Varadkar said: Totally agree. Needs a champion in the Dil to keep the pressure on. No better man to do it.Theres no douth that Rock was one of the most vocal advocates for Luas Finglas when he was a backbencher, but its a jarring tweet from Varadkar. As transport minister, he cancelled Metro North and Dart Underground and long-fingered the Luas projects.There was, of course, the financial crisis. Large-scale projects would have been hard to get over the link in an austerity mindset, but the description Varadkar has given of paying for Metro has no relation to the planned funding mechanisms where the State would only have to start paying after something like 10 years of construction.Even if the Government are given a pass on the financial crisis, the approach afterwards namely, nearly starting the project from scratch in the form of MetroLink. The plan was claimed to be with an eye to cost-cutting, but the reality is if Metro North was paused but secured for delivery within a few years, it would have cost a lot less than even the lower estimates for MetroLink.After forward to this year, as Taoiseach, Varadkar expressed that he was frustrated at the slowness of large public projects such as rail projects. Both that expression to the media and his tweet this week were made as if he had not served as the head of government between 2017 and 2020 and again between 2022 and 2024 and, between those years, as the rotating deputy leader.Of the Government parties, Fine Gael can be seen as the least credible in terms of the delivery of rail projects. Or, at the very least, not having any urgency about it.While transport nerds may know there were moves on pushing Luas Finglas ahead faster for some time, for most people, the timing of all of this is far too close to the general election, which is expected to be announced soon and held before the end of next month.The Government can point to the slowness in the planning system for the approval of MetroLink and Dart+ (and there are clear issues), but there are also issues with the Government not having resourced that system well enough, and there was also slowness around the approval of rail projects before they went to An Bord Pleanla.With Luas, the pre-planning progress has been painfully slow. Questions need to be asked about why the acceleration of not just Luas Finglas but also Luas Lucan didnt happen in the earlier days of Government. They might point to Covid, but using Covid as an excuse is likely not going to wash when action is only being taken years after the last lockdown.