Western Rail Corridor on Prime time now.

Judgement Day · 29-01-2012 7:44pm

PseudoFamous wrote: »

Tear up the tracks, and use them to doubletrack commuter routes. At least some good could come of them, then.

All the commuter routes are already double track.

parsi · 29-01-2012 8:01pm

Too many egos involved in that project and now we are saddled with something close to a white elephant.

What's scary is that there's similar talk about the Wesht Cork lines but thankfully it doesn't have such a head of steam yet (or a trackbed).

Jehuty42 · 29-01-2012 9:13pm

Judgement Day wrote: »

All the commuter routes are already double track.

He's probably referring to Galway-Athenry and Limerick-Ennis. There's certainly commuter potential there, short lines through populated suburbs of a large built up area, not a winding line through the arse-end of nowhere.

starviewadams · 29-01-2012 10:10pm

LaFlammeRouge wrote: »

This must be the same crowd who massaged the Greek accounts. Lets extend the DART to Dingle and claim success to the IMF by showing them figures for the prexisting passengers.

Just found the "hatchet job" on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KypTTQQDAlU

Only in this country could gombeens like that WOT guy defend the abysmal failure of the WRC with a straight face.Would almost be funny if it wasn't costing the state so much money.Close the feckin thing now!

Niles · 30-01-2012 7:17am

starviewadams wrote: »

Would almost be funny if it wasn't costing the state so much money.Close the feckin thing now!

Agreed that it probably shouldn't have been reopened (and certainly not stations like Ardrahan). But closing it would be an even worse waste of money. For better or worse it's here now and I think the way forward is for IÉ to improve services in feasible ways- culling the service after all the money spent on it would be farcical.

corktina · 30-01-2012 8:42am

in view of the liklihood of ever increasing competition from the Motorway and falling travel generally as more people lose their jobs and likely curtailment of the Free Travel scheme...

At what point do we cut our losses and close it then?

robd · 30-01-2012 10:47am

Niles wrote: »

Agreed that it probably shouldn't have been reopened (and certainly not stations like Ardrahan). But closing it would be an even worse waste of money. For better or worse it's here now and I think the way forward is for IÉ to improve services in feasible ways- culling the service after all the money spent on it would be farcical.

Not really. This is know as sunk cost. It should never be counted in deciding whether something has a valid business case in the present. Sunk cost is one of the most important concepts to economics and business decision making.

corktina wrote: »

in view of the liklihood of ever increasing competition from the Motorway and falling travel generally as more people lose their jobs and likely curtailment of the Free Travel scheme...

At what point do we cut our losses and close it then?

Agreed. It's being kept open for political reasons at present. There appears to be no commercial reason for keeping it open.

dowlingm · 30-01-2012 5:53pm

Would there be a possibility of losing Ennis-Limerick too if Ennis-Athenry was closed? Operating costs per mile on that section are probably higher than on the reopened section since I believe some of the crossings on the Ennis-Limerick stretch are still manual.

overshoot · 30-01-2012 6:26pm

not sure when mcCarthy said it, the timer stopped working but he was spot on when he said it cant compete with the bus when it is slower, less frequent and more expensive.
it should simply be a matter of if these issues (well particularly speed) can be resolved or not. it is impossible to determine the fesibility of the line if it is mismanaged from the start. if they cant remedy those issues, extending the line will not help passenger numbers for the same reasons and its time to shut it down and stop throwing good money after bad.
(that followed where he said no rail service between 2 cities operates anywhere in europe with less than 1million in both... cant help wondering how every other line on the island survives then

)

bk · 30-01-2012 7:02pm

overshoot wrote: »

(that followed where he said no rail service between 2 cities operates anywhere in europe with less than 1million in both... cant help wondering how every other line on the island survives then)

With about 170 million a year subsidy, plus the mystery as why no direct, non stop Cork to Dublin bus service has yet to be licensed.

When such a service is eventually launch, even the Cork to Dublin line will end up in serious trouble. It already lost a lot of passengers to cars on the motorway.

overshoot · 30-01-2012 7:16pm

bk wrote: »

With about 170 million a year subsidy, plus the mystery as why no direct, non stop Cork to Dublin bus service has yet to be licensed.

When such a service is eventually launch, even the Cork to Dublin line will end up in serious trouble. It already lost a lot of passengers to cars on the motorway.

sorry that was meant to sound sarcastic (choice of simile face didnt help)...he was saying something about throwing bad money away in all parts of the country to make it fair as if it didnt happen else where (unless he want one in donegal maybe?)... not saying the wcr isnt a bit more rediculous than the rest right now though.
a bus like that to sligo has recently been started by a private company but they are doing an awful job of advertising it

dermo88 · 07-01-2013 5:12pm

Its a year after I incurred a 6 month ban for shooting my mouth off, and seriously, I wonder what was the point in my doing that.

It achieved nothing beyond my getting a ban and proved less.
If I earned money from posting, brilliant, but I am not. I'm merely another nutter eating locusts and honey in a strange wilderness.

Lets face it, why bother. Its 30 years since McKinsey 2 was written and they hired consultants at the Department of Transport to tell us the effing obvious. At that time, CIE was losing 39 Million Pounds a year, or rather 110 Million Deutschmarks, which inflation adjusted on the German beer index is 220 Million Euro to tell us that we were better off gradually running the network down to closure over 25 years.

It was politically impossible to do that.

So you have a rail network.
What do you do with it?

It is 45 years since Charlie Haughey pulled off a political masterstroke by giving pensioners the free travel pass. Today, that is now unsustainable due to the demographics involved and the cost.

Withdraw that, you are an evil right wing Thatcherite.
Retain it......its unsustainable.

Yet it is clear the railways would never have survived without the free travel pass. But they need elderly folk with subsidised rather than pure free travel. They have to pay something, rather than nothing, and pay something directly.

Because having working folks paying E2,80 cash into the city centre, one of the highest transit costs in the world from Tallaght is crazy, and non working folks paying nothing, pensioner or not is crazier. I have no objections to a discount, but crucifying the young and middle aged worker for the young and elderly is a strange form of insanity. And the Department of Social Welfare underpays by a 300% factor for the free travel pass scheme. Its actually enough to get CIE out of jail by a massive amount. Only in Ireland.

Liam St John Devlin, CIE Chairman in 1974 said

"In Britain, the passenger pays, In Europe the state pays, in Ireland, noone pays"

monument · 07-01-2013 8:16pm

Thread locked.

I don't think any of that is related to the WRC and there's already another general WRC thread -- you can post there if you want.

Western Rail Corridor on Prime time now.

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