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WRC North Has Been Shelved

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2

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    #32
    Carawaystick
    Registered Users Posts: 8,779 ✭✭✭Carawaystick


    remind me again how long the western railway corridor was closed between Ennis and Limerick after a bit of rain?
    this on an already open section of line??


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    #33
    trellheim
    Registered Users Posts: 5,860 ✭✭✭trellheim


    what's not written here ? If they're pulling all that rail stuff [ which in fairness was all fairly obvious ]

    what road projects are being pulled ?


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    #34
    Schuhart
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,835 ✭✭✭Schuhart


    Nostradamus wrote: »
    Just had a look at the WoT website for the first time in months to see if they had anything to say.......
    Western Rail Corridor campaigners were accused of imagining the demand for services and their projections for freight traffic were scoffed at by commentators from the east coast. When we proved that demand by securing 18 trains a week which are obliged to travel, on an interim basis, through the congested Greater Dublin Area en route to Waterford Port, the cynics ignored that achievement. Currently, Dublin cannot produce one freight train per week. Our success at transferring 16,000 truck movements from roads onto rail, representing 3 million displaced truck miles per annum, between Mayo and Waterford is a fact that sustains our projections and confounds the sceptics. These freight trains receive no subsidy, unlike the DART, LUAS and Dublin Port Tunnel. These freight trains will be transferred to the Western Rail Corridor when complete to compliment passenger revenues.
    .
    Has anyone any background to this bit? I don't trust WOT as a source, but there does seem to have been some development re rail freight. All I could find was this document http://www.sustainabletravel.ie/download/1/0804%2023%20Number%20271%20WATERFORD%20PORT.pdf. However, it does not substantiate this figure of 18 trains a week.

    However, if there is a successful model for Irish rail frieght that might be developed, on the face of it we should take notice.
    Nostradamus wrote: »
    Hardly surprising it was ignored.
    It hasn't been totally ignored, although ironically the Galway Advertiser seem no more interested in rail freight than the Dublin Meeja.

    http://www.galwayadvertiser.ie/content/index.php?aid=12425

    I love the incensed air of the press release. Its quite clear that this desire to lay long, stiff steel bars across the country and feel them quiver and heave as a locomotive thrusts across them is deeply seated in someone's need to compensate for something.

    Dublin cannot produce one freight train per week. But Mayo can get three thrusting down from Ballina every morning. What a man.


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    #35
    DWCommuter
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,032 ✭✭✭DWCommuter


    If that press release from WOT doesn't justify everything myself and Nostrodamus ever said about them, then I'll eat my flute!

    Expect "official" mumurings about Navan around August. The interconnector is still not a certainty though.


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    #36
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Chris_533976 wrote: »
    I want to know who your source is :D

    The Department of Finance , they are busy trying to reduce a deficit of nearly 5% of GNP in 2009 and are snipping merrily away at capital schemes .

    The NRA is to be completely deballed by Finance which neatly explains the sudden and widely dispersed NRA interest in progressing route selection projects nationwide during 2008 .

    These selection projects are all suddenly underway on the N11 , N17 , N20 , N15 , N5 , N21, N24, N25 and N4 and also on the Dublin Orbital project. The hope in the NRA is that there will be widespread support for the NRA in their efforts to defend their budgets .

    However there is no money in the pipeline for transport and there will be no money for the rest of the Transport 21 temporal envelope . The Atlantic Road Corridor has been killed off along with the WRC and the rail projects I mentioned.

    The Dept of Finance always wins , especially when there is no money and more especially when the Metro North budget including reserve 'contingencies' that the department insists on allocating now accounts for €7bn or 20% of the entire Transport 21 budget and it not even started .

    Get with the real program people.


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    #37
    DWCommuter
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,032 ✭✭✭DWCommuter


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    The Department of Finance , they are busy trying to reduce a deficit of nearly 5% of GNP in 2009 and are snipping merrily away at capital schemes .

    The NRA is to be completely deballed by Finance which neatly explains the sudden and widely dispersed NRA interest in progressing route selection projects nationwide during 2008 .

    These selection projects are all suddenly underway on the N11 , N17 , N20 , N15 , N5 , N21, N24, N25 and N4 and also on the Dublin Orbital project. The hope in the NRA is that there will be widespread support for the NRA in their efforts to defend their budgets .

    However there is no money in the pipeline for transport and there will be no money for the rest of the Transport 21 temporal envelope . The Atlantic Road Corridor has been killed off along with the WRC and the rail projects I mentioned.

    The Dept of Finance always wins , especially when there is no money and more especially when the Metro North budget including reserve 'contingencies' that the department insists on allocating now accounts for €7bn or 20% of the entire Transport 21 budget and it not even started .

    Get with the real program people.

    I like you. I hope you're right. You back up what I said in public on the airwaves and netwaves over the last few years. But and with respect, you could be just a mere fortune teller, so I wont piggyback on your predictions just yet, as my source hasn't committed to the extent you have. (but nearly) I'll stick with them for now as they buy me pints in the flesh!!!!


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    #38
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    DWCommuter wrote: »
    I like you. I hope you're right. You back up what I said in public on the airwaves and netwaves over the last few years. But and with respect, you could be just a mere fortune teller, so I wont piggyback on your predictions just yet, as my source hasn't committed to the extent you have. (but nearly) I'll stick with them for now as they buy me pints in the flesh!!!!

    ask YOUR source if senior staff particularly in the Finance side of the NRA are being offered or have been offered ' temporary' 'secondments ' out of the NRA and to where .

    Then ask yourself if the NRA will retain the capability to progress PPP projects in the absence of these people .

    Follow the Money :cool:


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    #39
    popebenny16
    Registered Users Posts: 2,461 ✭✭✭popebenny16


    We have been told that only the Interconnector and Metro North are the only 2 projects that will get the green light (for borrowing). While that is not bad news, we are looking at 2015 for Interconnector and 2017 for Metro North now.

    Everything else is long fingered until 2013, i.e it will be shelved and reviewed then.

    Phoenix park tunnel anyone?


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    #40
    paulm17781
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,858 ✭✭✭paulm17781


    Wasn't T21 supposed to finish in 2015? Isn't great how bad we are at everything. :(


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    #41
    Nostradamus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 621 ✭✭✭Nostradamus


    Phoenix Park Tunnel, yes that, and Navan - Drogheda, Dunboyne - Broadstone, and Athlone - Mullingar (Ennis-Athenry as a given).

    In other words the 6 rail projects which should of been under development in 2000-2001. Add that to Dart Underground and MN and things really are fairly good. So with a bit of moxy we could still get out of this with our knickers still on.

    The Celtic Tiger years were a shocking waste of time and money only to arrive back at the natural course of development before the arrival of spin doctors, PR agencies, benchmarking indulgences and cash drunk civil servants.

    I would also add to that the incredible damage done by the "Independent Rail Researchers" and Anglo-Irish trainspotters and all the other various social justice railfrieght and rural rail eccentrics around the country/UK who created massive confusion/distortion within the Irish local and national body politic by taking the focus off what need to be done for the rail commuters.


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    #42
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    popebenny16 wrote: »
    We have been told that only the Interconnector and Metro North are the only 2 projects that will get the green light (for borrowing). While that is not bad news, we are looking at 2015 for Interconnector and 2017 for Metro North now.

    Everything else is long fingered until 2013, i.e it will be shelved and reviewed then.

    Thats precisely what I heard too as I said in these two posts

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=56331562&postcount=15

    and

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=56331050&postcount=11

    The only thing that is confusing me is the precise rationale behind opening the interconnector two years before Metro North.

    What I was told was that the interconnector will be built above MN in Stephens Green and that the Interconnector has to be fast tracked becuase of disruption to Pearce and Connolly stations and to Heuston to a lesser degree.

    MN can be completed at a more leisurely pace because it will only interface with the interconnector HOWEVER Pearce and Connolly disruption may not under ANY circumstances be allowed to last more than 3 years and that ONLY during the intensive phase envisaged as 2012-2014 .

    All MN tunnelling in Stephens Green must be completed in 2013 and the low level halls in Stephens Green must be structurally complete by 2014 latest .

    This then has a bearing on an ongoing turf war between CIE and the RPA as to who 'controls' the Stephens Green schedule and station , ( aka the Battle of Broadstone in another guise :) ) and CIE have seemingly won that battle because Pearce and Connolly must be finished by end 2014 and the RPA cannot _guarantee that_ , only CIE can it seems :(.

    Once Transport and Finance conceded CIE would have to run the Interconnector project and the Stephens Green construction plan they immediately cut the crap out of everything else, nationwide , in preparation for the inevitable cockups and oversights and overruns now they themselves left CIE in charge of things .


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    #43
    OTK
    Closed Accounts Posts: 556 ✭✭✭OTK


    I think the interconnector requires the KRP and Maynooth electification so these projects are also safe. Dempsey has indicated that he will push for Navan given that it's in his constituency. If he waits until 2013 he may not be still minister so I would imagine this project will be somehow fast-tracked.

    Sandyford-Cherrywood will complete as all the developer funding is in and it's half done already.


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    #44
    paulm17781
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,858 ✭✭✭paulm17781


    Surely Citywest Luas (also private) is also safe?


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    #45
    loyatemu
    Registered Users Posts: 14,778 ✭✭✭✭loyatemu


    isn't the Bray luas also to be levy-funded?


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    #46
    Victor
    Registered Users Posts: 78,278 ✭✭✭✭Victor


    paulm17781 wrote: »
    Surely Citywest Luas (also private) is also safe?
    Assuming they have cash on hand or the banks are willing. Note the developers will be looking to finance Laus A1 with property sales that might take time.
    loyatemu wrote: »
    isn't the Bray luas also to be levy-funded?
    Yes.


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    #47
    markf909
    Closed Accounts Posts: 461 ✭✭markf909


    Once Transport and Finance conceded CIE would have to run the Interconnector project and the Stephens Green construction plan they immediately cut the crap out of everything else, nationwide , in preparation for the inevitable cockups and oversights and overruns now they themselves left CIE in charge of things .

    Ironically enough, IE have come in on budget on everything since mini CTC I think.


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    #48
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    The Interconnector can support diesel or electric running but it could be a tad stinky down there with the oul diesel fumes.

    In extremis the Interconnector could require electrification from Kildare - Heuston _Tunnel_Connolly - Howth Junction - Malahide - Balbriggan .

    Some is done, not much overall.

    Maynooth electrification is to allow Maynooth ( or Dunboyne) - Clonsilla - Connolly and then Connolly - Dart to Greystones or else Connolly - Point Depot area.

    So Maynooth electrification is to allow continous running Greystones - Maynooth which will not go via the interconnect tunnel .

    All that electrification in CONJUNCTION with rather than as part of the Interconnector looks shocking expensive to me but I am not sure which bits of that may have already been chopped by CIE if indeed any .

    Its safe to say that electrification must be tackled in conjunction with the Interconnect Tunnal scheme but I am unsure how much electrification is an integral part of the overall scheme scheme .

    Why stop spending when you have a blank chequebook eh :)


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    #49
    popebenny16
    Registered Users Posts: 2,461 ✭✭✭popebenny16


    paulm17781 wrote: »
    Surely Citywest Luas (also private) is also safe?
    loyatemu wrote: »
    isn't the Bray luas also to be levy-funded?

    Point I was making is what is being borrowed for by the exchequer.

    Obviously things that have started (eg Luas to Point and Middleton ) will proceed.

    As for Sponge Bob, I'm not raining on your parade, I was just waiting for our source to pipe up before posting, just like you did :D

    edit - interconnector = DART2 by neccessity or else there is no point doing it


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    #50
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    My source in Finance originally sought to tell me that the Atlantic Road Corridor, N18 / N17, Claregalway Bypass Western Rail Corridors were all kyboshed AND that Frank Fahey knew all of this , and was told in no uncertain terms they were all dead , as early as March 2008 .

    Transport 21 policy is that the WRC will go to Tuam from Athenry. That will not happen .

    I have been kept very busy a keeping Galway People abreast of all Franks lies on Transport ( every fukcing week he lies again :( ) in this long running thread here .

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055291863


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    #51
    murphaph
    Registered Users Posts: 19,018 ✭✭✭✭murphaph


    Hmmm, yet Cowen insists on repeating the mantra that we will continue to invest heavily in national infrastructure. Borrowing is sometimes good. We are still miles behind our european neighbours and need to borrow on the basis of a rebounding economy in the medium term. If we all think we're returning to the days of the 1980s then what does an extra few billion debt mean anyway?!


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    #52
    paulm17781
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,858 ✭✭✭paulm17781


    murphaph wrote: »
    Hmmm, yet Cowen insists on repeating the mantra that we will continue to invest heavily in national infrastructure. Borrowing is sometimes good. We are still miles behind our european neighbours and need to borrow on the basis of a rebounding economy in the medium term. If we all think we're returning to the days of the 1980s then what does an extra few billion debt mean anyway?!

    I wish they'd just get on with it. True I don't know the state of public finances but building some tunnels would definitely employ a few...


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    #53
    Prof_V
    Closed Accounts Posts: 122 ✭✭Prof_V


    Schuhart wrote: »
    Has anyone any background to this bit? I don't trust WOT as a source, but there does seem to have been some development re rail freight. All I could find was this document http://www.sustainabletravel.ie/download/1/0804%2023%20Number%20271%20WATERFORD%20PORT.pdf. However, it does not substantiate this figure of 18 trains a week.

    Are they, by any chance, including timber trains? There's timber traffic between Mayo and Waterford too, but it doesn't go to the port. However, the figures I have for 2004 are four timber trains and three Norfolk liners each way per week, which comes to 14 (counting both directions). There may have been extra trains added since then, though I can't find any evidence. Note also that Mayo-Waterford traffic currently doesn't come any nearer Dublin than Kildare, where it reverses. Technically, Kildare is in the Greater Dublin Area, but I don't think capacity for these trains is a major issue.


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    #54
    Ham'nd'egger
    Registered Users Posts: 3,025 ✭✭✭Ham'nd'egger


    Prof_V wrote: »
    Are they, by any chance, including timber trains? There's timber traffic between Mayo and Waterford too, but it doesn't go to the port. However, the figures I have for 2004 are four timber trains and three Norfolk liners each way per week, which comes to 14 (counting both directions). There may have been extra trains added since then, though I can't find any evidence. Note also that Mayo-Waterford traffic currently doesn't come any nearer Dublin than Kildare, where it reverses. Technically, Kildare is in the Greater Dublin Area, but I don't think capacity for these trains is a major issue.

    It's 4-5 timber trains a week; 2 from Westport and 2-3 from Ballina. Ballina sees 1 or 2 liners in and out a week, again depending on loads. The freight from Mayo used to run via the WRC until the late 90's; even to run it via Athlone and into Athenry would free up space on the Cork and Waterford sections. There is some emphasis by powers that be that the timber runs via rail, the liner is a case of Norfolk finding it economic and speedier to run trains; some other small loads are moved on it as well.


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    #55
    Victor
    Registered Users Posts: 78,278 ✭✭✭✭Victor


    Hamndegger wrote: »
    even to run it via Athlone and into Athenry would free up space on the Cork and Waterford sections.
    Thats a substantially longer route - on single track. It would impair services Athlone-Athenry-Limerick-Waterford.


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    #56
    aliveandkicking
    Registered Users Posts: 961 ✭✭✭aliveandkicking


    I may be living in a parallel universe or something but why has Metro North's completion date moved from 2013 to 2017 in the space of a couple of months? Whatever about a year or so but FOUR years delay is taking the piss.

    Also I was under the impression this project was to be done under a public private partnership meaning the private company finances the whole project with the state paying a fixed sum to them every year for 35? years. If that is the case the state doesn't have to borrow to fund Metro North since it will only cost the government a couple of hundred million a year so why the 4 year delay due to the current downturn in public finances???


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    #57
    Sponge Bob
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 25,234 ✭✭✭✭Sponge Bob


    Its behind the Interconnector now.


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    #58
    aliveandkicking
    Registered Users Posts: 961 ✭✭✭aliveandkicking


    Sponge Bob wrote: »
    Its behind the Interconnector now.

    Yes I know but why? There is no financial reason for this since it's a PPP.


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    #59
    markf909
    Closed Accounts Posts: 461 ✭✭markf909


    Metro North is supposed to go to tender in August this year is it not?

    Will this now drag out for another few months (years!)?
    How will the govt engineer the slowdown of the metro delivery?


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    #60
    Carawaystick
    Registered Users Posts: 8,779 ✭✭✭Carawaystick


    I thought Macnamara pulled the rug from under PPP's feet for those who still believed in that auld private sector risk guff.


    I guess this explains why the PPP part of the N8 wil be the last part completed
    " And also, importantly, in a national context, the injection of private finance will accelerate the delivery of the public capital programme."[1]

    [1]http://www.nra.ie/PublicPrivatePartnership/


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    #61
    aliveandkicking
    Registered Users Posts: 961 ✭✭✭aliveandkicking


    Carawaystick wrote: »
    I thought Macnamara pulled the rug from under PPP's feet for those who still believed in that auld private sector risk guff.


    I guess this explains why the PPP part of the N8 wil be the last part completed
    " And also, importantly, in a national context, the injection of private finance will accelerate the delivery of the public capital programme."[1]

    [1]http://www.nra.ie/PublicPrivatePartnership/

    The McNamara thing was a few Housing regeneration programmes in Dublin City not anything transport related. Basically the council changed the rules on apartment sizes so they had to be built bigger. This impacted on the viability (profit) of the PPPs so McNamara pulled out. Nothing to do with transport projects.


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