EU Funding for Rail but not for Road

Qadhafi

Motorway plans face more delays
The Irish Independent
11-December-2003
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A €1.5bn motorway planned between Dublin and Cork will not get priority EU funding worth €300m.

The earliest the scheme can hope to be considered is in just over a year's time. Only the Cork to Belfast rail link will win approval in Brussels tomorrow.

Victor

Its going to go ahead anyway.

Qadhafi

thankfully it is, hopefully they can get the finger out and have the Galway/Dublin/Cork motorways finished by 2007.

its a good sign to see the Cork Belfast railway going ahead but is it a new rail link or improvements on existing services?

Qadhafi

EU funds miss a setback for €1.5bn road plan
Brian Dowling and Conor Sweeney
13-December-2003
The Irish Independent
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IRELAND failed to get the proposed Dublin-Cork motorway on the fast track for €300m of EU funding but Taoiseach Bertie Ahern insisted it was still there to play for in a year's time.

Mr Ahern acknowledged that the setback did mean that the ambitious timetable to complete the motorway in the next three years was not going to be achieved.

Referring to the fact that funding options will be reconsidered in a year, the Taoiseach said: "I have spoken to Seamus Brennan about this. It is still there to play for. We have detailed plans. We will press ahead."

The Government made huge efforts for the road scheme to be designated for the EU's quick start list but only the Cork to Belfast rail link has been included and it alone got the go-ahead from European leaders in Brussels.

The Dublin-Cork motorway, costing about €1.5bn to complete, is on a longer list of so-called TEN projects and will not have the same political support from EU leaders for its speedy construction as other pan-European projects. Mr Ahern pointed out, however, that EU leaders had agreed that funds for quick start projects would be examined again next year and the Irish government would be pressing ahead to have it included at that stage.

Nonetheless, the setback at the Summit will cast doubts over the speed with which the Government can hope to draw down the EU aid for the project or access cheap European Investment Bank loans to fund it.

The Taoiseach said work was under way on different stretches of the Dublin-Cork route but it would not be completed by 2006.

If the Government is to succeed in securing EU quick-start funding next year, it will have to prove that it is in a position to meet criteria for immediate action on construction of the motorway.

It is also hoped to secure EU funding for the Dublin-to-Galway motorway but there are obstacles to be tackled before it obtains sanction for the €240m the Government estimates it can draw down from the EU. Last week, Transport Minister Seamus Brennan estimated that between the three schemes - the Dublin/Cork, Dublin/Galway motorways and Dublin/Belfast rail link - the Government could draw down €600m in EU aid in the long term that would otherwise not be available.

The €60m rail investment will go towards upgrading signalling and increasing speed on the Cork-to-Dublin line in particular, which is intended to become an hourly service for a two-hour journey.

At yesterday's Summit meeting, EU leaders gave their blessing to a €62bn "quick-start" list of priority projects to be launched over the next three years.

De Rebel

Originally posted by Qadhafi
The €60m rail investment will go towards upgrading signalling and increasing speed on the Cork-to-Dublin line in particular, which is intended to become an hourly service for a two-hour journey.

So much for all the talk about a Cork-Dublin-Belfast TGV. They already have a 2hr31min Cork-Dublin service. Two hours is not going to be enough to make an hourly service viable. It needs to reach 80/90 minutes to deliver a world class service and wipe the face of its road/air competitors. Yet another milestone in Irish Infrastructure failure. Yet more crumbs for CIE management to mess around with.

Qadhafi

€60 million to take off 31 minutes. More than likely IE will make a mess of it. Still its better than nothing. Will Cork Dublin every see the likes of TGV? probably take another 10 years. Could they do those things in phases like electrification of the lines etc? does that improve speed?