"Universally accepted" rail freight "is dead in Ireland"???

monument

Transport21 Fan wrote:

I think it's more or less universally accepted by this point that railreight is dead in Ireland and never coming back.

(I’ve separated this from the WRC thread because it’s a far wider issue)

It looks like, as a part of an article on our oil dependency, one of your favourite journalists advocated that it should not be dead and that pushing freight back on to rail is what has been happening in the UK and Europe. This article wasn’t 10 years ago, but just this week in the Irish Times…

Running on empty

Life After Oil: Ireland has been allowed to develop in a way that sends people into their cars when they should be getting out of them, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor………..

….The market share for rail freight has fallen from 5 per cent in the late 1980s to less than 1 per cent today. Indeed, the consultants who carried out the 2003 Strategic Rail Review warned that the business was "at risk of irreversible decline if the current policy vacuum continues". Three years on, policy is as vacuous as ever.

Consultants Booz Allen Hamilton calculated that a rail freight meltdown would cost Irish society €63 million a year - €27 million in extra road maintenance and €36 million as a result of pollution and accidents. Yet the Government has no plans to introduce any scheme of incentives or allowances to encourage more use of the railways for freight.

Other EU member-states such as Britain, Denmark and Sweden are pressing companies to consider rail, or at least keep the option open. The reason is simple: their governments realise that the higher costs of energy, labour and environmental compliance will make it cheaper to rail freight across Europe rather than sending it by road.

Because of our reliance on roads for freight, as well as the explosion in car numbers and air travel, Ireland's transport sector accounts for 40 per cent of total energy consumption. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from transport are increasing by up to 10 per cent per year, seriously jeopardising the prospect of meeting our Kyoto target.

Successive budgets have failed to tweak Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) to reflect energy consumption or CO2 emissions….

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2006/0718/1856084032FTTUEENERGYTRANSNEW.html

Although in this last part he goes on to talk about cars, our VRT mostly likely doesn’t reflect energy consumption or road usage because it would in the main effect road freight, ie the road haulage industry, ie a powerful lobby.

The reasoning that rail is not needed because such and so industries have shut down is nonsense. Rail is not used because the haulage industry is at an unfair advantage because there is no VRT reflection on their energy consumption or road usage.

The fairest way to charge users for their road usage would be scraping VRT and charging users at the point of purchase of fuel – why isn’t this done?

MarkoP11

The context is important here, the DoT have refused funds to IE to put new freight flows on the railway. Unlike the UK and most of Europe there are no grants or financial aid to support freight services

The largest rail freight customer was IFI, 3 ammonia trains a day plus fertiliser, they went belly up, ballpark 200,000 tons pa was moving the ammonia between factories it no longer exists
Quigley Magnasite were a huge customer until the early 1980's, they closed down due to oil prices
Slivermines, the mine was depleted
Asahi Ballina Acrylonitrile, Asahi shut down
Beet, EU and WTO nuked it

What you will note is that with the exception of part of IFI's business none of this put a single extra truck on the road

The only one that got away was Bell Lines who went belly up

Ham'nd'egger

Good points, Mark, the reality of much of the lost business is that it hasn't gone onto Roads, it has just been closed businesses. Ireland just doesn't have the heavy ore traffic compared to other European nations at the moment.

September will see God knows how many trucks of beer on the roads from Dublin, Waterford, Dundalk, Kilkenny and Clonmel which can be shifted by rail given the incentive to do as such. All the freight on the lines left soon will be timber and the odd liner train for Norfolk Lines and in time the forests will be stripped so that will go as well. As well, with the current engine fleet being very old (141 and 181 Class are 40 years old, and 071 30 next year), the obvious case to not handle it will be a lack of motive power (Any co-incidence that there is a rake of rail cars being ordered?).

And with dimishing levels of traffic, can you blame IE for not wanting to take on more freight? If the money is in passengers, then that's what they will handle. And from the customers end, the reality of it is is that a Iveco Van or a Box Truck for €20k that goes door to door, knock off the VAT and it's a lot less hassle and more practical. The old days of loose coupled goods trains went out pretty much when vans became handier to get, so this trade is effectively lost forever.

Maybe a better question is what nowadays can be carried via Rail and how it can be made cheaper to businesses?

MarkoP11

Freight and Passenger go hand in hand since they split the infrastructure costs so the net cost per train reduces, if passenger services returned to the Navan Drogheda line the cost to operate Tara Mines would reduce while the passenger end only pays a portion of the actual cost. The assets are there to sweat

There is no money in passengers well you can't be sure since the accounts don't show the revenue correctly, well you be sure it lost 170 million last year but the DoT covers that there is not a single penny for freight

Diageo when out to tender for a transport supplier IE were undercut by a haulage company, you have to remember the road haulage boys are powerful and will resist any attempt to favour rail over road

What is interesting is IE could right now if they wanted shift a train load of containers from Dublin Docks to Cork in under 3 hours 30 minutes, they don't know. The problem is unless you want to shift multiple 20+ TEU trainloads per week there isn't a chance of a reasonable quote

Transport21 Fan

I am not saying I am anti-railfreight, but when I look at all the "ifs, ands and buts" I just see no future for it in Ireland and most of the people I know who do see a railfeight revivial in Ireland are just IRN/West on Track types who are lost in a delusional fantasy world which would make the Flat Earth Society look prosaic by comparision.

At some point in your life you have to accept that the world around you has changed for loads of reasons and there is no going back. For me it was talking to major Irish business people in major companies during 2002-2004 and the answer was all the same from all of them "after the ILDA strike not on your nelly!"

ILDA killed railfreight at a very crucial point in its development by alienting the business sector FOREVER and also killing any chance of future Government investment/support - which is why the tax relief and grants never came and never will come.

The business people and companies who can put freight on rails are terrified of the CIE rail unions as they cannot allow their commerical activities to be held to randsom by the culturally-insane and self-absorbed basket case which is the CIE rail unions.

All the letters in the world sent with Royal Mail stamps on them from IRN managers to the regional Irish newspapers won't change this. It may provide a superfical glimmer of hope to some out there who are lost in the infantile world were the ultimate expression of rail transport in Ireland is a Class 141 loco pulling a few mollasses wagons along the Foynes Branch, but in the real commerical world of Irish business, a HGV is the safer bet than the strike-junkie liabilites of ILDA/NBRU/SIPTU etc.

Can you really blame Irish industry for turning its back on these muppets.

I know this reality is extremly difficult for the IRN types to come to terms with as most of them are infatuated with anything that drives a locomotive, but this is the truth of the matter. ILDA MURDERED RAILFREIGHT IN IRELAND FOREVER and sent the sector into a downward spiral towards the oblivion which we see happening before us all now. This is an endgame scenario which we are witnessing.

As for private railfreight in Ireland, the major players said there were not interested and the CIE rail unions said as recent as Feb 2006 that they would fight any private railfreight operations on Irish tracks. So not a hope in hell there.

Another significant reason why railfreight is finished is because railfreight in Ireland was, by tradition, a classic olde-time semi-state gig serving other olde-time semi-state gigs in a pre-motorway, agrarian, pre-services industry orientated Ireland.

These semi state industries have all vanished or morphed into something different and the roads are now great and more significantly, the vast majority of commercial shippers in Ireland are located in the edge of urban areas and traffic congestion is not an issue.

However, and this is very important...

Even with the demise of the semi-state railfreight customers, there are huge amounts of merchandise which (I believe having studied the market in depth) could still travel by rail in Ireland today...but alas, as mentioned above, the rail unions in CIE scare the ****e out of commercial shippers and the continual behaviour of the CIE rail unions since ILDA from the DART drivers shakedown to the family crises in Mallow a few weeks back has just reinforced the business community's perfectly rational and understandable belief that putting your goods on a CIE train is playing Russian Roulette with consigments. Anto and Deco's mood swings are too risky.

The Foynes to Ballina fertilizer train isn't coming back and neither is any other significant railfreight in Ireland.

Chris_533976

the CIE rail unions said as recent as Feb 2006 that they would fight any private railfreight operations on Irish tracks. So not a hope in hell there.

What is that unions problem with EVERYTHING?

Maskhadov

Rail freight will be back on the island once the Tuskar tunnel is built and a deep port in Shannon. All the freight will cross ireland to mainland Europe via England.

Diaspora

MarkoP11 wrote:

The only one that got away was Bell Lines who went belly up

I saw a Bell Lines container on a freight train in Belgium last week what happened to the assets of the company?

Ham'nd'egger

Diaspora wrote:

I saw a Bell Lines container on a freight train in Belgium last week what happened to the assets of the company?

What assets? lol The company leased virtually everything so there was sweet FA to sell off.

Diaspora

Hamndegger wrote:

What assets? lol The company leased virtually everything so there was sweet FA to sell off.

That was the purpose of the question: still doesn't explain why the leasing company didn't repaint the boxs

DerekP11

Chris_533976 wrote:

What is that unions problem with EVERYTHING?

His opinion. Expressed on a message board, that isn't linked (as far as we know) to any activity, that constitutes meeting with IE management. Therefore he can be as biased/unbiased as he likes and you can skip over messages posted by him, thereby negating your need to comment on it.

Thomas,

In fairness, a bit of digging by myself over the last year or so, reveals that ILDA were not alone in affecting railfreight in Ireland. There is a certain Human resources person in IE that appears to be making a mission out of provoking industrial unrest. Think, recent dispute over MK 4s. Considering the culture in the place, this can be deemed in the realm of "daft management". Their turf wars are enacted with a total and absolute disregard for the customer, be it you and me or a bag of cement.

Furthermore, the Gypsum traffic from Kingscourt was heading for road anyway, despite the dispute in 2000. We can blame unions/management all we want for the demise of railfreight, but realistically its a combination of "belly ups", "no suitable traffic" and "lack of state aid" (which only comes into play if Government are serious about diverting suitable heavy loads from road to rail.)

Apart from that, you're spot on, its passenger traffic all the way and commuters in particular. Comparisons with other countries, re freight, fail to take into account, the industries located in those countries. The twice weekly north kerry goods train lasted way beyond its sell by date in a country that was backward in relation to fellow European countries.

That was then. This is now. Lets try and move on.

Transport21 Fan

DerekP11 wrote:

There is a certain Human resources person in IE that appears to be making a mission out of provoking industrial unrest.

Yeah, I know about this little soap opera and it's really weird too. What I really like to know is this internal war within the CIE world is...is it a philospical one, or is it driven by the need to bring that company's workforce (and I include much of the management in this as well) into the 20th century and in time with any luck the 21st century?

Sure, the demise of railfreight in this country was a combination of many factors. However, I will maintain this, becuase I know it to be true (having spoken to the folks who could, if they felt safe doing so can put freight on Irish rails,) that the chance of a revivial of the sector was destroyed by the unions and in particular the horrific damage done by ILDA in 2000.

The IRN fellows in the UK can demand all the "Southern Eire" tax breaks for rail freight they want, but if a commercial company is moving produce from point A - B and we are talking real Euros and Cent here, and this is put in danger by a handful of selfish types driving locomotives suffering from mood swings, then nobody in their right mind is going to trust their consignments to these jokers.

Hence, why I strongly beleive that there is a untapped market for railfreight in Ireland, but the rail unions in CIE have traumatised the commercial interests who might want to do this so much that the game is up.

The days of the unions having their way in Ireland and commerical business people (and Irish society as a whole) accepting it so as to now offend the ghost of Jim Larkin are over . The HGV became the commerical shippers panecea for Anto and Deco the CIE train drivers getting out of bed on the wrong side some mornings and not wanting to drive locomotives.

Which bring me back to the original title of the thread, that "universally" (by which I mean people who could transport their goods by rail) have accepted this mode of transport as dead in Ireland. It's very unfortuante, but the Celtic Tiger damaged it badly, and then the ILDA drivers unions gave it the coup de grace before it had a chance to be resuscitated.

Derek is correct, no point in crying over spilled milk and people looking for a railfreight revival in Ireland now are just as unrealistic as expecting to lobby for the Fintona Horse Tram to be put back in services as an alternative to road transport. Even if there was a chance for railfreight, it always has to be a minor player to the commuter rail services which is the great white hope for rail transport in Ireland going forward.

That was then and this is now indeed.

Transport21 Fan

I was told the other night that a major shipper in Dublin Port a few months back cancelled a contract to transport containers by rail out of the docks at the 11th hour. I would be most interested in hearing the circumstances surrounding this last minute cancellation of what should have been a major boost for railfreight in Ireland. This should not of happened - the whole thing sounds very fishy.

When I hear about carry on like this I do wonder if Ireland badly needs a railfreight lobby afterall. There again is proof that railfreight is there for the selling and some companies do what to use it, but some really screwy stuff is going on behind the scenes which is constantly messing it up. This should be all basic and straightforward stuff.