Meath Chronicle editorial on Navan rail link

Navan Junction

Meath Chronicle, Saturday September 30th 2006

TRANSPORT Minister Martin Cullen’s announcement this week of the Government’s go-ahead for the Western Rail Corridor (WRC), while undoubtedly great news for people in Mayo and Sligo, is something akin to a slap in the face to those in this county who have campaigned long and hard over the past decade for the reintroduction of rail services between Navan and Dublin.

The Cabinet’s approval for the phased restoration of passenger services from Ennis to Sligo has been described by its supporters as a major victory for common sense and democracy. The development has come about after a long and arduous campaign by a regional pressure group which spent a good deal of its time preventing the removal of the old track and preserving the route in public ownership.

It is difficult not to contrast this success for the people of the west with what has been achieved to date in Meath. Since the much-hyped announcement of the Government’s Transport 21 project late last year, there has been no further progress on the reintroduction of a rail corridor between Navan and Dunboyne which - with all due respect to lobby groups and tourism interests west of the Shannon - has to be considered a greater priority, given the thousands of Meath commuters sitting in choking traffic jams on the N3 every morning and evening on their way to work in the city and home again.

While the progress achieved to date in bringing forward the project from Clonsilla to Dunboyne is welcome and will form the first phase of this project linking the capital with Meath’s county town and perhaps beyond, campaigners for the reintroduction of the line to Navan believe they are no nearer achieving their objective than they were in the late 1990s when Iarnrod Eireann commissioned its last scoping study of the line.

Like a lone voice in the wilderness, the local lobby group Meath On Track has been shouting from the rooftops since earlier this year that the campaign to bring passenger rail services to Navan is going nowhere, with another scoping study on the Navan rail project not due until the middle of next year. This study will not even include a crucial cost-benefit analysis and preliminary design, according to the group, both of which are required to bring the project to railway order stage.

Meath On Track has contrasted this lack of progress with other rail infrastructure projects announced under Transport 21, including the WRC and the extension of Dublin’s LUAS light rail system from Dundrum to Cherrywood, both of which have moved at lightning speed when measured against the snail’s pace of the Meath rail plan.

It is interesting to note that one of the proponents of the Western Rail Corridor, Fr Mícheál Mac Gréil, remarked recently that the evolution of their case over the past four years was boosted by the establishment of the West On Track community campaign, which came about as a result of the negative conclusions of the strategic rail review undertaken by CIE and Iarnrod Eireann, and that it was strongly backed by local authorities, county development boards and regional assemblies.

There is a lesson for Meath in this. It is now clear something of a similar nature needs to happen here. With a general election looming on the horizon, a concerted effort must now be made in Meath, involving everyone from influential people in positions of authority right down through all the various strata of local society, to get this project fast-tracked to railway order stage. Crucially, it needs to be properly co-ordinated to bring maximum pressure to bear on the Government to provide this desperately-needed piece of local infrastructure sooner rather than later.

It is not good enough to meekly accept a provisional timeframe of 2015, nine years away. This project can be delivered within five years if the political will is there to do it. All that is needed is to make people angry enough about being stuck in traffic on the N3 for four hours out of every working day for them to shake off their apathy. People power and feet on the street can deliver this project for Meath; make sure every politician who comes knocking on your door over the next few months hears that message loud and clear.

Sarsfield

Maybe you need to get a priest on board. It works for the West - Knock airport, WRC, and I believe the Shell-to-Sea protestors were reciting the rosary today.

Ireland may be a lot different from 20 years ago but some things haven't changed yet.

dixiefly

On the day that the rail link from Navan to Dunboyne was announced there were a lot of posters all around the place proclaiming "Dempsey delivers for Meath again". I regret not getting a photo of one of them to show when he or one of his cronies come to me looking for a vote.

Navan Junction

dixiefly wrote:

"Dempsey delivers for Meath again".

I have one somewhere. I'll post it up at the weekend..:)

Ham'nd'egger

Navan Junction wrote:

I have one somewhere. I'll post it up at the weekend..:)

lol, NJ.

Without taking sides here, two things the WRC has on it's side is

1) The line has been open to some traffic in the last few years, so as such, it can be seen as being easier to re-open
2) Government Decentralisation plans will need improving infrasctuctural links in the west, and the WRC is a good sign of this being done.

Regardless of the needs of other lines to be developed, certainly this announcement should and will be welcomed by all as an asset for West Ireland.

Navan Junction

Hamndegger wrote:

lol, NJ.

I know.. You couldn't help it at the time, it was such blatant bull especially against such a back-drop of failed delivery..

I was actually going to take one of the posters home and put it back up before the election.. Should have..

BTW, I don't think the editor wasn't welcoming the WRC, he was just making the comparison on movement between the various LUAS, Metro and heavy rail projects, and the complete lack of progress in Navan.. Which is fairly valid at this stage, nearly a year on from T21, and 6 years on from Platform for Change, and eight since the first "scoping study" by IÉ..

One article which I've been given recently is really interesting. It is a 1998 Meath Chronicle report where Noel Dempsey launches a campaign to bring the railway to Navan.. Real upbeat stuff... I wish I lived in 1998.

Slice

Do people in Meath really care about a rail link when they're getting the M3? Perhaps the Government just doesn't want to encourage more sprawl into neighbouring counties?

Why isn't MOT campaigning for the re-opening of the Navan-Drogheda link in the interim?

Navan Junction

Slice wrote:

Do people in Meath really care about a rail link when they're getting the M3? Perhaps the Government just doesn't want to encourage more sprawl into neighbouring counties?

Yes definately to the first but there is a sense that it is coming so we can relax, and to the second Navan is the county growth town / proposed city under all of the current plans.. The sprawl has really happened in the other towns and villages (ie Ratoath), Navan was alway supposed to grow..

Slice wrote:

Why isn't MOT campaigning for the re-opening of the Navan-Drogheda link in the interim?

MOT have - it's just a strange subject locally. It's an arguement that goes back over 150 years to when the Drogheda line existed and other interests wanted the direct link via Clonsilla.

Basically, aside from IÉ using smoke and mirrors to say there is no capacity on the northern line, and then the sense in people that going all the way to Drogheda to get to Dublin is a mad proposition.

Because the roads are poor across to Drogheda, and people have no experience of how direct the rail link is, it has been a real problem getting the message across that it is a viable solution, even as an interim measure..

However, it is raised at every meeting in the context as an interim solution and possibly for longer term use.

westtip

NJ - you get my full support on the Navan meath on track campaign. I live in the north west not far from a point on the Claremorris/Collooney section of this line and find the West on Track campaign an embarrasment, but as the Meath Chronicle says you have to hand it to them - Why do I find the campaign embarrassing - well IMO it is in the long term going to damage investment in the West, and I am confining my comments to the Collooney Claremorris section - because this section of railway line will be very expensive to run - because it certainly won't wipe its face (not that public transport shoud make a profit, but there is a limit to how much it is subvented), to talk about rail commuting in the west of Ireland is nonsense - there simply isn't the cirtical mass for such a luxury, lets face it commuting from Claremorris to Sligo via rail is an absolute joke of an idea. To offer a commuting service you have to offer regular train services - a miniumum of say five trains each way a day, so are we going to have the 7.00, 7.30, 8.00, 8.30 from Claremorris to Sligo. One train per person doing this commute (who is prepared to travel by train) with perhaps the odd passenger picked up at Tubercurry. Not to mention the need for a commuter service in the evening, I mean if you are going to build a railway line you need to use it with more than two trains a day - or what's the point in doing the exercise.


Some of the arguments used in the North West have been to provide a public transport service to hospitals and other services, the usual emotive political blackmail with the kind of line "Our people just can't get to hospital for their day care" Again if this service is going to be offered reliably they will need a train every half hour every day - and then when the users get to Sligo they will have to get a cab from the station to the hospital in any event.

It is these small points of matter of fact detail which West on Track have chosen to ignore. In actual fact if the Department of Health and the Department of Transport got together and had a joint "health-transport policy", it would be cheaper to have a round the clock 24/7 hospital minibus/taxi offering a door to door service from home to hospital for the population of East Mayo and South county Sligo than opening this particular stretch of railway line.

But no up here they want a state of the art rail line whilst the commuters of Navan (who really do need this investment) struggle on the N3 or are driven onto the M3 to pay private company tolls; this decision is just poor governance, in fact weak governance, because a strong government woudl say no - we will invest in the west, but we will not give in to every hair brain idea which happens to have a good PR engine behind it.

So, why will restoring this line damage future investment in the West - because it will be referenced as a complete waste of money with comments such as Look what was given to the west and look what it is achieving, it will add not one iota to the local economy.

With regard to using this line for long haul freight - Well Sligo isn't exactly Rotterdam - it is not a container port nor is it likely to be. Actually, if containers are to be shipped to the North West for redistribution via Road - then Ballina would suffice for the Western terminus of this line. The line from Claremorris to Ballina already exists and as it happens there are container facilities at Ballina (installed at the time of Asahi operating in Killala)

You know my mantra on this one: Claremorris to Collooney make it a long distance foot/cyle path - this could be a real tourist attaction. I have referenced a trail called the Tissington Trail in the UK where a disused rail line has been used as a trail.

Let me share some recnt research I did when I interviewed the manager of the Tissington Trail cycle hire centres:

There were 36,000 bike rentals by visitors to the Tissington Trail last year (2005) from the three (not for profit) bike hire centres run on the trail by the National Parks: Of these 36,000 bike hires, one third (12,000 when I went to school), stayed at least one night in the area in a B&B, hotel, campsite, hostel etc.

So let's ask West on Track - will a rail line from Claremorris add 12,000 heads on beds in Claremorris, Charlestown, Tubercurry, Collooney, Sligo? In addition to the 36,000 cycle hires BTW, the track is also used by an additonal 70,000 who bring their own bikes and about another 125,000 visitors who just come to walk the trail. We can hazard at a guess but some of these bring your own cyclists and thousands of walkers must have - stopped for lunch, a pint, bought stuff in local shops, stayed the night etc -

The trouble with West on Track is they have no vision. The reinstatement of the Collooney to Claremorris section will be a huge lost opportunity to create a facility (walking/cyling trail), for the North West, they have lost their way with their heads buried in the bog, and the whole thing has become an irrational emotive campaign along the lines of the west gets nothing it must get this.

Ham'nd'egger

westtip wrote:

You know my mantra on this one: Claremorris to Collooney make it a long distance foot/cyle path.

We could make a compromise and have Rickshaw riders taking people between the stations on the new cycle path Burma Road :cool:

westtip

Hamndegger wrote:

We could make a compromise and have Rickshaw riders taking people between the stations on the new cycle path Burma Road :cool:

Ham, be careful - make a suggestion like this and someone in the West of Ireland Multi-cultural development section of Minister O'Cuivs department will pick it up as an idea send an email to the Minster of da west - next thing you know a delegation of the chinese restauranteurs of South Sligo with their local priest will be chaining themselves to the railings in Merrion Square, demanding equal rights in the west of ireland for rickshaw carriers. Tubercurry station will be designated the west of ireland centre for Rickshaw studies and there will a nice big sign up saying this project was jointly funded by the .............. well I will leave it for others to make suggestions.

.........Of course the emailer to da minster of da west, will receive a benchmarking award and be decentralised to Knock airport..... Ahhhhh the penny has dropped....

This is why they want the WRC re-opened - to facilitate the commuting of all those hard worked civil servants decentralised to knock Airport business park, so they won't have to sell their houses in Dublin (now prices are coming down - why sell), and they can commute from Dublin to Knock Daily on the 04.45 out of Heuston, changing at Athenry, then Claremorris, arriving Charlestown/Knock international interchange railway station, at 09.23, transferring to the Charlestown/Knock Bus station (which will have to be built to cater for this influx of Civvies in da west), arriving at the office at 10.07, but never mind they work flexie time so will be able to get the 10.12 bus back to the Knock interchange to get the 10.45 back from wence they came. Getting home about 3.30 just intime for Countdown. Never mind eh the work might not be challenging but the pension is good, and now they have been transferred to the west the journey to work is paid double time as travel time.

Why didnt' we all see it. It all makes such sense now.