[Article] Traffic poll shows need for Mayo rail link

Zoney

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Hopefully any upcoming CIE rail development plans for Limerick will see the potential of closing Colbert and moving the new bus and train station to site of Check Platform allowing through running on all services in and out of the city. Would be like a mini-Interconnector for Limerick.

There are plans for a new bus station (well, there isn't really one at present, just the yard beside the station, and the use of the railway station building and ancilliary shacks) The new station will be on the north side of the station, on the current car park extension. New parking will replace the current bus yard. Buses will exit the station to the rear on Roxboro Road, which should be handier.

Mind you, the new N7/N20 junction under construction will not have city-bound access, so all buses from Cork and Kerry will have to go by the N69 Dock Road or the Tipperary Road. Fun!

Chris_533976

Theres going to be uproar about that, especially for buses.

Maybe a bus lane should be added to the Dock Road interchange so buses can do a 180 and go back down the new DC to the Childers road.

D'Peoples Voice

Transport21 Fan wrote:

I am not going to comment other than bold the sections. You can make your own minds up about it. I'm saying nothing!

Western People 18/04/07
End of an era as trains go electronic - Cróna Esler

Man that article makes me mad,
in a country where unemployment is running at 4%
and 70,000 immigrants coming here each year,
this journalist paints a picture of complete Destitute for these gatekeeps etc.

It's almost as if, we shouldn't introduce change if it's going to cause people their jobs (which by all accounts it hasn't because the article says some of them will be reporting for duty after the upgrade).
Clearly the West of Ireland is still living in a period where every job lost is a massive blow! The article is so negative - it hardly even talks about the advantages or purposes of the upgrade.

westtip

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Good posts there dermo, glad to see you are still around.

I agree with everything you say on this thread. Although what FG did to railways in this country was in the past, The whole approach of a train leaving Sligo or Ballina and making it's way to Limerick 5 hours later belongs in the 19th century.

It's not going to happen, or at least it'll be decades if it ever does and even then I could only see the northern half being opened as a Train-Tram style route. Which would be viable if planning and population settlement patterns were sorted out in East Galway, Mayo (yeah right!) and Sligo.

The idea of 20-30 services in each direction a day with tram-train driver-controlled level crossing operation and line-of-sight running is far too modern for the average WRC supporter. Shame really, as the more I look at the Northern Half of the WRC, the more I see a potential for some of it to be reopened as a Tram-Train service. But alas that's not on the agenda.

Absolutely right - I live in West Sligo county and have had my head chewed off for arguing against the WRC northern section Claremorris - Collooney, apart from the technical engineering issues (it will be the most expensive part of the line to restore to modern standards), there simply is not the critical mass to support its restoration. WRC are very focussed on their own agenda they run a high profile campaign and just assume they are right and everyone else is wrong When places like Navan haven't got a rail link to Dublin and with the Athlone-Mullingar line mothballed how could Collooney-Claremorris take any kind of priority. The WRC campaign has tried to put into peoples minds if the WRC doesn't open the West will fall into the Atlantic - b***sh*t, they may actually achieve their objective of a WRC from Ballina to Limerick (If the Claremorris Tuam Athenry section opens this will de-facto be the WRC) but Claremorris-Collooney won't happen because every successive Government after this one will keep putting it on the long finger - and quite rightly - it is quite simply not a National priority and nor is it a regional priority. I have argued on these boards before - and in the letters pages of the IT, that the best use of the northern section of WRC, would be to convert it into something of public use - a walking cycling track that would attract a lot more visitors to the area than an tram car going up and down the line three times a day. This idea has worked in every other west european country where old rural rail lines have been used as a tourist attraction - imagine getting the train from Dublin to Collooney - then walking or cycling over the weekend from Collooney to Claremorris to get the train back to Dublin on the Westport line. How many heads on beds would this bring into the hotel, B&B and guest house trade along the route? Not to mention the fact that locals would use this kind of facility far more than they would a railway line - WOT simply need to wake up.

WOT have simply not addressed the real issue, there is no proven need for the northern section of the WRC but there are alternatives for the northern WRC alignment - WOT simply will not compromise though and continue with their mantra.

gobdaw

The ideas put forward by Westtip make sense, to me anyway.

Further, if, if, there is a case for Sligo to be on a "WRC", I imagine that a new allignment from Ballina to Sligo could be provided at a lower cost that Collooney-Claremorris, to a higher standard and with (possible?) economic advantage to Ballina.

What journey times would be like on a WRC via Ballina I don't know

Transport21 Fan

gobdaw wrote:

The ideas put forward by Westtip make sense, to me anyway.

Further, if, if, there is a case for Sligo to be on a "WRC", I imagine that a new allignment from Ballina to Sligo could be provided at a lower cost that Collooney-Claremorris, to a higher standard and with (possible?) economic advantage to Ballina.

What journey times would be like on a WRC via Ballina I don't know

It's all mountains and hills, the villages along the way like Easkey are all tiny and the Sligo-Ballina Bus Eireann route is never filled even in the height of summer. The largest town on the route, Enniscrone is only populated during the summer months and filled with thousands of one-off houses and holiday homes. It has gigantic car parks as public transport is not required there nor wanted as you can't get a caravan, sailboard or jet-ski on a bus or train.

You cannot enter into the north east side of Ballina town as you would have to demolish half the town and build a suspention bridge across the Moy. It would be one of the biggest rail engineering projects in Europe if undertaken.

and nobody wants to take 5 hours train trip from either Ballina or Sligo to Limerick in 2007 regardless of the route

murphaph

The people of Ballina demand their suspension bridge! You're worse than the brits Thomas, taking all that is owed to those that have suffered through years of Dublin neglect. Shame on you.

Transport21 Fan

murphaph wrote:

The people of Ballina demand their suspension bridge! You're worse than the brits Thomas, taking all that is owed to those that have suffered through years of Dublin neglect. Shame on you.

I actually love Ballina it is a great, thriving town and I really would like to see more people use the train from other parts of Mayo to go shopping there/commute and so on.

A developer had a plan turned down there a few months back, he wanted to build a basketball arena and shopping centre next to the train station but the planners rejected it as the "development was too far from the town centre and DID NOT HAVE ENOUGH CAR PARKING SPACES".

Goes to show how much the planners and politicians who are demanding their WRC actually care about doing their bit to make it viable. Which is sad as potentially all railway lines in Ireland can be major successes if planning, commuter and population patterns were eh..."planned".

Slice

The people of Ballina demand their suspension bridge! You're worse than the brits Thomas, taking all that is owed to those that have suffered through years of Dublin neglect. Shame on you.

Citizens of Ballina for an independent Connaught!

Schuhart

Slice wrote:

Citizens of Ballina for an independent Connaught!

To saying nothing of Citizens of Dublin and environs for an independent Connaught!

murphaph

Schuhart wrote:

To saying nothing of Citizens of Dublin and environs for an independent Connaught!

lol

Happy Bertie

I'm brainstorming here but I'm trying to get some correlations in Irish travel patterns. If someone could develop from some of these seeds I'm putting out it would be appreciated.

I think one would find some high correlations in the following.

I think intercity railway patornage can boil down to the following.
If the amount of products and services availabe in the place where you live is less than a near or distant city or town, you will likely have incentive to visit that city or town. It may sound simplistic but it's generally applicable for distances greater than 60 miles.

Student and tourism travel can often be the exception to this rules as often the smaller destination fulfils their specific requirements

- people will travel from towns to cities
e.g. Tralee to Cork, Tuam to Galway,

-people will travel from smaller cities and towns to much bigger cities
e.g. Limerick to Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Galway, Tralee to Dublin

However frequent travel between cities and towns of similar size is less often done because one's own town or city will frequenty provide the same services as the other similarly sized town or city. e.g people from Waterford have less need to travel to Limerick than say someone from Ennis or Clonmel. Exceptions are if similarly sized cities provide substanially different services. Galway could be considered a fun place for Limerick residents to visit, where as Limerick people usually have less reason to visit Cork or Waterford.

This why lot more people travel from Waterford to Dublin than say to Limerick.

.........

If anyone can add to this or has a comment please contribute.

dermo88

The trouble is that West on Track are entrenched in their position, and will not compromise. One individual on IrishRailwaynews even called for me to be banned, purely on account of my opposition to it.

What did he hope to achieve to call for my banning. I'll tell you why. He was scared of the truth. He was scared that I had the facts, figures and statistics at hand. We all have the facts, statistics and figures. You can get figures for every line in the country. You can get population levels, and figure out which routes would work.

It is simply, a case of priorities. It is definitely a case of East vs West, of logic vs parochialism.

Martin Cullen and Dr John Lynch should play hardball. Closure notices, bustitution, anything to wake them up.

A few Cravens and 121's bouncing around on jointed track....perhaps. But then, the amount of rail enthusiasts coming for that alone, would sustain the Westport line for a decade .

I'm entrenched in my opposition to it. Sometimes 10% of me looks at Athenry to Claremorris and wonders....."Hmm.....maybe it will work".

And then I go back to sleep, thinking of ingenious and devious ways to bury this, and dream of a railway from Dublin to Derry via Navan so the railway map of Ireland actually looks a bit fuller, rather than a Thalidomised rail. With skanger and paramilitary (both sides) slave labour.

Happy Bertie

Just an addendum to my previous post..

The post grew out of my curiousity why rail patronage on the Tralee to Cork line was much higher than rail patronage between Cork to Limerick, or, Limerick to Waterford (these example are excluding Dublin bound passengers)

I am thinking that Ballina, Westport and Castlebar passenger would have suffienent incentive to travel to Galway, as Galway is the goods and services capital of the region, and further afield to Limerick or dare I say it, to Cork. And that they would choose rail as the preferred method of transport compared to car and bus for journeys of2 hours or more. I would say for tourists train absolutely would be the preferred method for say, a 4 hour journey from Galway to Cork, for example.

I often think of somebody in Sligo region wanting to travel to Limerick. They could take a bus to Claremorris and take the train from there to Limerick via the WRC, which is much better than being in a cramped bus for the entire journey.

All I'm saying is the that the WRC could defy conventional wisdom and economics and be a success because of the huge interest and enthusiasm by many people in the West in this project.

Remember when everybody said local radio would fail in Ireland and only be viable in say Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway and they were citing statistics from England where radio stations that served over 500,000 people were losing money. In Ireland local radio became such a success that there are now over 40 radio stations compared to Britains only 90 radio stations (with 15 times the population)

I mean why is Ennis to Limerick a success when Nenagh to Limerick is a failure. One could have said Ennis to Limerick would be a failure, citing Nenagh to Limerick as an example. The example often quoted by the anti-WRC people is the Limerick to Waterford example. I guess there is an enthusism about some rail lines and there isn't with some. If Limerick to Waterford closed for 20 years, then there might be an enthusiasm to reopen the line. You could almost envision it.

MarkoP11

It all depends what you classify as a success and a failure

Over half of the 120,000 Ennis Limerick passengers continued to Dublin

Question is if the bus is much faster and cheaper will people use the train, will the broke student pay double the bus fare to get a train which takes longer?

Its a bit like asking everyone on the N17 would use the train instead http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=53043033&postcount=2 the vast majority say yes but the reality in Dublin in towns with a train service its only about 36 in a thousand per head population (ARUP Demand Model Dublin Suburban) on average use it for the commute

dermo88

Thats what needs to be done with the Nenagh line and the Waterford to Limerick Junction line. These routes will not survive unless there are a minimum of two direct trains a day in each direction going to Dublin. Extra cross country, shuttle and branch services can be added to supplement and connect. Otherwise its a policy of neglect by Iarnrod Eireann. This includes a pricing policy designed to discourage demand, and I saw this in the early-mid 1990's when a Waterford to Rosslare one way fare cost IEP10.50, and the bus was IEP5.50. I was shocked.

This was being charged to a French student in Waterford. At the time it was 8.80 to the Punt, and the standard SNCF Rate at that time was 1 Franc per kilometre, and thats for Corail Intercity standard services, NOT a bog standard 141 and Cravens.

If Ennis to Claremorris had been retained since 1976, it would have cost 53 Million Euro in todays money in subsidies to keep 1 train running in each direction. The line would be open, West on Track would not exist, and it would be pointless. But noone would bat an eyelid, because the communities would have their rail link, however cosmetic and useless it was.

westtip

Happy Bertie wrote:

Just an addendum to my previous post..


All I'm saying is the that the WRC could defy conventional wisdom and economics and be a success because of the huge interest and enthusiasm by many people in the West in this project.

.

Well I live in the west, in fact the north west, and I have never heard the WRC mentioned as a priority by anyone up here - WOT are a bunch of cranks who have stolen the "moral highground" whingeing on about how the west loses out so much to Dublin - give me a break in a country this size we all need Dublin to succeed - why because it drives the economy. The northern section of the WRC won't happen - believe me - no one believes it will happen and ten years on from now we could and probably will be debating the same issues - there is simply no real demand for it. WOT need to recognise this fact. If the money needed to build and then subvent the running costs of the claremorris collooney section where spent on real needs of the North west - for example good quality bus services then we might all start using public transport, but as it is building a railway line forr 3 trains a day to take one man and his dog from Tubbercurry to Sligo isn't only laughable it is absurd, and please spare me the Knock airport story it is a completely different case...............

Victor

Happy Bertie wrote:

This why lot more people travel from Waterford to Dublin than say to Limerick.

Thats largely it. Similarly if you go to a Dublin shopping centre, you will find either Tesco or Dunnes, together with the usual suspects as listed here: http://www.dundrum.ie/index.asp#storeguide

However, there is a second factor. Cement is made in Drogheda and Limerick and imported through various ports. Chemicals are made in Cork. Electronics are made in various places, but they are different parts of the product chain. This creates cross-links between different locations, dependent on the population / economic diversity of the origin, the population / economic diversity of the destination and the distance between them. Hence Dublin-Cork have strong links, whereas Dublin-Urlingford (half way) has a weaker link and Cork-Urlingford has a weaker link again. Urlingford-Roscommon (simlar distance) has sod all link.

westtip

dermo88 wrote:

The trouble is that West on Track are entrenched in their position, and will not compromise. One individual on IrishRailwaynews even called for me to be banned, purely on account of my opposition to it.

It is simply, a case of priorities. It is definitely a case of East vs West, of logic vs parochialism.

I'm entrenched in my opposition to it. Sometimes 10% of me looks at Athenry to Claremorris and wonders....."Hmm.....maybe it will work".

And then I go back to sleep, thinking of ingenious and devious ways to bury this, and dream of a railway from Dublin to Derry via Navan so the railway map of Ireland actually looks a bit fuller, rather than a Thalidomised rail. With skanger and paramilitary (both sides) slave labour.

Exactly Dermo, I had a conversation with someone from West on Track and told them about my idea for a walking trail on the track from Claremorris - Collooney - and they said but you live in the West how dare you oppose this plan (for the railway to re-open), they said you had better not go to the papers with that idea it could cause us damage - I kid you not - they nearly threatened me. Actually I said the numbers don't stack up and it is not in the national interest, and all the evidence I have seen suggests a walking trail would be a huge tourist attraction, and by the way I have already gone into print in the national press about it. I don't think it is a case of East v West, I think it is a case of the West looking at what we can develop out here for the only real hope we have for the future - the tourist industry - and we need to offer people things to do when they come west. East and West in this country need to work together - and yes something has to be done about regional imbalance but the truth is the economy is driven by Dublin and the West needs Dublin to function well (and to do this it needs the larger part of investment in public transport projects). I really think the WRC (northern section) will do the west a huge disservice - because it will be a complete white elephant - it won't server any real purpose - it won't move a lot of people (which is what railways do best), it won't take cars off the road, but it will allow those to look at it afterwards and say - why invest in the west when so much money was wasted on a railway line no one uses. It will be a complete nonsense - which is why it won't happen no matter much huff and puff we hear from the politicians in the coming weeks out here.

dermo88

If anyone threatened me in such a manner, I would laugh at them, and have the letter typed up ten times faster and sent to ten times as many papers, journalists and politicians.

Keeping them praying, keeping them waiting, keeping them under control, and keeping the soother in their collective mouths is the safest approach. We've got to consider that 6 hours of a ministers time, the Chairman of CIE's, and the cost of studies, the occasional meeting, the occasional conference and talks about talks, hot air, etc costs the same amount over 10 years as 400 meters of track.

So talk is cheap. Although, I'd like to send in the lifting trains for fun and spite. I'd like to see the Army and Gardai arrest and detain anyone trespassing on the permanent way as they protest. But that would give their sad, sorry and pathetic cause some validity, and that must never ever happen.

dermo88

Heres a few threads from Irishrailwaynews from a while ago....a few years, dealing with this, and other topics. Like the West Clare railway, and the West Cork railway, and others it only gets attention, because rail enthusiasts love the railways that carry the least. Meanwhile in Dublin, in Meath in Limerick, and Cork....the traffic jams continue.

Frankly speaking, I'd give my right ball to be the CIE chairman and send in the lifting trains for Athenry to Collooney. It would give me nothing but the greatest of pleasure to see the Gardai arrest anyone protesting or trespassing on the track while it was being lifted and that branchline would be gone, never to be heard of again, only in the miserable drunken ramblings of rail enthusiasts on IRRS or RPSI specials. Ernest Shepherd, Colm Creedon and Colourpoint publications can make their money selling books about it.

The real work of delivering a truly viable, modern rail system, carrying plenty of passengers in the places where the passengers actually are can continue.

Should Platform11 apologise in Castlebar

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...21117918479361

Back in 2002.....remember this.

Close lines to cut costs

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...33836490844793

The real issues....imperfections in the existing network...take a look at Limerick Junction.

The Limerick Junction Issue

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...13424241188381

Union warns againts possiblke closures

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...st=1902&CDir=1

Rail closures (2002)

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...90981235603196

Interconnector Tunnel

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...44070507760824

Clonsilla Navan

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...46992839698099

Meath on Track

http://groups.msn.com/irishrailwayne...52689998133685

Each and every one of the above is of far more importance, of far more potential, and of far greater importance to the people of Ireland than a wasteful Victorian Tramway. Each one of these represents a bullet in the heart of the Western Railway Corridor. Those who support the Western Railway Corridor should read these, and bury their heads in shame at the waste that they are proposing.

Schuhart

I can't get those links to work.

dermo88

Go to Irishrailwaynews and you'll find them under my recent post regarding old posts.

Schuhart

That seems to be here, just for ease of reference.