Galway Light Rail?

Chris_533976

I dont really agree with that... any modern country thesedays HAS to have a good motorway network. Certainally not the excuses that the N18 north of Ennis and the N20 south of Patrickswell are.

Slice

For example when the Government asked the NRA to come up with a plan to upgrade the country's inter-urban roads (in the late 90's or early noughties) it was deemed most of them would only need to be upgraded to 2+1 status. This is and remains the necessary capacity to meet demand for inter-urban journeys given that most of the journeys on our country's motorways are actually local commutes. Obviously it can be argued that motorways are necessary to connect major urban centres such as Dublin-Cork or Dublin-Belfast but was it ever considered that the additional cost incurred by building a motorway over 2+1 could be directed to upgrade existing regional and local roads and so discourage commuter journeys on national routes? Furthermore such arguments were no doubt considered by the NRA, yet they were mandated by the Government to proceed with a far more extensive road building initiative - no questions asked. It's another example of Governments setting up expert review boards and oireachtas committees to study and recommend the best course of action then subsequently ignoring such advice when the advice wouldn't be as politically convenient.

I'm not saying rail investment shouldn't be subjected to detailed scrutiny, I'm just saying that the same should apply to roads we don't necessarily need. The savings from doing so would leave more money for good public transport - something which any developed country also has.

Chris_533976

But if 2+1s were built and interurban DCs scrapped, would you REALLY trust the government to spend the cash responsibly in public transport??

lukas

...and let us not forget that we could have voted those responsible for mis-allocating public funds (and I agree with Slice on this) out of office long time ago. We didn't. Mainly, I guess, because the majority of "us" like them roads so much that we appear to enjoy spending more and more time on them... Car-dependency! ****, half of the Galway Advertiser consists of new cars being presented to us as if our lives depended on it...

Transport21 Fan

lukas wrote:

Slice - well said! Is that because our society fetishizes the car

*sniff-sniff-sniff*

lukas wrote:

as an enblem of individuality (wrongly, IMO, equated with freedom) at the expense of communal (=public) modes of transportation? If so, what could bring about change?

I love the smell of social justice in the morning.

lukas

Transport21 Fan wrote:

I love the smell of social justice in the morning.

...don't we all. The evening, though, has its merits too. But seriously - IMHO the dividing line has always been defined by Jeremy Clarkson who perhaps is more than anyone else to blame for the fetishization of the car... Can we clone him for a future train lobby group without becoming train spotters in the process? Just wondering...

Schuhart

Chris_533976 wrote:

But if 2+1s were built and interurban DCs scrapped, would you REALLY trust the government to spend the cash responsibly in public transport??

The old 'we'd better let them spend the money unwisely on unneeded roads, in case they spend it unwisely on public transport' argument. If I was an asphalt supplier, I'd agree with you.

Transport21 Fan

lukas wrote:

Can we clone him for a future train lobby group without becoming train spotters in the process? Just wondering...

The next train lobby will be a race of railway supporting supermen, with their bodies specially altered with chemicals and implants harvested from Anglo-Irish aristocrats. They will have nothing else in their lives except train lobbying. Their trousers will be engineered to make the fly permanently half-opened, the baked beans on their anoraks will always look 6 weeks old - not a day more, not a day less...and they shall scatter rose petals from Rosslare to Limerick singing their railway lobbying songs while HGV drivers step down from their cabs and beg them for forgiveness.

and there will be social justice and Craven consists for all.

dowlingm

The attractive thing about light rail in Galway could be a link to the airport and on to Tuam (using a diesel-electric vehicle like RegioCitadis) on a more direct route than via Athenry. The problem is how you access the core given the narrow approaches into central Galway.

dodgyme - if you want to know about me, look up the conflicts of interest thread (not sure why it's closed - Victor?). Read my previous post again and try and figure out what you got wrong in your hysterical response.

Slice

But if 2+1s were built and interurban DCs scrapped, would you REALLY trust the government to spend the cash responsibly in public transport??

Does anyone trust government enough to do this? I don't. When we don't apply the same standards for investment in roads as we do to rail does it reduce these standards to nothing more than an excuse not to invest in rail at all? It's competing for the same allocation of funds that goes towards the Department of Transport and as such it matters! So many of the discussions on this forum about rail is about the viability of rail and even the viability of one railway project against another but no one (not so much on this forum but more in the greater public debate) ever questions how investment in road may hinder investment in public transport.

Slice

not sure why it's closed - Victor?

Yes, I never had an opportunity to add a comment to this thread

dowlingm

Slice

ideally the process would be an identification of a transport corridor first, then an Environmental Assessment which could look at what flows are available (bulk freight, people, intermodal, combo) and then what modes are appropriate (heavy rail, light rail, light rail incl. cargo trams, road, a combo alignment) and contract with NRA, RPA, IE to construct them.

It seems to me that NRA can just build roads without any alternative being considered - but sometimes a road will be the right call.

As for how you get government to build more rail - ask RPA how LUAS got so popular - with demands for extensions from voters - and try and figure out how to make rail equally so.

bk

Slice wrote:

Obviously it can be argued that motorways are necessary to connect major urban centres such as Dublin-Cork or Dublin-Belfast but was it ever considered that the additional cost incurred by building a motorway over 2+1 could be directed to upgrade existing regional and local roads and so discourage commuter journeys on national routes?

I believe that the argument was that building Motorway instead of 2+1 was only slightly more expensive and that for a change the government would actually build with future increases in capacity in mind.

Also I believe there were some serious questions about the suitability of 2+1. The 2+1 trial project in Cork has worked ok, but not great and has had some problems (people speeding up and trying to merge at the last minute at the end of 2 sections, etc.).

Plus the original plan was based on lower traffic volumes, before the celtic tiger kicked in and so many people bought cars and the population of Ireland jumped by half a million. It is questionable if 2+1 would still be suitable on many of the inter-urban roads.

To be honest it was always a bit of a cheap, typically Irish solution to building proper infrastructure.

Chris_533976

bk wrote:

Also I believe there were some serious questions about the suitability of 2+1. The 2+1 trial project in Cork has worked ok, but not great and has had some problems (people speeding up and trying to merge at the last minute at the end of 2 sections, etc.).

I hate that bit of road. Median crossings, no hard shoulder etc. It jams up to ribbons in rush hour at the end of each '2' section, and when its not jammed up, people are acting the maggot at the end of the '2' section by trying to overtake.

2+1 is utterly unsuitable for interurbans, proper motorways are the only way to go and I'm glad theres been a bit of future proofing done for a change, especially with the N/M9.

OTK

Something in The Tribune on the weekend about the RPA's view of light rail in regional towns/cities:
http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=Tribune/Business/Business%20Week&id=68368&SUBCAT=Tribune/Business

dowlingm

the problem with 2+1 as on the Cork-Mallow road is that the left lane was marked the "slow" lane rather than the right being marked the "passing" lane. Nobody would move into the left lane to allow traffic to pass. Instead the 1 lane should have continued as the left lane, splitting to the RIGHT so the driver staying in his lane was correctly keeping to the left.

Chris_533976

The biggest problem with that 2+1 is that it should not be there. Back in the '80s the plan was for Cork - Limerick DC, and almost 30 years later, DC is only still in planning, albeit advance planning. Some funds have been given to plan the remaining sections.