Western Rail Corridor (all disused sections)

islanddoc

well all very good but this is still only about 12-14 passengers per train between Ennis and Athenry. Frankly in these times I prefer my tax to be spent on sustainable projects. And am sure Leo the great agrees

mgmt

53,187!

Dublin Bikes achieves that figure in a bit over a week. Tarmac the railway line and put in cafes and bike hire bays in the train stations.

corktina

i hope its clear to any casual reader that ...

the new section of the WRC carried 53000 passengers in its first year, which figure includes all the novelty first timers who will in all probability never ride again..

this 53000 is only just over HALF the projected figure..

this equates to about 14 passengers per train..

and that this cost US €106 million

LXFlyer

I will keep my comment on this restricted to the operations rather than getting into the politics.

A railway line will only ever be used if a meaningful timetable is put into effect.

I would have to say that it was very unlikely that many prospective commuters from south of Athenry would ever use the service to/from Galway with the original timetable.

A single evening train at 1725 was farcical, given that while most people start work at the same time, their finishing times often vary.

The new timetable with trains at 1730 and 1830 is a major improvement and it will be interesting to see whether this has an impact on numbers.

The additional morning and evening service between Galway and Athenry using the WRC stock (when it was previously laying idle in Galway) is a sensible addition to the timetable.

The significantly improved connections at Athenry for people travelling towards Dublin in the morning and returning in the afternoon may also have some positive impact.

There still remains however much work to do in terms of getting the line speed raised through the elimination of accomodation crossings, and better connections at the southern end at Limerick Junction.

corktina

TO Limerick Junc I assume you mean?

LXFlyer

corktina wrote: »

TO Limerick Junc I assume you mean?

Absolutely. In terms of service the line needs to maximise connections at either end - at a minimum most trains should be operating Limerick Junction-Galway, but to be honest they ought to be Waterford-Galway.

But for that to happen the Cork line needs to get the work completed that eliminates the multitude of temporary speed restrictions on it so that the time differential between Dublin-Cork and Cork-Dublin trains serving Limerick Junction is significantly reduced - it can be up to 20 minutes.

westtip

lxflyer wrote: »

Absolutely. In terms of service the line needs to maximise connections at either end - at a minimum most trains should be operating Limerick Junction-Galway, but to be honest they ought to be Waterford-Galway.

But for that to happen the Cork line needs to get the work completed that eliminates the multitude of temporary speed restrictions on it so that the time differential between Dublin-Cork and Cork-Dublin trains serving Limerick Junction is significantly reduced - it can be up to 20 minutes.

And I guess to maximise connectivity at each end of this white elephant - we should also extend the corridor to Tuam and Claremorris and onto Collooney and Sligo and build a line to Letterkenny. Islanddoc and many others including those of us in the west don't want to see another cent wasted on this line, and Leo V will see to it that no more money is wasted on this vanity project. As for all the talk about commuters south of Athenry having suitable trains to catch and a meaningful timetable - you don't provide commuter services to cater for a couple of handfuls of people from Gort. Commuter lines are about moving lots of people in and out of big cities not cross country trains dropping a few people off hither and tither at every halting site that used to exist to pick up the churns of milk and odd few cattle over a hundred years ago. The time for this fantasy project to be guillotined has arrived.

corktina wrote: »

i hope its clear to any casual reader that ...

the new section of the WRC carried 53000 passengers in its first year, which figure includes all the novelty first timers who will in all probability never ride again..

this 53000 is only just over HALF the projected figure..

this equates to about 14 passengers per train..

and that this cost US €106 million

Corky you are actually been over generous - it was 53000 passengers from March 30th 2010 - 24th April 2011- a period of of 56 weeks not 52, and the 53,000 included the first bumper month of 7,000 passengers. The actual annual figure is coming in at about 50,000 passengers - half of the numbers the business case was built on - yes we can expect a dip because of the recession - but has there been a halving of passengers on any other line because of the recession - no. The business plan was wrong it was scam it was written to appease west on track and now we tax payers have to now listen to its all the fault of the scheduling. My god I am really beginning to feel sorry for Irish Rail! Its clearly all their fault that no-one used this white elephant - its all to do with Irish rail not running trains at the times the marauding throngs of commuters to Gort and Ardrahan needed them. What a load of boll**x OK so lets lay down the marker here and now on June 10th 2011, with the improved services the promotional fares, the scam publicity from West on Track - what is an acceptable improvement in numbers going to be for this time next year? 60,000 passengers, 70,000 passengers - how about 90,000 or even hitting the business plan numbers. Corky don't worry the failure of this project has killed off any further waste north of Athenry, the trouble is it has probably killed off a lot more much needed work on the network on much more needy projects.

Oh and by the way Corky its not just the 106 million capital cost we have to bear - its the ongoing bloody subvention of what is it 2.5 million = divided by 50,000 which for those of you not to good at maths is a nice crisp 50 euro note per journey - per journey! - my god if I was a commuter on the route I would write and ask Leo V to pay me 80 euro a day not to use the service to save the department 20 euro a day, and then we have people coming on saying this is a vital piece of infrastructure for the west, please save me from this lunatic asylum will you - (BTW could someone confirm the exact subvention - I can feel a letter to Madam Editor coming on.....)

mgmt

westtip wrote: »

Oh and by the way Corky its not just the 106 million capital cost we have to bear - its the ongoing bloody subvention of what is it 2.5 million = divided by 50,000 which for those of you not to good at maths is a nice crisp 50 euro note per journey - per journey - my god if I was a commuter on the route I would write and ask Leo to pay me 80 euro a day not to use the service to save the department 20 euro a day, and then we have people coming on saying this is a vital piece of infrastructure for the west, please save me from this idiocy - (BTW could someone confirm the exact subvention - I can feel a letter to Madam Editor coming on.....)

Surely the subvention is greater then 2.5million? The business case says that passenger numbers of 200,000 gives revenue of €1m. So 50,000 gives a revenue of €0.25m. Operating cost given as €3m in year 1. So a shortfall of €2.75m. (55euro per passenger).

Goodbody Business Case:
http://www.transport21.ie/Publications/upload/File/Reintro%20Ennis%20to%20Athenry.pdf

LXFlyer

westtip wrote: »

And I guess to maximise connectivity at each end of this white elephant - we should also extend the corridor to Tuam and Claremorris and onto Collooney and Sligo and build a line to Letterkenny. Islanddoc and many others including those of us in the west don't want to see another cent wasted on this line, and Leo V will see to it that no more money is wasted on this vanity project. As for all the talk about commuters south of Athenry having suitable trains to catch and a meaningful timetable - you don't provide commuter services to cater for a couple of handfuls of people from Gort. Commuter lines are about moving lots of people in and out of big cities not cross country trains dropping a few people off hither and tither at every halting site that used to exist to pick up the churns of milk and odd few cattle over a hundred years ago. The time for this fantasy project to be guillotined has arrived.

With respect I am purely making my comments on the railway line that is operational, and focussing on the operations that the railway company put in place. I am not getting involved into discussions about reopening other lines or agendas between various organisations.

Not unlike many other lines in this country the timetable that was put into use a year ago on the WRC fell way short of what it could be.

Whatever you may say, a poorly constructed timetable will have a serious impact on numbers. And the timetable was poorly developed, and to an extent still is. The lack of meaningful connections at Athenry and Limerick, a final departure from both cities that was far too early, and an all too great number of temporary speed restrictions was never going to deliver huge numbers.

The railway company has to take some of the blame for this - they failed (not for the first time) to use their imagination and develop a timetable that potentially would deliver more customers. The new timetable is an improvement with the services outlined above, but still fails to deliver on potential connections to Cork and Waterford, something I believe that this line has to do.

westtip

mgmt wrote: »

Surely the subvention is greater then 2.5million? The business case says that passenger numbers of 200,000 gives revenue of €1m. So 50,000 gives a revenue of €0.25m. Operating cost given as €3m in year 1. So a shortfall of €2.75m. (55euro per passenger).

Goodbody Business Case:
http://www.transport21.ie/Publications/upload/File/Reintro%20Ennis%20to%20Athenry.pdf

MGMT I know the more I look at this in detail the more I see others post on it the more I realise we are actually coming out of a dark period of irish history in which the foolishness of the fools who governed us was beyond the comprehension of most intelligent people to comprehend.

mgmt

lxflyer wrote: »

Whatever you may say, a poorly constructed timetable will have a serious impact on numbers. And the timetable was poorly developed, and to an extent still is. The lack of meaningful connections at Athenry and Limerick, a final departure from both cities that was far too early, and an all too great number of temporary speed restrictions was never going to deliver huge numbers.

The railway company has to take some of the blame for this - they failed (not for the first time) to use their imagination and develop a timetable that potentially would deliver more customers. .

What is the opportunity cost of adding new slots on the WRC? Especially at peak hour.

LXFlyer

mgmt wrote: »

What is the opportunity cost of adding new slots on the WRC? Especially at peak hour.

Well in the new timetable they've added two Galway/Athenry moves using sets and drivers that would otherwise be idle in Galway Station, and a Galway/Ennis return service in the evening to which the same applies.

So basically the additional cost is the fuel.

I am not talking about adding more trains than the new timetable - I am talking about scheduling the existing trains in a manner that allows people have the choice of travelling to/from south of Limerick.

At the moment, out of the five northbound services that have a connection from the south, the wait time at Limerick is 20 minutes, 40 minutes, 5 minutes, 60 minutes and 20 minutes respectively. Southbound the wait time at Limerick for the five services with advertised connections is 25 minutes, 17 minutes, 48 minutes, 31 minutes and 43 minutes.

To my mind, 15 minutes would have to be the maximum wait time. The schedule needs to be developed with the network in mind and not just in isolation.

Aidan1

Goodbody Business Case

That's not the business case, it's an independent audit of the business case. It should be noted (I've pointed this out in another post also) that this actually suggests that the IE business case projections (originally done by Faber Maunsell in 04) might be on the low side - "may prove to be somewhat underestimated". It also criticises the patronage growth rates as 'pessimistic'. It's also interesting to note the origins of the 'audit' - from memory it was requested by WOT on the basis that the original assessment was 'wrong', and overstated the capital cost and understated the likely ridership/revenue.

Once again, it is clear that the opposition to this project from within IE and the Dept was entirely justified, and that the original analysis (conducted before a lot of the road improvements) was much closer to reality.

That said, the capital costs are sunk - it's worth a shot re-configuring the services and trying to operate it on a more commuter friendly basis. If that means cutting mid day services (which having to be running empty going by the figures), then so much spared.

I've worked out the cost per passenger over the lifetime of the project already - at some stage I must work out the GHG emissions associated with each journey ...

mgmt

Aidan1 wrote: »

That's not the business case, it's an independent audit of the business case. It should be noted (I've pointed this out in another post also) that this actually suggests that the IE business case projections (originally done by Faber Maunsell in 04) might be on the low side - "may prove to be somewhat underestimated". It also criticises the patronage growth rates as 'pessimistic'. It's also interesting to note the origins of the 'audit' - from memory it was requested by WOT on the basis that the original assessment was 'wrong', and overstated the capital cost and understated the likely ridership/revenue.

from the tweet machine

Constantin Gurdgiev

@alicecharles @thenext50k You kidding, right? Impact assessment in IRL? Western Rail corridor took 3 reports rejecting its feasibility until the 4th one - produced by an outfit that did one of the previous 3 reports - finally showed what the Gov wanted (even there - the most optimistic case)
http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/GTCost/~BWvG5

Aidan1

As ever, Mr Gurdgiev is being slightly unfair, both in the specific and in the general. There are often a series of impact assessments and CBAs done for capital projects - the fact that they tend not to conform to his own political views is probably equally as pertinent.

In this case, it looks like officialdom did a series of analyses, and fought this every step of the way, but were eventually overturned by the political process as the 2007 General Election loomed. And, to be fair, that is what is supposed to happen - this is a democracy; one of the inevitable outcomes of this is that priorities are chosen on the basis of politics rather than optimising a return on public expenditure. In this case, the Govt ultimately felt it had to "do something for the Wesht", primarily because of the perceived lack of capital projects in the region.

Judgement Day

Does Mr Gurdgiev even know where the WRC is? Another bloody cossetted academic expert on everything. He's on Tonight with Vincent Browne so often I'm surprised he has time to think about the WRC or much else for that matter.

eejoynt

JD he is not an academic although he is described as being associated from trinity
however when i last looked at the faculty pages in the TCD departments of economics or business in TCD i could find no trace of him

mgmt

eejoynt wrote: »

JD he is not an academic although he is described as being associated from trinity
however when i last looked at the faculty pages in the TCD departments of economics or business in TCD i could find no trace of him

..

Constantin Gurdgiev
Dr Constantin Gurdgiev was born in Moscow in 1970. He is the
Editor of Business&Finance, Ireland’s largest business publication,
a Lecturer in Economics at University College Dublin and a Research
Associate at the Institute for International Integration Studies, Trinity
College, Dublin. He is also a Founder and Academic Director of the
Open Republic Institute—www.openrepublic.org—Ireland’s only
independent economic and social policy think-tank, for whom he edits
the quarterly Open Republic magazine and co-edits the weekly Policy
Watch newsletter. He is a Member of the Academy of Political Science, the
American Economic Association and the American Finance
Association. Dr. Gurdgiev holds a PhD in Macroeconomics and
Finance from Trinity College, Dublin, an MA in Economics from
Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Pure Mathematics from
the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining University
College Dublin, Dr. Gurdgiev taught economics and mathematics at
Trinity College, Dublin and Johns Hopkins University

Chief Economist
Irish Exporters Association
Research industry
2009 – 2011 (2 years)
http://ie.linkedin.com/pub/constantin-gurdgiev/7/3a3/39

He's not a dud.

eejoynt

"a Lecturer in Economics at University College Dublin"

strange
I just searched the UCD website and found no mention of Dr Gudgiev in the staff of either the business and economic faculities.

Curiouser and curioser

westtip

mgmt wrote: »

..


He's not a dud.

Unlike others who advocated this nonsense (WRC) and still do so....

CIE

westtip wrote: »

Unlike others who advocated this nonsense (WRC) and still do so....

Once that road freight (i.e. lorry) tax from the EU comes, lots more advocates for the WRC will suddenly appear. They might even advocate for the railways that connected Sligo with Belfast, who knows...

corktina

fairly predictable clutching at straws there !

L1011

CIE wrote: »

Once that road freight (i.e. lorry) tax from the EU comes, lots more advocates for the WRC will suddenly appear. They might even advocate for the railways that connected Sligo with Belfast, who knows...

Rail freight isn't going to happen unless Irish Rail are removed from control of the network.

Shannon-Foynes PC and Stobart have both attempted to get the rail line to Foynes reopened at their own cost, IE have stood in the way; and so on.

mgmt

MYOB wrote: »

Rail freight isn't going to happen unless Irish Rail are removed from control of the network.

Shannon-Foynes PC and Stobart have both attempted to get the rail line to Foynes reopened at their own cost, IE have stood in the way; and so on.

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport (Deputy Leo Varadkar):

Following my visit to Shannon Foynes Port, I wrote to Irish Rail to ask it to consider the re-opening of the line to freight. Obviously, given the precarious financial position of the State and the need to reduce the transport budget by several hundred million euro over the next two to three years, it can only be considered on the basis that it would cover its annual operating costs
http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2011/05/17/00390.asp

stop

eejoynt wrote: »

"a Lecturer in Economics at University College Dublin"

strange
I just searched the UCD website and found no mention of Dr Gudgiev in the staff of either the business and economic faculities.

Curiouser and curioser

Seems to be a member of staff at Trinity

westtip

mgmt wrote: »

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport (Deputy Leo Varadkar) http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2011/05/17/00390.asp):

What was really interesting in terms of the WRC and what has come to light in the past few days about numbers and cost per passenger on subvention on this thread -is what he actually said - now read this carefully then ask - is the writing on the wall for WRC norther branch line:

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport (Deputy Leo Varadkar): As Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport I have responsibility for policy and overall funding in relation to public transport. In relation to policy on this issue the Government has announced the preparation of a new capital investment framework for the period from 2012. This will be overseen by my colleague Deputy Brendan Howlin, Minister with responsibility for public expenditure and reform. The review will examine capital proposals across all sectors of the economy to establish a set of priority projects and programmes that will provide value for money for the tax payer, offer employment opportunities and provide a growth stimulus to the economy. This will be published as a new national development plan for the period 2012-2016. The preparation of the new framework requires that my Department review all existing projects and programmes. This will focus on the cost and benefits, the contribution to overall economic objectives as well as the employment creation potential, the key criteria will be affordability. The key criterion will be affordability. The review which will involve consultation with relevant agencies will of course also need to take account of new funding realities. A major priority will be to ensure funding to protect and maintain existing investment and maintain high safety standards. This of necessity will restrict the funding for new projects with only those offering the highest return having any chance of being prioritised.

Greenway versus Railway - I think I know which will cost less which will give greater value for the tax payer and what will contribut to the west of Ireland economy in a far greater way.... The writing now is truly on the wall, its my emboldening but that last sentenced has to be the death knell for the norther branch line.

corktina

and probably for a Greenway too.... RUST IN PEACE WRC for anothe 20 years methinks

mgmt

I like this bit of the debate:

Deputy Dessie Ellis:
I am reminded of the €40 million the Minister said he had got from some of the projects. The western rail corridor is a vital area of our infrastructure. The Minister has said he will review it in the plan for 2012 to 2016. It is vital for our tourism to put in such important rail links which that area does not have. The Minister seems to have indicated that it will go down the road a good distance, but I urge that it be looked at very seriously as soon as possible.

Deputy Leo Varadkar:
I can assure the Deputy that we are looking at it and needless to say it would cost considerably more than €40 million to complete the next phase.
http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2011/06/01/00027.asp

The left wing sure have a fascination about rail. Leo is still up to date on his brief.

eejoynt

"Seems to be a member of staff at Trinity"

the link refers to 2004. his bios, seven years later still claim it
I wonder why?

mgmt

eejoynt wrote: »

"Seems to be a member of staff at Trinity"

the link refers to 2004. his bios, seven years later still claim it
I wonder why?

Lecturer in Economics
Trinity College Dublin
Educational Institution; Research industry
2000 – 2006 (6 years)

Adjunct Lecturer in Finance
Trinity College, Dublin
Educational Institution; Research industry
August 2008 – Present (2 years 11 months)

http://ie.linkedin.com/pub/constantin-gurdgiev/7/3a3/39

Satisfied?