Culturally Speaking - Regional Rail Has No Future In Ireland.

FlameoftheWest

Communting to the cities does.

But Irish people (being one myself) are not the type of people who take a train from Cahir to Wellington Bridge. WILL NEVER HAPPEN. You could put the best timetable in the world out there and it would still be ignored.

You see this lack of interest in regional railways from Mayo to Wexford. You see more people get around by tractor than by train outside the main urban centres.

They get all flustered when closure if on the cards. They kick up a storm and then go back to ignoring the rail service they all claimed would murder their grandad if it closed.

When the line from Sligo to Galway was under the same threat as Wex-Waterford is now, they had up to 5,000 people show up at rallies at places such as Charlestown claiming that without freight the town would die. Irish Rail kept the freight trains going and still no extra customers. The same thing had happened with the passenger service between Sligo and Galway in the 1960's They all claimed they would use it when the new railcar came on stream, and they all ignored it.

This is never going to change. Rail communting yes, that's a huge future. Bring it on. Inter-City unless CIE rebuild the Dublin-Cork-Belfast IC line, is dead. It is already dead if we are honest about it.

But this idea of Mary and Paddar getting on a train at Castleconnell to do shopping in Nenagh is not the Irish way. Never was and never will be.

Some of you on this board need to be really honest and not be selective of bits of history here and there to suit your arguments. There are two sides to this story and as much as we all hate CIE they are not completely lying about this lack of regional rail patronage.

Look, I hate CIE like all normal people, but we have to come to the conclusion that unless there is a gigantic shift in the Irish transport psychology then forget about improving services on this regional line or that one. They will be ignored because they are surplus to the society they serve in 2010.

Sad but true. The WRC is going to be the engineered virus which will take out the rest of the regional lines and the more I think about it, this is maybe the reason this turkey got reopened and funding. It is failure-proofed to be the final nail in coffin of all the other lines and West-on-Track and the trainspotter folks played right into a trap set for them by the road lobby in Kildare Street.


Think about it! Look at the news reports about closing this and that during the opening of the WRC. This is all planned.

mk6705

This is not the conspiracy theory forum. The WRC probably won't be a huge success, yes. But saying that people will never use rail in day to day life outside Dublin is fairly naive. Transportation habits do change, if the service it better, it will be used. It may take a few years but it will. The Dublin to Cork line should be improved. It is too slow at the moment. People are still using it though. It will be improved in time, I don't doubt it. If you told people 30 years ago there would be a motorway from Dublin to Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford, I don't think they would all know what a motorway is.
If you too look back on infrastructure in 30 years, you too will likely be surprised. Trains have stood the test of almost 200 years, and have survived the advent of much faster road and air transport. Rail in Ireland is by no means dead. Improvements are always welcome but it would be stupid to start closing all our intercity lines. They are used, and will still be used for many years. It's hard to see change over a short period of time, but improvements are slowly happening.

ardmacha

It is easy to say that people won't use the train even if there is a good timetable. But surely a good timetable should be tried, and other measures, before writing things off.

The entire Rosslare-Limerick-Galway line should be privatised to a lightweight operation that has a real incentive to try and drum up business on its franchise.

Zoney

Anyone who needs to take a bus, but can afford the extra cost of the train, will take the train. This assertion is not meant to suggest that there isn't a very real crisis due to poor intercity times, but nevertheless there is absolutely a future for intercity rail travel. Under normal circumstances (no disruption, reasonably punctual) taking the train even beats travelling by car hands down for comfort and a relaxing journey, with the potential to do work as well.

Personally I expect the situation to get worse before it improves, but it's simply a non-runner to ditch intercity rail travel altogether. Once the country's fortunes improve somewhat and passenger numbers have dropped further due to the poor journey times, we will see investment on particularly the Dublin-Cork line (will have benefits for all southern routes) and at some stage Dublin-Belfast (already singled out as being a particularly atrocious international service amongst EU countries - not something that can be ignored forever). The OP even states "Inter-City unless CIE rebuild the Dublin-Cork-Belfast IC line, is dead". Well, as far as I am concerned, that may in a sense be true, but it is inconceivable for that not to happen in the medium term.

I will admit that in the short to medium term, it seems suspended animation is the best we are likely to see for Limerick-Waterford. Commerce along that route is poor in general due to the poor road infrastructure as well. However, I would expect Waterford to be boosted as an economic hub by the new M9 (again, existing road probably actually depressed commerce). This should eventually result in a demand for rail services to/from Waterford. Other towns on the railway line may also be boosted by for example the M8.

Contrary to the M18 being a threat to the WRC, I think it too is likely to facilitate Galway-Ennis-Limerick (and Galway-Cork) commerce and as such this will mean more people who may need at some point to use public transport. While the bus may be comparable journey time, again my point stands that anyone who can afford to take the train, will. Who in their right mind wants to be crammed into a bus? Even the austere commuter railway carriages are less degrading.

dowlingm

IE provides Intercity, commuter, freight, regional and network within the same structure but doesn't seem able to walk and chew gum at the same time - expansion of one tends to come at the cost of another, rather than for its own basis. We have no idea how much it costs to run regional rail really, because IE is not transparent about its finances and operations. We now see IE scrapping Mark 3s and 181s and possibly flogging 201s to Israel but we have no access to the internal documentation which justifies this - we can only go on the few connected people who post here and IRN and RUI who do the best they can to provide some background.

By contrast, here in Toronto both the local transit operator and the regional transit operator post staff reports and service planning documents (example - PDF) which go to the Board/Commission which meets in public session. While every operational detail is not published, and obviously some things are held confidential, it would be impossible for a service to be wholly discontinued without public justification (i.e. more than the Information Minister giving one of his friends in the press a call).

Look at the discussion during the week about Limerick-Galway. Would any part of the country put up with even the smallest rural road being made alternate one-way with stop lights for 13 miles (Athenry-Galway) or 25 miles (Ennis-Limerick) without a single place to pass except during temporary road works, let alone a road heading into a city of tens of thousands? We know that some time in the next 12-24 months, the line will close due flooding (although at least this time there's a chance a set trapped in Ennis will get out the back way - unless that bit floods too like last winter). Would that be accepted of the N18? Why are we pretending rail can compete when we listen to those who cry "build it on the cheap and 'twill be grand"! Why are we worrying about giving vouchers to pensioners to fill the trains when people can't get the train to GMIT?

corktina

ardmacha wrote: »

It is easy to say that people won't use the train even if there is a good timetable. But surely a good timetable should be tried, and other measures, before writing things off.

The entire Rosslare-Limerick-Galway line should be privatised to a lightweight operation that has a real incentive to try and drum up business on its franchise.

##get Brian Soutter or Richard Branson to have a go...free use of the line and equipment for 5 years, see if they can make something of it.

dowlingm

Zoney wrote: »

Anyone who needs to take a bus, but can afford the extra cost of the train, will take the train.

Except if they need to leave Galway after 1730 (the last bus leaves at 2005)

FlameoftheWest

dowlingm wrote: »

Except if they need to leave Galway after 1730 (the last bus leaves at 2005)

Which brings up another reason I dispise CIE and everything it stands for. Why can't they supply Combo IE/BE commuter tickets at a special price so one could take the train in the morning and the bus home in the evening rather than being a prisioner of both timetables.

Makes so much sense.

FlameoftheWest

Adro947 wrote: »

Rail in Ireland is by no means dead.

Can you please point to were I made this statement? Rail in Ireland has a fantastic future - just not to places such as Cahir and Tuam. The bizarre situation of Oranmore having all kinds of trains serving it and anyone who had the idea to build a station there was either ignored or laughed off. What does that tell you about the mentality we are dealing with on all levels? The guy DW from the Platform group said that WoT gave him a cold "NO" when he asked them to consider a commuter service to Oranmore. Why? I'll tell you why? Because they are deluded gob****es so lost in their own narcisstic worldview and cheered on by a handful of trainspotters and alziemers casualties that they cannot see that real goals are created in steady successful steps and modules. Groups such as WoT are like a disease for rail development. They are living in the 1800's and have forgotten that the rest of the West of Ireland is in the 21st Century and need a 21 Century rail solution. Short haul commuting with reliable and workable timetables. Simple really, but alas...

Commuting on direct lines is the only future, not waiting for a driver to walk from one end of a rail car to the other at Athenry in the middle of the afternoon. The motorways and cheap flights are already slaughtering the IC network on like for like journeys.

Get real, the network outside Dublin and maybe Cork is dying on its feet and kept alive mainly by free travel passes.

This is not conspiricy theory - this is fact. Deal with it or the whole network will go down with the WestonTrack metality.

dowlingm

A station in Oranmore was part of the 2006 Business Case (transport21.ie). I wonder how many of the projected 100k new boardings were premised on that (and how many of those would have been from Dublin or Athlone services)

FlameoftheWest wrote: »

Which brings up another reason I dispise CIE and everything it stands for. Why can't they supply Combo IE/BE commuter tickets at a special price so one could take the train in the morning and the bus home in the evening rather than being a prisioner of both timetables.

So-called competition (Thanks, PDs!) The problem being that IE has a hand tied behind its back because it shares a holding company with expressway so operating competing buses is not on the table.

Example: Amtrak from Seattle, WA to Vancouver, BC operates partly as trains and partly as buses.

mk6705

FlameoftheWest wrote: »

Can you please p deluded gob****es so lost in their own narcisstic worldview and cheered on by a handful of trainspotters and alziemers casualties that they cannot see that real goals are created in steady successful steps and modules. Groups such as WoT are like a disease for rail development. They are living in the 1800's and have forgotten that the rest of the West of Ireland is in the 21st Century and need a 21 Century rail solution. Short haul commuting with reliable and workable timetables. Simple really, but alas...

Commuting on direct lines is the only future, not waiting for a driver to walk from one end of a rail car to the other at Athenry in the middle of the afternoon. The motorways and cheap flights are already slaughterin
Get real, the network outside Dublin and maybe Cork is dying on its feet and kept alive mainly by free travel passes.

This is not conspiricy theory - this is fact.

Rail is dead outside Dublin and Cork? No, it is not. People still travel by rail to Sligo, Westport, Galway, Limerick, Tralee and Waterford. It is focused on Dublin, but that is where most are going anyway. Just because a town lies along the line to any of these destinations, doesn't mean that people have to use the trains for local travel or that they are not viable. People in Cahir, Carrick-On-Siur, Tipperary, Clonmel etc. would use the train, mainly to get to Dublin via Limerick Junction or Waterford, but services on the line are infrequent and fairly slow. Rail can have a future there, but a few improvements are necessary

alentejo

I do think that the odds are stacked against regional rail at present. This is mainly due to the fact that the frequency is not customer friendly.

However, what i think might spur rail travel in future is the impending Oil crunch which is likely to happen before 2020 when alternative energy sources are very much going to come to the fore. Car travel as we know it will cost a hell of a lot more and public transport in all its forms will play a bigger part in moving us all from a to b. This is where rail transport should play its part.....wishful thinking on my part..maybe, but a county will a good rail infrastructure will be better poised to deal will an oil crunch!

Stonewolf

Unfortunately peak oil will hit CIE as hard as it will people in cars. The DART may be electric but we're heavily dependent on fossil fuel for our electricity, as for the rest of the network, IE seems to operate under the delusion that diesel is forever, one day they'll wake up and discover it's not, there'll be a crisis and we'll all still be here on boards pointing out how lots of foreign operators saw it coming and started doing something about it a decade previous.

I don't think rail is dead outside Dublin commute and the Cork-Dublin-Belfast corridor, it is however underdeveloped and poorly operated. Ireland has a very distributed population (a consequence of both history and the one off house craze) and therefore a heavy reliance on the car, we also have large areas with low population density (let's face it, Ireland isn't a populous place). Both of these combine to work against rail, if we just had low population density but good concentration in the various villages and towns rail would be much more viable, if we had the same concentration but higher density the towns themselves would be big enough to make rail more viable. As the country wakes up and starts to tackle the bungalow blitz we may see rail become more viable but what can we do in the meantime to fix matters?

1) Park and Ride
All stations should have a car park, you should be able to get a parking docket with your rail ticket (for a nominal fee probably) to display in your car. This would allow the distributed population to use their cars to travel a short distance to the railway thus creating a virtual concentration of the population. This approach is particularly effective where people know their destination will be congested (or indeed somewhere they dislike driving).
2) Better speeds on the trunk routes
Better speed on trunk routes means that regional services connect to a fast link into the destination thus making it more attractive
3) Better timetabling
This is very much a case where the much vaunted "Joined up thinking" needs to be applied. Regional services should be timed to connect to trunk services and if envisioned as potential commuter services timed to get people to the destination with time to spare to complete their journey to work and have services leave having given time for those people to get back to the station.
4) Better infrastructure
All the way down here because regional rail is never something the operator will want to spend bucket loads of money on but it is nevertheless important. The Nenagh line is a particularly good example of where poor infrastructure lets the service down.

baalthor

alentejo wrote: »

Car travel as we know it will cost a hell of a lot more ...

Most of the population couldn't afford cars until the 70s at least but the rural railways were losing money and passengers long before that.

dowlingm

Stonewolf wrote: »

Unfortunately peak oil will hit CIE as hard as it will people in cars. The DART may be electric but we're heavily dependent on fossil fuel for our electricity, as for the rest of the network, IE seems to operate under the delusion that diesel is forever, one day they'll wake up and discover it's not,

To be fair, DART Hazelhatch/DART Maynooth/Interconnector will massively increase the number passenger-journeys made by electric. The aim should be to expand that electric core progressively out from Dublin.

Unfortunately a bad call was made on the 22K order, which should have been split between diesel 22Ks for intercity and dual mode 1500V and diesel for Dundalk/Gorey/Mullingar/Portlaoise (similar to those Bombardier made for SNCF)

I don't worry quite as much about diesel supply, for which there are several non-fossil sources such as canola, algae, fish oil and so on if the money was put into developing them, whereas gasoline/petrol is not as easy to replace (and ethanol mixtures are downright counterproductive and lossy due to its polar nature and low energy density)

corktina

fish oil?...what bankrupt thinking is behind such a notion when half the world is starving ? (ditto for all "agri" solutions)

What is needed tecnology-wise are ways to reduce.nay, slash, the absurd amount of travelling we as a species do. Why do we always want to be somewhere else? (when the people THERE want to be where we are!) Rant over.

dowlingm

corktina wrote: »

fish oil?...what bankrupt thinking is behind such a notion when half the world is starving ?

It's actually being done at the moment in Nova Scotia as a byproduct of fish processing for omega 3 acids. No question of removing food from the market.

A proposal for Brazil involves fish waste.

corktina

dowlingm wrote: »

It's actually being done at the moment in Nova Scotia as a byproduct of fish processing for omega 3 acids. No question of removing food from the market.

A proposal for Brazil involves fish waste.

removing fish from the sea though.... as looney tunes an idea as fish meal used as fertiliser.Its wrong.

Cool Mo D

corktina wrote: »

fish oil?...what bankrupt thinking is behind such a notion when half the world is starving ? (ditto for all "agri" solutions)

What is needed tecnology-wise are ways to reduce.nay, slash, the absurd amount of travelling we as a species do. Why do we always want to be somewhere else? (when the people THERE want to be where we are!) Rant over.

The reason people are starving isn't because of food shortages. The world produces more than enough food to easily feed everyone.