Navan Rail Line

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965481#Comment_123965481

Transport oriented development.

This will happen anyway.

Property developers love railways. Adds value.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965373#Comment_123965373

Swords is bigger but to be fair it's getting a Metro hopefully.

Glaceon

As long as the powers that be continue with pushing people further out from Dublin, transport links from what are now commuter towns will need to be considered. That's the cost of having such policies with regard to Dublin.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965504#Comment_123965504

Building a new town on fields with no population or even an existing village for miles goes against literally every piece of local, national and EU planning policy. It can't happen without an about-face on planning policies at all levels.

It has got nothing to do with property developers, it wouldn't be them spending the fortune needed to get the necessary infrastructure in place.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965558#Comment_123965558

For God's sake.

We're doing that right now in Clonburris, Adamstown, Cherrywood.

There's a new town planned around the new Water Rock station in Cork.

All these are built around railway stations or the Luas.

It's extremely common.

Obviously it has to be in the right areas.

gjim

Navan will likely struggle in terms of CBA - it’s a lot of expensive infrastructure to carry 2 trains/hour per direction peak.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965671#Comment_123965671

Same as Tuam and Claremorris.

Rail's expensive so if the population isn't there, it's a waste of money.

spark23

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965699#Comment_123965699

I have no doubt if the route is thought of as it should be thought of as more than just passengers it will succeed, ie navan route taking ore trains away from busy east coast. Navan, Dunshaughlin are very busy commuter towns. Ideally Trim would be included at last census over 9000 population in line with AIRR vision of areas with population of 10000 suited to rail connection.

spark23

I have no doubt again Tuam/Claremorris link will pass if thought of in right mindset, passengers services plus removing freight conflicts from busy midlands links for commuters even according to Irish Rail youtube video, freight has surprised them with its increase.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965578#Comment_123965578

You mean places on the edge of existing large urban areas with an existing operational train line passing by? So nothing like these fields in Meath then...

goingnowhere

Tuam Claremorris will struggle also. Freight out of Ballina and Westport is going to Dublin or Waterford and that works today so there is not business case benefit

We need to stop the romanticism around railways and focus on high impact projects, twin track Athenry Galway would be a winner

Navan Drogheda, I'd watch that

MayoSalmon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123964955#Comment_123964955

Its literally the opposite lol...Navan has a parallel severely under capacity motorway. Train times will be double a car journey no matter the time of day.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966292#Comment_123966292

Under capacity until Blanchardstown, where it hits a crawling backlog on to the crawling M50 and crawling city.

LXFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966292#Comment_123966292

How are you arriving at that precise conclusion on timings?

Where are you measuring it from and to?

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966292#Comment_123966292

You're not serious with this. A peak hour trip from Navan to Central Dublin by car is easily 90 minutes. Navan to Connolly will be around a hour.

cgcsb

I don't get the point of the Athenry to Claremorris link or rather why it's such a priority. The projects that would really boost rail in the west of Ireland are:

1. Double tracking Portarlington to Athlone
2. Double tracking Athenry to Galway and
3. Electrifying and improving line speed.
4. Improving Limerick to Athenry as much as possible to provide competitive journey times.

CatInABox

The Cost Benefit Analysis talk seems to miss out on the fact that there has already been a CBA on this route. They looked at using the existing route, and using a new route that moves closer to Dunshaughlin. It came out with a BCR of about .7 to .8, which is clearly not great.

On the flipside of that, there's a couple of factors that'd move this very easily into positive territory. The CBA had no input from the environmental fines that we're about to suck down, and it also had no input from the fact that we're going through a historic housing crisis (the overall conclusion in the report includes land use, but not in the CBA, something that I think would change today). Cut our emissions while also unlocking loads of land for housing? Yes, that'd definitely pass any kind of CBA, never mind a political CBA.

On the motorway utilisation, it's definitely under utilised, to the point that traffic on the old n3 roads is actually increasing. The thing I would highlight on this is the fact that most people on the M3 aren't trying to get to Blanchardstown, they're trying to get to the city centre, or points within the M50. Once you hit Blanch, timings go out the window, and what was a fast drive can easily, and very unpredictably, turn into an hours long slog. A train avoids all of that.

gjim

The M3 Parkway has fairly low daily boarding numbers (561 according to the 2024 rail census) given the 25 or so daily departures. You’d imagine transferring to train here would be an attractive option for those who would potentially use the train from Navan? Maybe there’s a reason it isn’t so popular?

You’ll need a hell of a lot more passengers willing to board at Navan but who do not at Pace to justify a spend of €1B or anything like it. Say the Navan train station attracts an extra 1000 passengers daily - then the CBA needs to justify that’s a capital spend of about €1m per passenger. Maybe it’s 5 times that (I seriously doubt it) but these numbers give an idea of the scale of the challenge for a successful CBA. And that’s ignoring operating/maintenance costs.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966391#Comment_123966391

The land is already unlocked.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966669#Comment_123966669

It's after the toll from Navan, so there's a psychological element of "I've paid for the road, so I'm going to keep driving" even though the road from there in has never been tolled.

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966390#Comment_123966390

Exactly.

The projects to focus on are intercity and commuter rail with high potential ridership.

There's probably 10+ projects that are more beneficial than WRC and Navan.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966777#Comment_123966777

Navan has much higher potential ridership than nearly every intercity project.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966736#Comment_123966736

Have a look at the densities that are allowed beside a Bus Eireann bus route, and a rail service. Huge differences, because rail has a far higher capacity.

They looked at it in the report I mentioned, one of the options was an expanded, express bus service. It was marked as Neutral/No Impact for land use.

spacetweek

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123964755#Comment_123964755

Navan is right in the sweet spot for a rail connection:

Large enough town

Near large city

Lot of travel demand between them (because we felt we needed to build the M3 20 years ago)

Close enough that commuter rail makes sense but not too far away that the rail journey time is too long

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966669#Comment_123966669

A park and ride after a toll was never going to get much patronage from navan

cgcsb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966777#Comment_123966777

Navan would be totally different league to WRC in terms of user numbers

orangerhyme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123967300#Comment_123967300

I still think spending up to a billion on railway to one big town is too much.

I bet the numbers don't stack up.

If there was 3 big towns on the line, it might.

DrivingSouth

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123966669#Comment_123966669

I've no idea how to do A CBA but surely it should be measured against passenger journeys over the lifetime of the infrastructure, not just in one day.

Also we should consider the infrastructure between dunboyne and Clonsilla and Clonsilla and town. The extension to Navan will help get the most value from what we have already invested and will invest as part of dart plus. And will add further weight to the justification of the intercity extension between Maynooth and Adamstown.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123967499#Comment_123967499

One day passenger figures are whats typically preferred as commuting is the life blood of these lines. If a station has 1000 alighting at it, it would tend to be the same 1000, every day. So the value prop is giving 1000 people a careers worth of commuting by rail, or 1 million euro a head.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123965699#Comment_123965699

actually it's not that expensive in reality.

not only is it cheaper then road even at the higher end of the costs, but the capacity even if limited goes a lot further, and can last way way longer, without needing multiplication.