What Positives Going Forward Can Be Done to Save Rail

OurLadyofKnock

Sack the entire management of CIE from regional level up. All across the board: clerical to administrative.

Separate the track and infrastructure from the services.

Remove all railfreight from Irish Rails hands including all the equiptment and offer it for free to a private shipper - one that presents the best business plan to develop the sector going forward.

Commuter rail services and Inter-City Services to be integrated into high-frequency/high-capacity routes were possible.

Non-stop Morning and Evening services on IC routes. All Arriving in Dublin and the Regional Cities/Towns before 8AM.

Flukey

It has already been scuppered by the capital budget cuts, but they should have a lot more lines. It is crazy when you look at the mainline map and see that massive gap between the Dublin/Belfast line and the Dublin/Sligo line. Some lines should be there for years now, and others should never have been closed, or at least re-opened by now. We had the crazy situation with the Luas Green line, where politicians were looking for credit for the delayed partial re-opening of a line that should never have been closed in the first place. We could revolutionise the country with more rail lines, but there has barely been a totally new line laid since independence, if any at all. We have the Red Luas line, but has there been any brand new inter-city or cross country lines laid? There have been lots closed, that's for sure.

Jehuty42

OurLadyofKnock wrote: »

Sack the entire management of CIE from regional level up. All across the board: clerical to administrative.

While that might work, I don't think such a radical operation has ever happened in any company of the size of CIE. Unions wouldn't let it happen. Adding to the Live Register seems like a bad idea too. There would be a loss of some expertise and in-company knowledge, so maybe some safety concerns there. There would be a loss of morale in the remaining staff. I know I wouldn't keep working for a company where that happened.

Something so radical will never happen. Maybe a "restructuring", an efficiency-increasing exercise and other such buzzwords would have a similiar effect.

OurLadyofKnock wrote: »

Separate the track and infrastructure from the services.

Good idea. Again, the company created from that move would essentially just be a mini-IE, since the only qualified staff would have to come from there, at least initially. It would just be the IE Permanent Way department under a different name, so just a balancing sheet trick, no?

OurLadyofKnock wrote: »

Remove all railfreight from Irish Rails hands including all the equiptment and offer it for free to a private shipper - one that presents the best business plan to develop the sector going forward.

I completely disagree with offering it for free. Also, I would want to see some commitment from the shippers themselves that they actually want to take on the cost of operating the service and would use it. I'm still not convinced there's much more than a small niche of companies who would use rail freight. We have precious little heavy industry, really all traffic on rails would be goods containers liners. Perhaps that is more suited to road, where it can get straight to the destination. Also, most industrial estates and distribution centres were not built near rail lines, so there would be a cost involved in sidings and branches.

OurLadyofKnock wrote: »

Commuter rail services and Inter-City Services to be integrated into high-frequency/high-capacity routes were possible.

I guess that makes sense. There's a limit on how much of that can be achieved on the huge swathes of single line in this country, though. It is my understanding that the network is already stretched to breaking point every single day on a majority of lines. The Sligo line at peak times is a great example, trains cross at every possible point along the way.There's not much that can be done without some strategic investment in double and quad tracking.

OurLadyofKnock wrote: »

Non-stop Morning and Evening services on IC routes. All Arriving in Dublin and the Regional Cities/Towns before 8AM.

I don't know what you envision here. Sligo-Dublin non stop? Not enough passengers just in Sligo for that to work. I fear it would be the same in many locations. A better and less radical suggestion would be to aggressively prune the number of stops, so that only locations that have shown they have demand above a certain threshold should get a service. And again, the single track, congested network does not lend itself well to express services.

OurLadyofKnock

Flukey wrote: »

It has already been scuppered by the capital budget cuts, but they should have a lot more lines. It is crazy when you look at the mainline map and see that massive gap between the Dublin/Belfast line and the Dublin/Sligo line. Some lines should be there for years now, and others should never have been closed, or at least re-opened by now. We had the crazy situation with the Luas Green line, where politicians were looking for credit for the delayed partial re-opening of a line that should never have been closed in the first place. We could revolutionise the country with more rail lines, but there has barely been a totally new line laid since independence, if any at all. We have the Red Luas line, but has there been any brand new inter-city or cross country lines laid? There have been lots closed, that's for sure.

That is not what this thead is about. We have 10 years of crayonism when the money was there and all we got was more crayons.

This thread is about the future form this point on to save the rail network so it is relevant to the frugral Irish society and economy of the future.

This is about gettting value for money - not wasting it. I think we can all agree that Irish Rail is a hopeless case if it continues as is and they will destroy what lines we have left.

n97 mini

Gonna put the cat in amongst the pigeons here.

It has often been said that the union tail wags the management dog in CIE.

So... how about management do a Ryanair on it and refuse to recognise the unions going forward?

Del2005

Flukey wrote: »

It has already been scuppered by the capital budget cuts, but they should have a lot more lines. It is crazy when you look at the mainline map and see that massive gap between the Dublin/Belfast line and the Dublin/Sligo line. Some lines should be there for years now, and others should never have been closed, or at least re-opened by now. We had the crazy situation with the Luas Green line, where politicians were looking for credit for the delayed partial re-opening of a line that should never have been closed in the first place. We could revolutionise the country with more rail lines, but there has barely been a totally new line laid since independence, if any at all. We have the Red Luas line, but has there been any brand new inter-city or cross country lines laid? There have been lots closed, that's for sure.

We've built our country in such a way that new heavy rail isn't viable for the vast majority of people. If we'd had proper planners following a plan we could have created denser populations to make rail viable instead we have ribbon development along all our roads so even the bus is barely viable.

Not an expert at all on rail, or much else to be honest, but they definitely need to improve commuter rail.

Any station within 100km of Dublin/Cork should have dedicated commuter services which are prioritised over other traffic, even if that means more tracks and knocking houses along the lines.

Intercity can't compete with the motorways so that should be improved with the least amount of money possible.

We don't have enough money to fix both IC and commuter, so commuters have to take priority. Getting more commuters onto trains will improve transport for everyone, thought this may well totally kill off IC rail if the buses can travel even faster between cities.

Jehuty42

n97 mini wrote: »

Gonna put the cat in amongst the pigeons here.

It has often been said that the union tail wags the management dog in CIE.

So... how about management do a Ryanair on it and refuse to recognise the unions going forward?

Good luck to them if they try to do that.

My own personal view is that workers have every right to assemble and form unions, and that right should be protected. A global recession like this would be the worst time to take away that right, history has shown that.

I know unions make company management awkward and difficult, but its better than the alternative. A dictatorship is probably a much easier governmental model with a minimum of red tape, but it's not the best.

dowlingm

Most of the above seems a recipe for keeping the High Court and the Labour Court busy for a couple of year, several million in legal fees and not much else. Statements like "sack everyone" and "derecognize unions" are as much of a fantasy as a line from Navan to Derry to fill in a gap on a map. I don't say this as someone with undue affection for CIE or ICTU, just someone doing his best to be realistic.

n97 mini

Jehuty42 wrote: »

Good luck to them if they try to do that.

My own personal view is that workers have every right to assemble and form unions, and that right should be protected. A global recession like this would be the worst time to take away that right, history has shown that.

I know unions make company management awkward and difficult, but its better than the alternative. A dictatorship is probably a much easier governmental model with a minimum of red tape, but it's not the best.

Modern unions don't protect workers rights, there are plenty of laws that do that. We have the most right-wing unions possibly in the world, which are now all about protecting workers interests.

Jehuty42

n97 mini wrote: »

Modern unions don't protect workers rights, there are plenty of laws that do that. We have the most right-wing unions possibly in the world, which are now all about protecting workers interests.

I do agree with you, modern trade unionism is often very far from the ideals it started out from. I certainly don't like them on a personal level. I will never be a member of one, my industry doesn't really go for them. They work better for less-skilled "working-class" jobs.

I wouldn't have total faith in employment law, seeing as recent trends show that government, the law-makers and big business capitalists are often in bed together. So I feel that in some areas, unions are still important and the right for them to exist should be maintained.

Political theory aside, the reality is that IE is extremely unionised, and it does sometimes leak down to day-to-say passenger impressions. I don't think it is as paralysing as you portray it though. Keep them, recognise them, and work with them to implement change. It's a balancing act between carrot and whip in negotiations, because nothing in real life is as black and white.

dowlingm

n97 mini wrote: »

Modern unions don't protect workers rights, there are plenty of laws that do that. We have the most right-wing unions possibly in the world, which are now all about protecting workers interests.

Except one thing unions provide is representation before courts and tribunals to vindicate the rights embodied in those laws. Many of these bodies do provide some assistance and cut slack about the niceties for self-represented but the employer retains a massive advantage about how it all works because he/she will have counsel.

mickydoomsux

Why did you start another thread to discuss the same stuff as in the "Mass Rail Closing in the Next Decade?" thread?