Are Irish Intercity trains worthwhile?

Zaph0d

I think everyone accepts that commuter trains are an important part of a city's infrastructure due to their ability to beat car transport in journey times at peak hour. 20 million passengers a year on the DART, 20 million on the Luas and more on Arrow. Rail is catering to a sizable and growing proportion of Dublin commuters. Good for the environment & health.

But what about intercity trains in Ireland? Are they a waste of money? I''m beginning to think that they are not worth it in Ireland.

Irish Rail's annual report shows about 15 million non-DART journeys per year. Some of these are people commuting into Cork or on arrow services so a smaller number are actually using the long intercity connections. So for our population of 4 million, we're looking at less than 2 return journeys per head per year on the intercity train services. As the road network moves towards mway/dual carriageway between the cities, the comfort and speed advantages of the train over luxury coach or car will diminish making it even less popular.

The same report shows that mainline rail made an operating loss of €69 million and had €193 million spent on its infrastructure in that year. Is it worth it to spend €262 million on subsidising 7.5 million return intercity jouneys? Should we just say that the intercity traffic demand is insufficient to justify the costs and that the money would be better spent on buses and motorways?

(I know that the transport dept recently announced they are buying loads of new trains and increasing intercity frequencies so this is not on the cards)

What do you lot think?

embraer170

What a load of b----. That kind of logic was used in the past and look at where it has brought us (and other countries) today. The European country with the best road network (incl. most investment per head over the past 50 years) also just happens to have the best railway network.

If it wasn't 02:00, I'd attempt a coherent reply but the above sums up my feeling. Still thanks for starting what I hope will be an interesting debate.

murphaph

If rail got even a snippet of what roads get you'd have a TGV between Cork and Dublin! Rail has advantages such as not getting snarled up in traffic on the outskirts of cities (although Heuston pre-Kildare route project is a bad example!!). Rail is also statistically far safer. I think we should be able to offer both as a viable means of Intercity travel. Remember a huge amount of the money spent in reent years was on basic safety improvements, signalling etc., now with the 67 new IC carriages on the Cork line starting to arrive next month, the customer will begin to experience some of that money, at last.

Zaph0d

murphaph wrote:

If rail got even a snippet of what roads get you'd have a TGV between Cork and Dublin!

It's fair to say that the €262m subsidy for intercity rail includes the cost of rail track whereas the bus service figures don't include the amount spent on roads. I hadn't thought of that. As for TGV... high speed rail costs around €50m / km while the Monasterevin motorway bypass was recently built at a cost of €8m / km, so I don't think we would have got a TGV for the cost of a motorway to Cork.

Intercity rail makes sense in France because they have a few large cities whereas we just have Dublin and Belfast. Apologies to Cork, Galway, Limerick etc but they hardly compare sizewise with Marseille, Lyon, Nice, Toulouse, Strasbourg...

Rail has advantages such as not getting snarled up in traffic on the outskirts of cities

Yup, that's why I said commuter rail was clearly worthwhile.

Rail is also statistically far safer.

The safety and pollution advantages of rail over road reduce when comparing motorways rather than city roads.

Remember a huge amount of the money spent in reent years was on basic safety improvements, signalling etc

So some of that €262m may have been exceptional charges.

now with the 67 new IC carriages on the Cork line starting to arrive next month, the customer will begin to experience some of that money, at last.

If the customer numbers on intercity trains start to show any decent market share, then there is an argument for keeping them. I guess we'll see if that happens over the coming years.

murphaph

Agreed, we'll wait and see. My TGV comment was a little tongue in cheek-I should have put a smilie or something there. It's in everyone's interest that we have more than one option for travelling as more rail travellers means fewer road travellers and so on. I think we should stop right away the subsidising of internal airline travel-the most polluting form of all.

BrianD

The investment is worthwhile as it provides an alternative to road travel. Ultimately, we should have a choice of travel methods.

It has been demonstrated before that with new rolling stocks, timetables and competitive pricing people will use public transport.

ishmael whale

There was some discussion of this topic in these threads a while back.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=143806
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=141318

Rail is only useful if you’re moving a load of people, and some of the intercity services are probably of questionable value. The experience of other European countries is not a reliable guide, as they can clearly offer cross border services linking up a population of hundreds of millions.

Road is pretty much self financing and then some, as the revenue gathered in road tax, vehicle registration tax and fuel taxes exceeds expenditure on roads. What would be useful is if information was available on the costs, revenues and subsidies associated with each individual mainline rail service.

billy the squid

The only problem I would have with intercity trains would be that it is very expensive and you are not guaranteed a uniform quality of service. If you are lucky you will get a comfortable seat on a nice new train, but if your unlucky you will get standing room only on a rickety old cattlewaggon with no heating. yet they charge the same price for the ticket.

The last time I was on a train from Dublin-Limerick I felt as though I was being ripped off, so it is understandible why people would prefer to drive rather than take an intercity train.

Zaph0d

ishmael whale wrote:

There was some discussion of this topic in these threads a while back.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=143806
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=141318

Fair enough, no need to rehash all these old arguments, then.

One more bad thing about intercity rail is that it makes it difficult for the rail company to offer a competitive commuter service sharing the same lines. I don't think there is any plan to add extra tracks to the DART lines North or South, so I guess this problem won't go away.

embraer170

If the customer numbers on intercity trains start to show any decent market share,

Loads on Dublin - Cork trains are extremely high at present. We won't say a great improvement in market share without expanded capacity.

jank

Eh so your advocating scraping intercity rail tranport and just using money to but roads!!

Do you ever even travel outside the greater dublin region?

The Cork-Dublin train always has high passenger numbers. Sometimes people have to stand and also this train makes it possible for people in mallow thurles etc to travel to Cork/Dublin

Stop being so blind to see the big picture.

We need both rail and road to have a modern transport system ALL the people in this country deserve not just those who are lucky/unlucky enough to live the commuter hell hole called the greater dublin region

Zaph0d

jank wrote:

The Cork-Dublin train always has high passenger numbers. Sometimes people have to stand

Does anyone know what the passenger numbers are? Or how they compare with road and bus traffic for the same route?

We need both rail and road

Several posters have said this. Why do we need both and for which routes do we need both?

murphaph

ishmael whale wrote:

Road is pretty much self financing and then some, as the revenue gathered in road tax, vehicle registration tax and fuel taxes exceeds expenditure on roads. What would be useful is if information was available on the costs, revenues and subsidies associated with each individual mainline rail service.

There is a 'social return' from rail that roads do not provide. This includes reduced pollution, noise, traffic through towns, road fatalities etc. These have to be included in any comparison. We will face stiff Kyoto penalties if we don't do something and rail is simply theleast polluting form of moving a lot of people.

murphaph

Zaph0d wrote:

One more bad thing about intercity rail is that it makes it difficult for the rail company to offer a competitive commuter service sharing the same lines. I don't think there is any plan to add extra tracks to the DART lines North or South, so I guess this problem won't go away.

I take it from your post that you're aware of the Kildare Route Project, but for those that aren't, it will add another pair of commuter only tracks between Dublin and Kildare. There is no reason why a similar project (given a fraction of the funding the widenning of roads gets) can't address the Northern line and possibly the Western Suburban but this really probably isn't required at present. The Rosslare line doesn't really require it. The frequencies will never really interfere with DART here and there are passing loops in any case.

Zaph0d

murphaph wrote:

The frequencies will never really interfere with DART here and there are passing loops in any case.

The DART schedules are all over the place. In the morning peak the northbound trains run at intervals varying between 18mins and 4 mins with no apparent pattern. Is there a technical constraint that will prevent Irish Rail from ever running services at say 5 minute or 10 minute regular intervals? Did Irish Rail just give up on DART frequency and go for capacity increases instead?

murphaph

Zaph0d wrote:

The DART schedules are all over the place. In the morning peak the northbound trains run at intervals varying between 18mins and 4 mins with no apparent pattern. Is there a technical constraint that will prevent Irish Rail from ever running services at say 5 minute or 10 minute regular intervals? Did Irish Rail just give up on DART frequency and go for capacity increases instead?

Not for the first time we can blame the politicians. Remember the Greystones extension? The one that CIE were instructed to do by Lowry to make sure FG won that by-election. Bray-Greystones should never have been electrified as it's a long winding single track section that cannot realistically be widenned to as it's contained in tunnels. DART went to **** after this. The main reason DART is crap these days is because Connolly is a mess. The interconnector so beautifully tidies it all up it's a sea change we'll get.

ishmael whale

murphaph wrote:

There is a 'social return' from rail that roads do not provide. This includes reduced pollution, noise, traffic through towns, road fatalities etc. These have to be included in any comparison. We will face stiff Kyoto penalties if we don't do something and rail is simply theleast polluting form of moving a lot of people.

True, but I think the key point you are making is its the least polluting form of moving a lot of people. i.e. rail services will only make a significant social return if it attracts people out of their cars. There are a number of things to watch her such as:

1. If you find that road fatalities chiefly involve young bloods out for the night, then rail is unlikely to have much of an impact as the Wexford intercity service won’t going to get you to Tamangoes next Saturday.

2. Our low population density means that few rail services will be able to attract too many people off the road, then that equally suggests that rail will not make much of an impact on any of those things.

We don’t have the figures to tell definitively, but outside of Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast you probably have to take social factors into account before the other services look justified. And social factors in this context is really just shorthand for political realities. I don't think anyone has ever really assessed if the Westport service actually produces a social return that justifies the investment, or if those resources would produce a higher social return if devoted to some other need.

Its not just a question of whether the carriages are full. Its also a question of how much it costs to fill them.

jank

Zaph0d wrote:

Does anyone know what the passenger numbers are? Or how they compare with road and bus traffic for the same route?

Can you find a link?

Zaph0d wrote:

Several posters have said this. Why do we need both and for which routes do we need both?

Becuse rail is safer, cleaner and also servers a wider area and people. Not many like to drive for 3 hours each way to a city especially with the traffic one can encounter in urban areas.

Oh and rail is faster too..... well sometimes

Zaph0d

jank wrote:

Does anyone know what the passenger numbers are? Or how they compare with road and bus traffic for the same route?

Can you find a link?

OK, here's something from the national spatial strategy that states that rail market share in Ireland is under 3% but also claims a market share of 'over 25%' for rail for Dublin to Cork, Galway & Limerick. It doesn't give a source for this figure. If this is true then I'd have to say that these three routes were worthwhile.

kilman

A couple of quick points
1)Kildare route project-The quad tracking will be only from Cherry Orchard to just beyond Hazlehatch. In the future this may be extended.

2)From personal experience, the Cork/Kerry and Galway trains always have good patronage. Not so sure of Limerick/Sligo/Rosslare but Waterford line isn't huge.

People are commuting so far to get to Dublin that many intercity trains are used as commuter trains. Jaysus I know a guy that commutes from Athenry to Dublin!

jlang

Zaph0d wrote:

The DART schedules are all over the place. In the morning peak the northbound trains run at intervals varying between 18mins and 4 mins with no apparent pattern. Is there a technical constraint that will prevent Irish Rail from ever running services at say 5 minute or 10 minute regular intervals? Did Irish Rail just give up on DART frequency and go for capacity increases instead?

They didn't just give up. DART frequency had to be sacrificed to increase commuter train frequency. Every train that comes in on the Maynooth line or from beyond Malahide takes away a DART slot at Connolly. This is part of the problem the Dublin Rail Plan/Interconnector attempts to fix.