Western Rail Corridor / Rail Trail Discussion

Deleted User wrote: »

It says it on the page you took that from - Ballyglunin is too small to register for those sort of statistics.

Census small area statistics for anyone interested, select Small Area or Electoral Division for some basic pop detail.
http://census.cso.ie/sapmap/
Much easier on a PC.

Exactly! So how couldn't the person, who cost €3k per page do that!!

I.... or maybe they wanted us to see it was badly done :rolleyes:

Del.Monte wrote: »

Consultants like Ernst & Young seem to have templates for reports which they append a new name to and shoe horn some stats in to make it look like they've done an in depth study and the gravy train rolls on. :rolleyes:

Agreed. I love their statement on p. 100:

So EY did not use NTA's official National Transport Model for the analysis due to the incredibly tight schedule and budget for this project?

Deleted User wrote: »

You missed my point.
They were drawing from published, standardised statistics, which didn't include Ballyglunin as it was so small.
Using different statistics tables and plugging them in would not be standardised, and might not be comparing like with like.

If they used the small area statistic that says there is a population of 284 would it be appropriate?
most of them have less than a 30 minute commute, a quarter have less than a 15 minute commute.
http://census.cso.ie/sapmap2016/Results.aspx?Geog_Type=SA2017&Geog_Code=4c07d11e-0eb8-851d-e053-ca3ca8c0ca7f#SAPMAP_T11_1103

I followed your link and in three clicks I found the exact populations of the areas, it gives the numbers of each area.

When you say commute, are you talking about those that don't drive?. The census says that 40% of folk in the three catchment areas are under the age of 18

serfboard wrote: »

People in General Elections vote based on the Transport Policy of candidates?

Your evidence for this is what?

Did everyone else who voted for Sinn Fein around the country do this on the basis of Transport policy too, or was it only in Galway East?

You might want to look up the difference between correlation and causation.

I believe the rallying cry of the QMG campaign was "Anyone But Canney - ABC." But maybe that was because of his stance on direct provision.

Who's Dr.Bradley?


This from WOT FB page this evening:


Government Commissioned Report on WRC ‘truly shocking’ and ‘riddled with negligence’
DR JOHN BRADLEY – Mayo News 19 January 2021
In the national development strategy Project Ireland 2040 a commitment was given to examine the feasibility of restoring the WRC link from Athenry to Claremorris. Such a link would connect the Mayo towns on the Dublin-Westport/ Ballina line directly to Galway, Limerick and further south. In late 2018 the Dublin-based consultancy firm E&Y. were awarded the contract to carry out this evaluation and their long delayed report was finally exposed to public scrutiny last week.
To say that the E&Y report is devastatingly negative would be an understatement. Cutting to the chase, it asserts that over a period of 30 years for every euro of public expenditure on the WRC restoration, the state would recoup only 21 cent: in other words, a benefit to cost ratio of 0.21. E&Y conclude that there is absolutely no justification for the WRC restoration. Restoring the WRC would be almost like a Famine Relief Work, i.e., digging holes and filling them in again in order to pay the workers enough to prevent starvation.
I find myself in an unusual position. Far from quibbling with its parts, I reject the entire basis upon which the E&Y report was commissioned and executed. So permit me to set out my reasons briefly and propose a way forward.
Buried amid the scattershot and confusing detail of the E&Y analysis are three crucial issues that combine to produce the damning negative financial verdict. The first issue is the front-loaded capital costs of WRC restoration. The second issue is the ticket and freight revenue forecasts. The third issue is the treatment of the wider benefits of the WRC in the context of regional development strategy.
GOLD PLATING
The €260 million E&Y capital costs are incurred between 2022 to 2026. Closer examination of these show that the restoration structure used by E&Y is massively over-engineered and overpriced; 'gold plating', to use the West on Track press release characterisation. Not by a few euro here and there. But by more than double the equivalent costs of the earlier Phase 1 Ennis-Athenry work. Perhaps E&Y had the costs of the English HS2 project in mind? Is the fact that they quote a 90mph (145kph) speed for the WRC extension indicative of English-centric thinking? On that basis the trip from Dublin to Westport would be achieved in under two hours!
The E&Y forecasts of ticket and freight revenue from 2026 onwards are low and assume switching from road to rail, effectively ignoring new growth. Close examination of this projected revenue suggests that E&Y were singularly ignorant of the actual current nature of Ballina and Westport rail freight and the many current barriers to switching freight from road to rail.
Better informed re-estimates suggest that the present value of future revenue could credibly reach €80 million, ie, 250 percent higher than the E&Y calculation of €30 million.
Turning to the third issue, i.e. placing the WRC extension in a wider regional strategy context, this is the most disturbing feature both of the original terms of reference dictated by government and of the published E&Y analysis. The narrow and stringent Department of Finance 'value for money' requirement served to deflect the terms of reference away from any deep consideration of the WRC as a vital network link in transport infrastructure.
Worse, there is absolutely no regional strategic context within the E&Y report, even one in line with their weak terms of reference. Rather, a hand-waving effort is made to add and subtract costs and benefits associated with C02 emissions, noise abatement, time saving, congestion abatement, etc. They even calculate the benefit of alternative use of the WRC land, i.e., selling it back to farmers! I could go on, but you get the point. None of these issues, however relevant, have anything to do with any wider regional development strategy.
TEN -T
OF course the strategic elephant in the government and E&Y room is the notorious elimination ten years ago of the Atlantic coast region from the Irish TEN-T proposals to the EC. This is studiously ignored, only coming back into the picture in a curious 'peer review' study by the Jaspers consultancy that came with the E&Y work. What that study says is very revealing:
"The Trans- European Transport Network (TEN-T) describes a Europe-wide network of rail, road, inland waterway and maritime shipping corridors, as well as significant ports, airports and railroad terminals. The ultimate objective is to close gaps, remove bottlenecks and technical barriers across Europe, as well as to strengthen social, economic and territorial cohesion in the EU."
However, the E&Y financial analysis being 'peer reviewed' was considered to be so damning that neither revision of the TEN-T decision nor evaluating the WRC as part of a genuine regional strategy could save it. Case closed! Next business!
The fact that tax-payers money (rumoured to be multiple hundreds of thousand euro) was used to produce a report with serious errors and flaws, riddled with negligence and dissimulations, is truly shocking. So, what can be done?
Various concerned groups have struggled over the years to bring a sense of realism and optimism to the role of the WRC as a crucial infrastructural backbone to the revival of the central and northern Atlantic Economic Corridor.
Their goal is to promote a fundamental economic and social rethink of the West and a break from the East-West distortion that has poisoned political debate in Ireland, relegating the West to a second class development status.
Overturning the E&Y flawed analysis is likely to be a David and Goliath struggle where the Dublin government has all the big guns. But the effort to do so must start. The first stage will be for people with real expertise to produce a comprehensive and reasoned 'alternative' WRC report that corrects the E&Y errors and omissions and presents a fair and unbiased WRC evaluation. Policy makers and the public can then examine both documents and see for themselves how western regional development strategy and the WRC were trashed unfairly in the E&Y report. The second stage will be political. There will be a need for serious and sustained engagement by concerned local and national politicians in a fight to bring truth and reason to a debate that has wide implications for regional development in Ireland.

That's the whole point. the report will join the others gathering dust and in the meantime....

Deleted User wrote: »

According to the Mayo News:
Murrisk-based economist Dr John Bradley is formerly a Research Professor at the ESRI, thereafter a research consultant in economic development, working in several EU states.

I have only ever followed the debate on the WRC on this thread but surely Dr John Bradley has been involved before the publication of the report or is he only now getting involved??

L1011 wrote: »

That John Bradley article is interesting. He rejects that it would be significantly more expensive to restore a longer closed, poorer quality alignment to modern standards and specifically objects to it being brought up to a reasonable line speed.

The ops cost and journey times on a cheaply restored line would be significantly higher and usership significantly lower - so reframing the report on that basis still won't get the answer they want.

It is not written to a standard that I would expect from a research professor and contains many unsourced statements of "fact" in opposition to the report.

I agree reframing the report may not change the overall outcome of the report but it will bring the lines closer together. 90mph design speed between Tuam and Claremorris using the current corridor would be very difficult if at all possible so why did EY price for it? 80mph would be easily achieved at a considerably lower cost without reducing the quality of the corridor.

The EY report is not written to a standard that most would expect either, bar maybe the followers that only read the greenway sound bytes. This whole thing has been and is a joke to all and the saga will continue.

L1011 wrote: »

The engineering standards difference between 80 and 90 is minimal

You'd have to revert to 50mph to do it on the cheap and that would no longer be competitive with express coaches

The complaints I see about the EY report amount to nitpicking and edge-pulling by those unhappy with its overall outcome, which would not be changed even with said nits altered.

Can you furnish us with a little more information on the differences between the engineering standards?

Wow, it’s down to calling it nitpicking when a reported 500k report can be pulled apart on multiple areas, these are not just spelling errors you know? Have you actually read the report?

If the same report favoured rail and was as easily ripped apart the same argument would be made from the other side.

L1011 wrote: »

These do not amount to something being "pulled apart", they are just weak, nit-picking and edge-pulling attempts to discredit something due to not liking the results.

I've read the report in detail, and there are over 100 numerical errors scattered throughout. I've replicated EY's main CBA output table (Table 75 in Appendix F). There are 15 calculation errors in that table alone. Table 75 includes tens of millions in cumulative Capex and Opex costs, which are included in the NPV and BCR metrics, which are nowhere documented in the report text or annexes. It also includes hundreds of millions of cumulative benefits where are NOT included in the NPV and BCR metrics and are likewise nowhere in the report text or annexes. The magnitude of these discrepancies rises to a level that would reverse the findings of the report.

ezstreet5 wrote: »

I've read the report in detail, and there are over 100 numerical errors scattered throughout. I've replicated EY's main CBA output table (Table 75 in Appendix F). There are 15 calculation errors in that table alone. Table 75 includes tens of millions in cumulative Capex and Opex costs, which are included in the NPV and BCR metrics, which are nowhere documented in the report text or annexes. It also includes hundreds of millions of cumulative benefits where are NOT included in the NPV and BCR metrics and are likewise nowhere in the report text or annexes. The magnitude of these discrepancies rises to a level that would reverse the findings of the report.

So you're making the assumption that the findings of the report are based on some typesetting errors in a table?

Are we really reduced to this?

From my not read of the EY report, I certainly consider it full of flaws and inaccuracies. These extend to all areas of the report, both those which weaken the case for reinstating rail services and those which strengthen it. I can't understand why they would request changes to the first issue and then publish this as is, I wonder was the first issue actually more accurate! It probably suits some to have the waters muddied. I have no doubt that a better report would come to the same conclusions (and that people would still be trying to pick holes, even if none exist).

If the next step, as Ryan indicated, will be for WRC to be looked at further as part of a wider network review. This will undoubtedly recommend against further reopening of WRC. We should be investing in the core network and ensuring that it is as efficient and attractive to passengers as possible. Investing nine figure sums to tack on bits on the periphery at large ongoing subvention is a ridiculous way to go about things. Imagine the €100m put into WRC Phase 1 was spent on the line between Galway and Athenry (passing loops, LC removal, new stations, etc.).

Sam Russell wrote: »

There is not the population within the catchment area of East Galway to ever justify the provision of such a railway. Railway services need population to be viable, and East Galway does not have any large towns.

And WOT know that there is no passenger argument, which is why they are pushing the (imagined) freight argument. If we build this, freight will come ...

Sam Russell wrote: »

Even one of the proposed stops, Ballyglunin, has a population too small to be counted in the report.

The continuous talk about a stop in a non-hamlet like Ballyglunin shows what an absolute joke the Phase 2 talk is.