Western Rail Corridor / Rail Trail Discussion

You'd shorten the journey by about 12-15km by your suggestion. That's hardly worth the investment given trains could run at 80kmh (easily) between Tuam and Athenry.

There is only one historical station between Tuam and Athenry (Ballyglunin).

A journey time of sub 40minutes from Tuam to Galway, via Athenry, is possible, which compares to 50minutes by bus or 1hr+ in a car.

A new station at Roscam could connect to buses to industrial estates. Don't use the industrial estates argument here - it's the reason Galway hasn't invested in public transport forever and is now choked with cars.

i don't think it will be the case that every single stop will be reopened if galway to mayo is reopened, only the bigger stops like tuam and a couple of others perhapse.

not everyone is going to the business parks outside the city so there will be numbers for the line, sure going via athenry and reversing is not optimal but it's not the big deal it would have been when trains were hauled by a loco which had to run round and all of the stuff that goes with that.

Mostly 3 car 22ks aren't they?

190 if every seat is full. But I've seen trains with barely above 50% considered "full" cause nobody wants to sit beside someone / even share a 4 bay with someone.

These pics don't surprise me but they are still shocking. We wonder why we've a housing crisis. Government and councils won't allow one off housing, anymore, and yet there is no encouragement to build in villages especially ones on a flipping rail line....

Gort:

Craughwell:

Ardrahan:

How long is Oranmore station open?.... I think the point here is a complete failure of government and local council policy, not the quality of the rail service.

Those pictures are good examples of how badly located many railway stations are.

Just how thick are these people?

So the electric train gets as far as Maynooth. What happens then? Nothing, unless many many millions are spent of course.

Also you are not going to run a fast inter-city service on 1500V DC...

The article talks about Ardrahan station and says it's typically used by 14 people a day, which is probably true, but Ardrahan station is just one station on the Limerick to Galway railway, and is used by a very small amount of people compared to the total amount of people who use the service, or even just the amount of people using the reopened section of the railway. It's misleading to only talk about the small amount of people using just one station on a railway in an effort to claim the railway is used by a small amount of people. The fact that the article only mentions Ardrahan station makes it sound like it's the only station on the railway, and hence used by everyone who ever uses the railway, which isn't true.

Another statement in the article that isn't true either is that "Ardrahan station has 20 daily services" since it only has 10 a day according to the Irish rail timetable(5 to Galway, 4 to Limerick and 1 to Ennis).

I had a look at the data you shared, and it only shows that the usage of the stations between Limerick and Galway hasn't increased between 2012 and 2019, but it doesn't show the amount of people who travelled the whole way to/from Limerick from/to Galway, which could've increased over that period. I have already pointed this out in my previous post.

I accept that merely showing that the railway was busier in 2017 than it was in 2011 doesn't necessarily mean that it has remained as busy as it was in 2017 to this day, but I have found data that suggests it was busier in 2018 and 2019. Here it is:http://www.railusers.ie/news/news.php?year=2020&no=2.html

They say that they got these numbers from Irish Rail, so if that's the case, they're almost certainly accurate.

There are train stations all over Ireland where you can park your car for free, so the section of railway from Ennis to Athenry isn't unusual from that point of view. For example, Kilcoole Station has free parking:https://www.irishrail.ie/en-ie/travel-information/find-a-station?key=Kilcoole&REQ0JourneyStopskeyID=A%3D1%40O%3DKilcoole%40X%3D-6041120%40Y%3D53106967%40U%3D80%40L%3D6010030%40B%3D1%40p%3D1684512361%40&HWAI%3DJS%21js=yes&HWAI%3DJS%21ajax=yes

So does Foxford: https://www.irishrail.ie/en-ie/travel-information/find-a-station?key=Foxford&REQ0JourneyStopskeyID=A%3D1%40O%3DFoxford%40X%3D-9136429%40Y%3D53982938%40U%3D80%40L%3D6000046%40B%3D1%40p%3D1684512361%40&HWAI%3DJS%21js=yes&HWAI%3DJS%21ajax=yes

There are more stations with free parking, too. If you want me to post the entire list, I will.

I don't see why the fact that the numbers only cover Ennis-Athenry is a problem, considering that is the section of railway that was reopened.

I had a look at the daily boardings and alightings in the National Transport Authority Heavy Rail Censuses for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 to see if there were any statistics that suggested an increase in the usage of the reopened section of railway(Ennis to Athenry) over that time, and here is what I found:

In Limerick, the daily boardings heading in the direction of Galway and the alightings coming from the direction of Galway stayed mostly the same(showing no significant increase or decrease) from 2015 to 2019, but as the graph in post #4656 shows, the number of people using Ennis station decreased and the number of people using Sixmilebridge station stayed almost the same during that time. So, if the amount of people travelling from Limerick to Ennis went down, and the number of people travelling on the railway north of Limerick didn't, that suggests that there was an increase in the number of people travelling from Limerick to locations north of Ennis, which would require use of the reopened Ennis-Athenry section.

Here are the Daily Passenger movements in Limerick for each year from 2015 to 2019. The numbers shown are a combination of the Regional Northbound boardings and Regional Southbound alightings:

2015: 547

2016: 554

2017: 436

2018: 560

2019: 593

I looked at the Daily Regional Northbound boardings and Regional Southbound alightings in Limerick each Heavy Rail Census from 2015 to 2019, and added them together to present the numbers I gave in my previous post. That was where I got the numbers from.

I'm pretty much certain the figure I gave doesn't count the people travelling only from Limerick to Limerick Junction, or on the Limerick Junction to Waterford line either. I'm guessing that on the table showing daily boardings, the people who board a train at Limerick and travel towards Galway are counted in the "Regional Northbound" column, since Galway is north of Limerick, and then I would say the people who board a train in Limerick and travel towards Limerick Junction are counted in the "Regional Southbound" column. Then, I would say that on the table showing daily alightings, it's vice versa, so the people who get off a train at Limerick coming from the Galway direction are counted in the "Regional Southbound" column and the people who get off a train coming from the Limerick Junction direction are counted in the "Regional Northbound" column.

Here is a screenshot of the census showing 2018 passenger numbers, showing daily alightings, and I have circled (in red) the figure I took to mean the number of people who got off a train in Limerick that was coming from the direction of Galway.

Calls for high density housing in rural villages are nonsense. There are far better opportunities for densification in Galway and Limerick, and to a lesser extent Ennis, which would be cheaper, more sustainable and yield better results. Of course the population should be increased around the stations but the scope is fairly limited. You could potentially develop a new town at Ardrahan around the station as there isn't much there now.

The only way I can see for the southern part of WRC to compete would be to branch off at Ardrahan and join the existing mainline east of Oranmore. That would be 15km shorter than current route, can be designed for higher speeds and avoids the messing in Athenry. Leaving it as it is and reopening the line to Tuam would create an operational mess with all the crossing involved and likely would mean a deterioration in existing services.