Western Rail Corridor / Rail Trail Discussion

Just to point out that Bus Éireann Expressway services are also commercial services, and are not subsidised by the State. I don't think you will see them changing either.

Their PSO services on the other hand could be re-focussed to feed into rail services at certain locations. They are operated at the behest of the NTA.

Pie in the sky nonsense like the above, peddled by the likes of WOT for the past 20+ years, are a big part of the reason that the Sligo-Charlestown section remains idle (except of course the parts that are now being used as private gardens!) instead of having already been developed into an amenity that would benefit the local areas AND bring some tourism. Thankfully Sligo CoCo have finally decided to push on with an actual achievable project instead of pretending that a meandering alignment that never was, and never will be, a viable railway might someday be restored.

I disagree though this remains to be seen. Ireland was able to build most of our motorway network in a decade, as it received proper funding and wide political support.

A change is happening right now as the world finally wakes up to climate change. There is now proper funding, wide political support and climate change as motivators.

Our PT / AT infrastructure can now have a golden decade of development. Can we allow ourselves some more optimism, please?!....

There's no "strong" argument supported by tourism via Knock airport.

Knock already has a train station less than 20minutes away from it with direct train services to Castlebar and Westport (the old WRC station in Charlestown is approx 10min from Ireland West Airport - not a significant difference). If your hypothesis held any water at all then we'd have a shuttle bus offering to Ballyhaunis station from Knock airport, and crowds waiting on the Ballyhaunis platform as the train from Dublin pulls in. But of course, we don't.

So clearly it's not the heartland of Mayo that tourism will be driven to by the WRC from Knock - given the WRC would instead bring tourists by bus to Charlestown, then by a long looping route to Claremorris, where they have to change onto the same train that has already just passed through Ballyhaunis on it's way to Westport.

Maybe it's Galway that will experience this great tourist boom? But Galway already has a rail-link from Shannon - with Sixmilebridge not a whole lot further than Charlestown is from Knock.

So I guess it must be Sligo that will take all the benefit from linking Knock to the WRC? With the meandering Burma Road driving tourism towards Sligo that the already-existing, more-direct, bus services haven't managed to do from Knock; and indeed, which Sligo Airport never managed to do when it had direct flights from both Dublin and from the UK during the Celtic tiger years.

Ultimately where the hypothesis falls down is that Tourism in the West of Ireland is about a hell of a lot more than urban centres (which rail can link). Tourists want to travel the Wild Atlantic Way, visit Downpatrick Head, Knocknarae, Kylemore Abbey and Connemara. As a result, they end up on coach tours or in rental cars. And given Ireland isn't a particularly big country they are laregely happy to fly into Dublin and travel to the West from there.

Much like Maslow's man with a hammer, the rail enthusiasts have yet to encounter an issue that they don't think can be solved by a train

Yes, your right. Gradients around Knock airport is the issue here. I forgot the airport was built on the peak of a mountain.

Where's the rant?

I took each of the counties along the WRC one by one and pointed out why a rail link from Knock airport wasn't going to magically deliver "unlimited tourists" to the region. Odd how people get so upset by a nonsense argument being debunked

There's a sizable portion of the pro-WRC arguments that take "the train is the solution" as their starting point and work backwards from that - and get incredibly upset when challenged on it.

This type of thinking pervaded the county councils in Sligo, Mayo and Galway from 2000 until the mid 2010s (and still seems to have a hold on Mayo CoCo) and resulted in nothing more than the alignment continuing to lie idle and become more and more overgrown instead of being developed into something that, if nothing more, would preserve the alignment and provide a local amenity at the same time.

Thank you for responding constructively. To be clear, I'm aware this section of line is unlikely to be opened. If is it, a new alignment could still take in the airport, I believe.

The 4 SACs you refer to are rivers. All rivers + their banks are considered SACs, so this argument is unfair.

The airport is not built on a mountain! It's 200m elevation at the highest. A station would not need to cross the "summit".... a 400m walk north and you're at 160m elevation. The nearest town of Charlestown is at 70m. This is hardly a mega engineering project.

I'm in full agreement about the alignments. If ever a viable case could be made for a rail link between Sligo and Galway, then following the old WRC allignment would doom it to failure from the get go.

Realignments would be needed between Collooney and Charlestown, and between Charlestown and Claremorris if it were to have any change of succeeding - the old alignment can't compete with the N17 as it currently is, never mind the N17 if Collooney to Charlestown, or even just Collooney to Tubbercurry, ever gets upgraded.

That said - Knock Airport would still be a non-runner, due to the elevation difference from the airport's location to its surroundings

Well, if the report says the Athenry to Claremorris section should be prioritised for regional investment, then it's not inaccurate!

We really just need to see the damned report!