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Navan Rail Line
Comments
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I think Ashbourne and Ratoath need a different, more direct alignment. Bringing the Navan line from where it is now back east to serve Ashbourne just makes the whole route stupidly long, and the average line speed is already not great on this corridor (I hope that the DART+ works will do something to improve this).
My preferred option would have been something like @OisinCooke's, but I do think that this ship has sailed: too much has been put in place for the western path. Also, any stop at Dunshaughlin needs to be located close to the M3 in order to act as a P+R for traffic further up the M3, so running the line east of Dunshaughlin isn’t going to be good for meeting car traffic reduction goals - the current P+R is awfully positioned for M3 users, as it makes them pay a toll just to get to and from the railway station, and I think that’s a lot of the reason for its poor ridership.In a purely speculative vein, the proposed alignment might also allow for a future spur to Trim (population 9,500) if enough of this 8km branch alignment is still owned by CIÉ:
Looking at the aerial maps, though, I think most of that alignment is now long gone (a part of it just east of the Boyne is now an access road for a group of houses), but Trim is still a good candidate for rail-led development in future, as it has a good core, with scope to grow, but it is currently unattractive for car commuting as it’s not near a motorway.
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Dunshaughlin is arguably already served by the proposed route. On this routing, a station can be placed about 2km from the centre of the town (straight line; by road it’s 2.7 km because of the ringroad):
Re-routing the railway into the town would provide a marginal increase in usage, but at the very high cost of crossing M3. Ratoath is actually the larger population centre here (9,000), but serving that means making a diversion further east that would prevent the provision of an easy toll-free M3 Park and Ride: I believe that the Dunshaughlin P+R is a major factor in the positive benefit-to-cost ratio.
In an ideal world I would have preferred something that went closer into the town, east of the M3, but the M3 is where it is, no crossing was built into the motorway at construction time, and crossing it now would be stupidly expensive. It’s very hard to capture Dunshaughlin and Ratoath, and provide a convenient P+R from M3 without making the line excessively long. Take too much of a meander, and driving becomes more attractive again.
I mentioned Trim only as a future extension that becomes possible once the Navan line is opened, not as something that’s necessary to make the line viable: Navan is large enough alone to make the line work. I still think that to serve Ratoath, a more direct line into Dublin via Ashbourne is better - perhaps as a branch from the proposed Clongriffin-Airport-Swords-Drogheda corridor.3 -
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Here is the hidden Boyne Viaduct. Can't see any reason why there would be significant risk in using it, the Victorian engineers built to last, even built for 2 tracks. Plenty of other bridges still in place. Greatly speeds construction, reduces cost and risk and reduces risk of environmental impact.
Fantasy routings with crayons are all great, but you need to consider the geography as well. There will be minor deviations but wild routings across the M3 have been ruled out.
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