Navan Rail Line

"Penny pinching"? 3 billion euros is "pennies"?

It is impossible to build a public transport "network" which does not involve transfers. The very idea of attempting to provide a zero-transfer PT service is so strange - I don't understand it at all. Transfers and transfer nodes are as vital to successful PT as the actual links between them. The best public transport systems in the world (Japan and Switzerland, imo) are all about enabling transfers as much as possible.

There is NO bottleneck between Navan and M3 Parkway, the AADT numbers are some of the lowest of all the radial routes. The only busy section of the M3 is that between the M50 and Blanch - and this Navan rail project has absolutely nothing to do with adding capacity to this section.

@bk's suggestion of express coaches connecting Navan with M3 Parkway - providing a transport hub/interchange at M3 Parkway is the right solution for not just Navan but much of this part of the country which is characterized by relatively low density and distance. It would get people from Navan to a DART train quicker than by the train that this project would provide. You could make the coach completely free for about 1/100th of the cost of building a new heavy rail alignment between Navan and Pace.

3 billion is only an estimate and there is nothing to say it will be that cost and in all likelyhood it won't be anything near that.
even in the event it was, the alternative of more road capacity is going to cost more due to all the cost associated with it as a whole.
there is a public transport network which involves transfers and then there is a public transport network that has stupid transfers that make no logical sense and are pointless, and a bus between navan and m3 is a perfect example of making no sense.
the navan rail project will remove large scale traffic from that area meaning the traffic issues are a lot less, and of course the large scale issues on the old n3 where most of the traffic travels from navan anyway.
the suggestion of an express coach between navan and m3 parkway is not the right sollution for navan as it has little potential usership, provides no incentive to be used, and does not address the issues.
there is no evidence it would be quicker then the train, it is just a belief to try and justify a poor quality sollution that will do nothing for navan and has no incentive to use it over the car whereas the rail line does.

Are you going to acknowledge that many of those buses (the 51) only stop at Colbert.

Tell me what other Ennis to Limerick bus is frequent and stops in more than one city centre location*

*For non Limerick people Colbert is very central. Every bit as good as Arthurs Quay for a city centre worker before anyone mentions that joke of a Dublin Bus service.

I think most people coming from Ratoath and Dunshaughlin avoid the toll as it is quite easy to join the M3 at junction 5 and save yourself a few quid each day. That’s what most people I know do.

the alternative of more road capacity is going to cost more due to all the cost associated with it as a whole.

I don't know where this is coming from - nobody is suggesting more road capacity? Nobody on this thread that I can see believes in building more roads over developing public transport. I don't even believe the M3 was justified.

there is a public transport network which involves transfers and then there is a public transport network that has stupid transfers that make no logical sense and are pointless, and a bus between navan and m3 is a perfect example of making no sense.

The M3 Parkway will be a DART stop post DART+. It's a terminal station with no immediately surrounding population to speak of - so NOT providing connecting bus services to the DART here from places like Navan and Dunshauglin - 25minutes or less bus ride - would be insane. While you think it would be illogical and "make no sense" to provide such services?

It's exactly how public transport is supposed to work - a high capacity but inflexible rail core feed with buses to extend its effective catchment area.

between navan and m3 as a way to try and get out of building the railway absolutely i do believe providing a bus service between the 2 is illogical as it is clear the reasons for doing it.
if the line to navan is built and they are offering services from other areas, or they are offering services from areas which will never be rail served, then sure but that's a separate issue/discussion.

the navan project which is not my project but that of the people is already 100% compelling hense why there was and is a plan and want to do it, and why the bit to the m3 parkway was built in the first place.
an express coach between navan and m3 parkway which is likely to have little usage doesn't and will never make it less compelling because that 's not possible ultimately.
it absolutely is the thinking of a supporter of public transport and a public transport realist who understands that lots of people while they use public transport, they do have a limit to where, when and how much they will use it.

We're veering dangerously into rail fetishism here. The purpose of PT spending should be to provide maximum utility to people - I don't care if the mode is rail, bus, bike or donkey and cart. Rail has strengths and weaknesses and we should be leveraging it's strengths not shoehorning it into every proposal where the costs are completely out-of-whack with the benefits.

I don't and never will pretend that rail is a one-size-fits-all solution, but I do believe that for most of our largest towns, especially those closest to our largest population centre, it is the correct solution.

There are places where a bus or coach makes more sense, but at some point the sheer amount of coaches needed to serve Navan is going to become ridiculous, and it's already starting to get there. While the main bus is of course the NX which runs with 3bph all day, in the peak hour there are 5 other coaches going from Navan to Dublin, 3x 109, a 103X, and a 110D.

Picking projects based solely on a towns population size is "lines on the map" thinking. We need to think in terms of how many people a service will help move.

Well… a bit yea but that's how developing a network works. Population is far from the only consideration but the amount of people is a pretty important thing to consider, as it has a pretty big impact on determining what your nodes are in a network and how they should be connected.

There's underlying snobbery about non-rail public transport in Ireland (buses) which is weird. "It needs to be rail to get people out of their cars" - no it needs to be better (faster, more convenient) than driving.

And I don't disagree, I have never understood what some people's problem are with the bus. Particularly in the context of the NX, the LFs are amazing and I am still sad knowing the NTA can't buy any more. However to clarify, my support for the Navan line isn't anything anti-bus/anti-coach, rather it is just that I think the population and commuter growth of Meath has and will justify the need for a higher capacity form of transit.

Drogheda is the opposite of Navan - there exists a functioning rail link already so the costs of providing the service is marginal - so I'm all for it.

I compared Drogheda to Navan because you compared Navan to Greystones, so I am not sure what your point is.

Like I said, if this this were a simple line upgrade and could be done for a couple of 100m, then it would be a no-brainer. But you no matter how much you stuff the numbers (and from experience, the mere existence of a rail option does mean everyone will abandon coach/bus services) and even if you manage to convince yourself that 4000 will take the train every day, we are still taking about paying nearly 1m per passenger to switch bus/coach users to rail.

I am not stuffing the numbers, I am looking at the numbers that already exist. We have NX passenger numbers, and we know they are going to grow significantly over the next 5-10 years. We also know there is the 109 with an additional 3 departures and only a marginally slower journey time, as well as 2 other services provided connections to DCU and UCD.

This per-passenger cost is simply not sustainable if we are to have any serious ambitions to improve PT in Ireland. It doesn't scale - if replicated it would mean that spending 100B on public transport infrastructure would only provide services for 2% of the population.

And we shouldn't replicate that! The point is connecting the biggest nodes in a network with high-capacity options, for context connecting the 50 largest towns in the country will give direct access to a train station to 1 million people, whereas the next 50 towns wouldn't even do the same for a third of that.

That said I have no idea where you got the 100B for 2% from, as just counting Navan's 33K for 3B euro scales to 9B for 2%. However, that's not counting Dunshaughlin which would have a direct connection, as well as Ratoath, Trim, and Kells which could all have significantly improved connecting services.

The M3 usage numbers are low. The sky is blue. With the greatest respect to the motorway, it goes to no where important and that's not to diminish any towns or villages along the route and beyond. That's no surprise. As I said myself in my post it's a commuter motorway. Comparing it to the M1 is ridiculous. The M1 connects Dublin and Belfast, the M7 connects Dublin to every where in the South of country West of the Wicklow mountains. But just because the M3 numbers don't match the the numbers Intercity motorways doesn't mean it wasn't or isn't needed. Remember all these arguments where had when attempts were made to stop the M3 being built. It's an old argument and a thread for a different forum.

The biggest issue with the M3 parkway is that it costs money to park and most trains go to the Docklands which doesn't link to the Dart or city center proper. So you need at least one more change at Clonsilla. Compare bus and train numbers along this corridor it tells it's own story.

But it says a lot about how flimsy the argument against the railway is that the focus is on the M3 motorway an argument that failed decades ago. Let's focus on a railway station that is completely suboptimal for a whole host of reasons. But most importantly let's ignore the actual public transport numbers along the route.

To be fair Connolly is an issue and how the Navan line would link in with the Maynooth line. It is a technical issue. On the other side of things Connolly is an issue for for the current Maynooth, Belfast and Rosslare lines. So something has to be done regardless of what ever decision is made regarding Navan.

There is a (unused) bus stop outside the station building within the car park which could be used, otherwise a stop could be added on the main road outside the station, although the walk from that stop would be a large ask unless they added a shortcut (which they realistically wouldn't). The 105 timetable was reworked in September and they failed to add the station as a stop even though it passes by the entrance to it, although as you said it also has a stop outside Dunboyne station.