Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

I was about to ask actually.

Frequency improvements between Limerick and Athenry are listed as an ongoing project (phase 1 apparently… wonder what phase 2 is…) and the map of ongoing projects in the report shows infrastructure upgrades accordingly - station upgrades at Gort, a passing loop at what looks to be Crusheen, which makes sense given the talk of reopening the station - but weirdly, at Cratloe by the looks of it and not Sixmilebridge.

Why on earth aren’t they adding a second platform at Sixmilebridge?? There is a 5km section of perfectly straight track west of the station which could easily house a dynamic loop, and a second platform at the station would do wonders. It is exactly halfway between Ennis and where the line branches off from the Limerick Junction line, so would be ideal for a loop.

I do remember IÉ talking earlier in the year about undertaking a study to look at loops at either Cratloe, Clarecastle, or one other location, but it wasn’t Sixmilebridge and I really don’t know why.

Adding a brand new loop somewhere where there isn’t a station seems ludicrous to me, it would slow services heavily and any delay would be immediately obvious to the passengers. At least when th delay is in a station loop, the doors remain open and passengers can stretch their legs or smoke or wherever. Why on earth are they not even considering Sixmilebridge for a loop??

it isn't.

in reality it costs buttons for what you actually get in return and we have one of the cheapest if not the cheapest railway to run in europe in terms of subsidy when examined against taking parts of bigger networks similar to our network size.

The DUP will combust at pretty much any project with Dublin in the title, so I'd be skeptical about any big works north of the border.

rail is not used inappropriately in this country however, so it's not really expensive at all, any genuine inappropriate rail closed in the 50s to the 70s and even then there were a couple of mistakes even for the time.
when we look at any of the actual full on rail reopenings that have happened in this country, they have all been a lot less cost then motor way projects.
the claimed costs for the limerick nenagh ballybroaphy line were debatable and very much so, some could and would argue they were hugely exaggerated but that's for another day.
when we really examine them vs the rest of the network when it had similar issues such as crossings and staffed boxes and manual signalling, none of the other lines even got anywhere near a fraction of that cost, so therefore they make no sense.
people are correct to point out that the run down of the line which was deliberate in reality, was not going to bring any sort of decent usage even though nenagh in itself is a reasonable size town which is correct to connect to the network, and forget about whatever suggested stations you claim are in the middle of nowhere as they aren't being built so are irrelevant.
the all ireland review is investing in inter city rail and high basis regional rail which will connect large populations and will hvve the numbers.
the only oddity is mullingar to porterdown which seems a bit random i would agree, but perhapse with some actual detail maybe it will turn out to have some merrit but i doubt it.
nobody is suggesting railways should be the primary way of traveling around the whole country, that's just the usual guff people such as yourself come out with because you are unable to deal with the reality that rail is having a renaissence and we have a very viable rail network as a whole, + there being more recognition now that there are a small few areas which aren't on the network that need to be as spending on road transport to serve them and have that as the only option is not cost effective in terms of all of the goals we need to achieve.
ireland is doing exactly what you are on about, investing in rail where it makes sense and is similar to or beats the competition, we tried it your way and it didn't work.
dart+sw being put on hold is nothing to do with athenry to claremorris, even if that line was not going to be reopened (and i'm not convinced it is) dart+sw will still be on hold.

A lot of the right foundations are being put in place but the "renaissance" itself is still to be realised in the future I think. We're only a few pulled projects away from describing it as a "moderate improvement" and forces are currently at play to water down many aspects of previous transport commitments.

Sean Canney has recently u-turned on speed limits and RSA reforms and is likely a champion of Western rail corridor (he has been quite active in publicising progress of that scheme). I don't believe that the future of all previously-committed rail projects are as secure as most of us would like. It looks like Darragh O'Brien is keeping things under control to a degree, but we could well be back to "buying local votes with National infrastructure funding". In that regard I would say the WRC and Dart+SW etc are inextricably linked. I say that as someone who would typically use neither: I have no horse in this race and am just glad the Cork Commuter projects haven't all been axed (yet).

17.10 seems quite reasonable I presume they can only schedule one service- is it too early for must office workers?

Nobody seems concerned that those trains cant actually get to Galway

Conviently ignoring the Oranmore passing loop which will more than double capacity into Galway City. Double. That's twice the number of trains. Add one or two carriages onto each of those trains and you've tripled capacity.

Athenry crying out for more train capacity, which can, "drumroll", be served by trains starting in Tuam or Claremorris or Westport. For some reason, some people seem to think that Tuam trains will directly compete with Athenry for capacity.

Even in a "nine to five" that actually finishes at at five, a 17:10 train needs you to basically work in the station.

If there's a single service running somewhere as an evening commuter, 17:50 is probably more sensible

Yeah but here's the thing. With the current single track constraint they manage to operate 12x trains in the morning between 5.25am and 9.55am, 6x outbound and 6x inbound. Maximum "clock face" frequency in that period would be 14x trains, so they do pretty well given the constraints.

They manage this by effectively bunching inbound and outbound services together, so you have 3x outbound trains before 6.30am, then a gap of 1hr and 1hr 20mins.

Here's where the passing loop is a total game changer. 14x maximum becomes 28x. That is an ENORMOUS increase in potential frequency. Add in additional carriages and you've added even more capacity.

I absolutely agree with you here, all of the Athenry commuter services will be extended as far as Tuam (with maybe a few extra services added), and then additional Westport services will not be too frequent so shouldn’t take up too much capacity.

I’m not at all saying that the line shouldn’t be doubled, it absolutely should, and should have been done first, but in this county, the only way to get something done is for things to get so bad that it actually needs to happen.

When Oranmore, Athenry, Tuam, Limerick, or Athlone commuters start demanding more trains more regularly, then the case can easily be made for this ‘’magic easy fix” which will as a result get public backing.

In terms of doing Tuam in phases, is this actually happening, or just a thought? Because I agree I think that would be a far more sensible way to do things, both in terms of freeing up money by only building one phase at a time, but also by making the Tuam-Claremorris section more viable and actually usable by going for planing permission to actually bridge the N17 or even realign either it or the railway.

I suppose the only worry is that a Navan situation would happen again where the ‘immediately to follow’ phase 2 gets postponed indefinitely (and is still nowhere near construction…). But Tuam is the priority and probably the biggest traffic driver on the line, so getting that built first would actually be pretty sensible I suppose.

I only have one datapoint - I used Nenagh to Ballybrophy at 8am(ish) one morning and there were 5 people on it. Max line speed of like 80kmh.

And the upgrade north of the border could of course be called "Dublin Ulster Project". That should satisfy them.

A passing loop isnt going to cut it im afraid. Look at the proposed frequency increase kn Dublin to Galway