Western Rail Corridor (all disused sections)

what_traffic wrote: »

Interesting point re the money - the ratios are the killer for the WoT though. How many kms do you get for €1 million for a greenway v's railway? You would create a National Greenway network with 100kms for the €100+ million that was spent on the short railway section between Athenry and Ennis.

You could do it for a lot less. A basic greenway, grit surface on code 804 stone on top of the stone ballast on the wrc would cost €20,000 per km according to one firm estimate. In other words, around 1% of what it would cost to put a railway on the Claremorris-Collooney route.

Tuam Greenway Project wrote: »

Cycling and walking are legitimate and smart forms of transport, not just leisure activities. One of the key aims of our campaign is to create safe and attractive routes to schools, industrial estates and sports facilities.

Greenways are smart transport infrastructure which just happen to be attractive to tourists.

The real tourist potential will only materialise when there is a network of joined up greenways threading around the country, opening access to places of interest ( yes we do have some of these in Tuam ), shops, services and greenway targeted accommodation.

Where we fall down in Ireland in not attracting cycling tourists is our lack of long cycle trails, trails that will provide enough distance for somebody to spend a week travelling around the country or the region on a bike. The Mayo greenway, or the proposed Collooney to Enniskillen greenway won't provide this kind of length, but if they were joined up via the wrc we might be close to getting started in the business.

The best chance of doing this in Ireland is to connect the existing short trail at Castlebar/Achill to Collooney via the disused line, using a minor road connection from the museum of country life to Kiltimagh. Pushing on to Enniskillen plus a branch to Sligo would give us one long trail, not a great length but maybe enough to attract the less energetic touring cyclists for a week, with access from Knock Airport.

The other option (and the more likely scenario) is to let the line rot and gradually fall into private hands, and to allow the proposed Dublin-Carlow and the Dublin-Galway cycle routes to develop. At that stage, it will be too late. The north west will have neither railway nor greenway, just the usual begging bowl out to chase the unachievable.

Drain the Shannon, anyone?

Hungerford wrote: »

The NTA displayed their usual innovative approach to consultation: they approached WOT directly and didn't tell anyone else about the consultation.

I honestly don't know the origins of this report. But (unless corrected) it looks very like WOT had some input to its inception. I would have liked to have seen input from more than just WOT, Irish Rail and the "Consultants" that completed the report. The entire document is amateur and out of touch with the reality of the situation. It's recommendations are more or less daft and built on fantasy.

dowlingm wrote: »

In which case you have to ask why a local lobby group was able to solicit this report, and whether other localities will be able to solicit similar ones for Athlone-Mullingar, Drogheda-Navan, Midleton-Youghal, the West Cork Railway...

we'l never see these lines re-opened or train services re-instated on these lines within this century if ever, mind you i've often failed to understand why the west cork network was completely removed yet other lines which will never ever be re-opened were left, if the story about the group from west cork coming up to dublin is true i suspect it was probably to teach them and the people down there a lesson and to show them how serious CIE and mr andrews was about closing it for good, surely to god the main part of it might be viable in the future? ditto to the small branches of it as much as it would be nice to re-open them to.

rainbowdash wrote: »

I doubt we will ever see a rail line reopened in the country again. Its going to be more closures if anything.

I could see Navan and possibly even Youghal, depending on whether we ever get out of this depression or not.

eastwest wrote: »

The problem is that because of the way that Ireland has developed, trains don't take you where you want to go, particularly if you commute. Not many Navan commuters want to go to the centre of Dublin, it seems. If you look at the massive park and ride facility at Dunboyne you can see that it is mostly empty; almost nobody coming in to Dublin on the M3 bothers to park there and get a train to Connolly station. It's a flop, basically, much like the Ennis-Arhenry link. Because the Dunboyne line never delivered the numbers promised by the pro-rail lobby, it will never be extended to Navan. They have the M3, and a bus on that can give a far better service than a train ever can.
Same is true in Galway, most of the employment is out in places like Ballybrit, and not in around the square where the train drops you. That is why a Tuam commuter service, particularly one that goes around the houses via Athenry, will never attract passengers; it needs to serve the areas where the jobs are, and it won't.
Hard to get that across to the pro-rail lobby though; in their minds they seem to live in a different era, before people had cars and before buses were comfortable and fast.
The more you look at it, the more the idea of a train service on the WRC, particularly on the northern section, is so far-fetched as to lie in the realms of fantasy. If there is one thing dafter than that, it is the idea that this same service would serve Knock Airport. I just can't see the average Knock user waiting around for a couple of hours for a train that will take him to Sligo at an average speed just above walking pace, by the time it negotiates all the crossings of roads and people's driveways.
The other bit of fantasy is that a Sligo-Galway line would bring tourists to places like Claremorris. In fact, if it carried any tourists, they would have no reason to get off in these small places; the most that Claremorris cold expect from a rail link is being photographed from the train as it passed by.
We'd all love to have trains on our doorstep, in case we ever decided to use them, but the reality is that we wouldn't, and there aren't enough of us in any case to sustain a service.
Has nobody actually thought this pro-rail philosophy through?

I know we are straying slightly OT, but I'll quickly make a point or two about Navan. It's viability and relevance got very mixed up in a period whereby a Government promised everything. Noel Dempsey was a massive culprit in dragging the whole thing out. Ultimately the project was budgeted at half a billion. Irish Rail committed huge acts of either complacency or outright disinterest in relation to the M3s physical impact on the alignment. They were aided by MCC. Dempsey didn't do his homework and talked it up despite the rising amount of facts that suggested the reopening wasn't going to happen.

The WRC was a smaller and cheaper project in the West of Ireland and this fact seemed to be used as a reason for reopening instead of hard economic facts. Once I heard the cost of reopening the Navan line, I knew the writing was on the wall, despite the positive reports that it would cover its operating costs. Navan was doomed because the corridor could not justify a rail and road investment. Furthermore there are reports out there drawn up by both Irish Rail and MCC (late 90s) that demonstrate they were happy to go along with Pace park and ride and the M3 based on the fact that Pace - Navan had no centres of population in between. As I already mentioned Irish Rail allowed the NRA to steamroll a motorway and associated roads through what turned out to be a preferred railway route. The WRC didn't have big issues like this. That said the period from 2000 to 2008 was one of build railways everywhere. Five years later and the railways that exist are struggling to hold on. I love railways. But Im realistic.

Markcheese wrote: »

Sure for the money they've already spent on the western ghost train they could have put in place a fantastic coach service infra structure and let someone else run it cheaper and faster...

they did that, their called roads, the stations and shelters all ready mostly exist, so thats enough infrastructure for busses, we don't need any of that fancy stuff for road transport. if the railway was built to a proper speed cutting out the little small stations then maybe it would be used but as the saying goes we are where we are.

galwaycyclist wrote: »

Another letter to the times today

On your bike? Not any time soon
http://www.irishtimes.com/debate/letters/on-your-bike-not-any-time-soon-1.1454219

A remarkable letter that is more alarming than one could realise. To digress for a moment - In a time where Ireland needs to generate money in any way possible, I am always drawn back to the precarious nature of it's Tourism industry. I live abroad in a place that is extremely dependent on Tourism to keep the local economy alive. While Ireland isn't as dependent, the comparisons are educational. Ireland has consistently trotted out the same tourist product for generations. It's old, it's tired and seems afraid of real change. The American green trouser brigade have gone. The days of Americans flying in on Aer Lingus 747s and camping out in posh hotels all over Ireland are over. The market is very different yet the marketing of the product is the same. We see ads based on the "craic in the pub", "the trad session" and of course the "scenery". It's never changed. None of it. Yet there awaits us, a massive tourism market if we think differently, use our resources and tap into it.

I've been back in Ireland on business for the last few weeks and I feel like a tourist so I can benchmark it against where I live in terms of a tourism product along with my other travels. It's bizarre! Where I live they will move heaven and water to facilitate a tourism product because the kickback is financial reward for the economy both local and national. While I have expressed a don't give a damn attitude to whether the WRC is developed into a greenway or not (its not my fight) I know it shouldn't reopen as a railway. However I do see the merits of doing something with it as I alluded to a few posts back. The general Greenway concept is literally just one concept that can begin a change in the Irish tourism product. And for the record it doesn't have to just be about walkers and cyclists. While Greenways generally suggest to people that its about the fit and healthy getting involved, I think thats a limiting factor to a facility that can have so many other appealing factors. For example the Segway concept is growing and I can't for the life of me understand why this concept has not been rolled out on the few Greenways we have. Greenways provide a perfect environment for Segways. This is just one example of how the Greenway concept can be developed as a tourism product. There are many more and I'm not bothered getting into it now because I am shocked by the attitude from those against the Greenway idea for the WRC. This alignment has wonderful potential to deliver a really clever tourism product to the region compared to a multi million euro railway that we don't need. That said, one only has to visit the West of Ireland to see that they are still trotting out the same old and tired tourist product. It's getting embarrassing and that's from the mouths of tourists I've talked with. In the minds of those against the WRC Greenway, that's okay as they can't see the problem. Its always been that way so why change it. The railway represents something different to them. Its about the pound of flesh and entitlement that they think they deserve. That is a very inward way of thinking and highlights the same west of Ireland begging bowl mentality that prohibits them from actually forging their own future. They don't see what they have. They only see what they think they should have.