Kite flying at Iarnrod Eireann

The last week has seen a flurry of short newspaper articles about rail services in Ireland. On Monday, Tuesday and Friday we were treated to regurgitated press releases about investments in intercity lines to reduce travel times and a spur to Dublin Airport from the northern commuter line. Then to top it all off on Saturday we were treated to an editorial summing up the week's propaganda.

Now as regular readers will know, I'm all in favour of rail as a mode of transport. In an ideal world I would have most commuting, much freight and a substantial amount of inter-urban travel done by train. However, these announcements are not realistic proposals to improve the rail service in Ireland. They are kite flying exercises by Iarnród Éireann in the hopes that some scraps of funding will be sent their way if sufficient projects are proposed.

With regard to the Inter City improvements, the logic here seems to be that

1. Trains used to be faster than cars
   
2. We spent loads of money on motorways
   
3. Road trips between cities are now faster than the train
   
4. We should spend loads of money on trains to match (or beat) road travel times
   

While I would advocate investment in our heavy rail infrastructure it has to be for the right reasons and losing market share to buses and cars is not a valid reason. Colm McCarthy, of Bord Snip fame, also had a go at this plan recently. Written for the Farmers' Journal it has to get in swipes at the jackeens living in Dublin, and he makes some unfair comparisons to make his points. Comparing a road trip from the Red Cow to Dunkettle is not the same as one from Heuston to Kent stations. He needs to add at least 30 minutes to his trip time, and during rush hour you could easily make that over an hour. All of a sudden the train starts being competitive again.

The second proposal, linking Dublin Airport to Connolly via the existing rail line from Clongriffin is daft. It has already been rejected several times by commentators, planners and even Iarnród Éireann themselves as unworkable. If just the spur was built, the journey would take approximately 40 minutes, already longer than bus journeys via the Port Tunnel and would run at most once every 15-20 minutes due to existing congestion on the mainline. The way round this bottleneck is to quad-track the line from Clongriffin to Clontarf but that would involve substantial engineering works, not to mention CPOing swathes of back gardens through Clontarf, Killester and Raheny.

As always with Dublin transport it boils down to two issues - Interconnector and Metro North. At this stage I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record but, despite the recession, they are no brainers. Just do it! When the economy picks up again in the future, McCarthy will be the very one giving out about Dublin traffic and how it is killing the economy.

Transport Blues

It was only a matter of time I suppose, but it is disappointing to read in today's Irish Times that only one of the three big public transport initiatives in Dublin will now proceed in the medium term. Each of the three projects brings different benefits to the city but only through their combination would we end up with a truly integrated public transport system in Dublin.

From the noises that are being made it seems like Metro North will be the most likely to proceed. I have previously blogged on MN and still believe that it is fundamental to the proper future development of the city. Just to reiterate there though, it is NOT just a link to the airport. It is a corridor connecting Swords (40,000), the Airport (20 million passengers), Ballymun (25,000), DCU (15,000 students and staff), Mater Hospital (site of Children's Hospital) with the City Centre and interchanges with Luas and Dart.

The second option is the Interconnector, or Dart Underground as it is being marketed. This line which would join Heuston station with the northern Dart line through a tunnel via Christchurch, Stephen's Green and Docklands, bypassing Connolly, is actually the most important project in my opinion. The current bottleneck at Connolly cannot be remedied by signalling or other incremental improvements. The only way to improve services is to bypass the station and end up with one line running Malahide to Sallins and the other from Greystones to Maynooth with a crossover at Pearse.

The third option is the LUAS BX-D project from Stephen's Green, via O'Connell Street and Grangegorman to join the Maynooth trainline at Broombridge. While it makes sense to finally join the two existing LUAS lines, this should not be done until the central section of MN has been built as that construction will most likely result in tearing up the BX section of LUAS along Westmoreland and O'Connell Streets.

Of course, the really galling thing about all this is that none of these are new projects. All have been mooted in some form or another since the mid 70s in the DRRTS in the case of MN and the Interconnector or the mid 90s plan for LUAS. Successive governments have tinkered around with the plans, sat on reports, commissioned new studies and all other possible time wasting activities rather than just going ahead and building the infrastructure. Now when we need to throw all our spare cash into the banks, it comes as no surprise that worthwhile infrastructural investments are the first to be sacrificed on the altar of the EU/IMF.

Metro North

Over the weekend just gone, Eamon Gilmore was interviewed on Marian Finucane's show on RTE radio. By all accounts it was quite a good interview but one item which he mentioned was possibly postponing the building of Metro North. Following on from a brief discussion of MN last week on Twitter with various people I feel the need to put my views on MN on paper.

Firstly, it is not just a link to Dublin Airport. MN is the key north-south spine of the integrated transport system planned for Dublin since the DRRTS report written in the mid 70s. In its current form it joins the city centre with the Interconnector, both Luas lines, and the Maynooth (and Navan whenever it gets re-built) line as well as hitting the Mater Hospital (site of the new children's hospital), DCU, Ballymun, Swords and a park and ride facility near the M1. The entire corridor is earmarked for denser residential development with high-tech and light industry as well as commercial in the mix.

Secondly, we can't just build a spur from Dublin Airport to say Portmarnock and then run trains into town along the existing alignment. This route is already suffering from congestion with the mix of DART, Suburban and Enterprise services and cannot be quad-tracked due to the width of the cuttings from Clontarf through to Kilbarrack.

Thirdly, while it will cost money to build MN, it won't cost money now. It is being built as a PPP, a model that I don't like but in this case it works in our favour. When the line opens in 2017 or thereabouts, we will start paying for it over the next 30 years or so. The expected cost of construction is about €2B so we are effectively taking out a mortgage on the infrastructure. Once paid off we will be able to reap the benefits for years to come. Admittedly rail has a high capital cost, but the return on investment is huge. Consider the line from Pearse to Dun Laoghaire. It was laid in 1834 and with two major changes, 1840s converting from standard to Irish gauge, and 1980s electrification for DART, it is still transporting tens of thousands of passengers a day.

Finally, if we don't build it now, when will we build it? Since DRRTS we have been dragging our heels on bringing Dublin up to 20th century levels. With construction costs substantially down and large numbers of construction workers unemployed this is the perfect project to undertake in the downturn. It is estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 people will be directly employed on the scheme with an additional 7,000 or so contractors, suppliers, hauliers etc required as well not to mention the infinite number of breakfast roll makers to keep all the above fed.

Between them Metro North and the Interconnector are vital to Dublin's future as a viable city. As projects they are far more important to the nation than many of vanity schemes such as the Western Rail Corridor, Atlantic Road Corridor and the M9 that have already been built or are still on the agenda. Some of those are more like this ...

Rail transport policy

To put all my cards straight on the table, I'm a massive train nut. Now not to the level of standing on wet and windy platforms writing down engine and carriage numbers - I'll leave that for others. However, I love the idea, history, engineering and potential of rail (heavy rail in particular) as a mode of transport for the future. So it has piqued my interest to see a couple of rail stories in the news recently.

Western Rail Corridor

At the end of March the Western Rail Corridor finally opened its doors to paying passengers. This is a project that I have been in two minds about since it started. The idea of connecting Cork, Limerick, Galway and Sligo with regular train service is a good one. However, investing in rail while at the same time building a HQDC or motorway in parallel to the route seems somewhat daft. For a fraction of the cost of the road the rail route could have been straightened and double tracked. With that investment, travel times would drop drastically, the timetable would be more reliable. This would push the train substantially ahead of the car along the route length and promote modal shift.

Unfortunately in this country we tend to not spend money in the most beneficial way. In 20-30 years time when petrol costs €10 per litre and personal, non-electric cars are a distant memory investment in rail will still be paying back. Consider the investments made in the 19th Century in rail - we're still using the same mainline alignment on all our major routes. Now consider how many times sections of the road between Dublin and Cork say have been re-jigged in the intervening period.

Waterford-Rosslare

With the opening of the WRC it should almost be expected that there would be a closure elsewhere. The Waterford-Rosslare line, while never terribly popular, has had a terrible service on it over the last number of years. A couple of trains a day that don't match demand periods but rather the drivers' and conductors' personal schedules is not the way to manage a line. Instead with a small amount of investment, a commuter line servicing the south coast and then up to Wexford town. Re-opening the line to New Ross would also be of great benefit but the old alignment is now covered by the main road in parts. A spur from Campile to the town side of the river could be considered.

There are lots of other things that could be done to improve rail transport in Ireland. Everyone keeps going on about Dart Underground and Metro as the only things that count and while they are vital, smaller projects in rural and other urban areas can achieve a lot of good with small, targeted investments. More on this anon.