Western Rail Corridor

dereko1969

They obviously aren't big on spelling or grammar in GMIT :rolleyes:

D'Peoples Voice

rkevin wrote: »

that dose not matter you used it today in todays reply and today it is 7 years out of date and has no useful input in 2009 in relation to where people live

You're having a laugh, the total increase across these counties was 10,764 people since 2002 according to the CSO, hardly going to change the density map that much!

Population Change Components by County, Year and Statistic
  	
Natural Increase since last Census (Number)
Galway 		6,996
Leitrim 	210
Mayo 		1,778
Roscommon 	642
Sligo 		1,138

felipesegundo

Does anyone have any idea how long it's likley to take to get from Limerick to Galway once the line opens?

Zebra3

rkevin wrote: »

it is the dirtyest capital city in europe

Link?

KC61

felipesegundo wrote: »

Does anyone have any idea how long it's likley to take to get from Limerick to Galway once the line opens?

More than likely about 1 hour 45/50 minutes initially.

Nostradamus

rkevin wrote: »

well Nostradamus u tell us where u live and work and we will see what little trinket the tax payers have done for you??????????????

I am universal conciousness suspended in a quantum field and I have no need for material objects. Except for my Bohs season ticket. Apart from that I am sorted.

Seriously, go ask the Western Development Commision to show you their accounts and what they actually delivered for the West of Ireland other than whinging and jobs for their own little QUANGO circle while pumping money into obsolete companies that should of been left to die years ago. One of them was in Athlone and they listed is as being in the "West" simply because it was on the Roscommon side of the river.

All their recent PR has been asinine bull**** about Climate Change and CO2 reductions in the West. They have swallowed 10s of millions of tax payers money and vast amounts of it wasted, and did I mention that according to an article in the Mayo News recently their accounts are still out of date? When you get to the bottom of that, then blame the jackeens for all your ills.

corktina

KC61 wrote: »

More than likely about 1 hour 45/50 minutes initially.

and how long for the bus?

KC61

2 hours 20 minutes

Chris_533976

Take Shannon and Ennis out of the bus route and it'll beat the train. That is just crazy.

Tadhg17

KC61 wrote: »

More than likely about 1 hour 45/50 minutes initially.

1 hour 45/50 initally? Do they plan to reduce this time further after the service starts or something?

Tadhg17

http://www.galwaynews.ie/6142-gort-section-western-rail-corridor-progress

GORT SECTION OF WESTERN RAIL CORRIDOR TO PROGRESS
Thu 8th January 2009
An appeal which threatened the Gort stop off on the Western Rail Corridor has been withdrawn.

In a statement to Galway Bay fm News, it's been confirmed that Coen Holdings Limited and Iarnrod Eireann have "reached agreement on the matter".

The Belfast owned company, based in Gort, appealed the decision by County Planners to allow Iarnród Eireann develop the station as part of the re-opening of the Limerick to Galway railway line.

The planned works include two new 90 metre platforms, an 80 bay car park, pedestrian bridge and access roads


According to this article, a new railway station in Oranmore will be opened in Garraun:

http://www.advertiser.ie/galway/article/6876

Galway Advertiser, January 08, 2009.
By Martina Nee

The Gort railway station is “one of the most significant stages” of the Western Rail Corridor, that’s according to the chairman of the Oireachtas Transport Committee, Frank Fahey, who welcomed the news that an objection lodged with An Bord Pleanála has now been withdrawn.

The new station at Gort forms Phase 1 of the Western Rail Corridor and trackwork began on the section in October 2007. The Ennis to Athenry line will link the towns of Sixmilebridge, Gort, Ardrahan, Craughwell, Oranmore, Athenry, and Galway.

Welcoming the news local Fianna Fail TD Frank Fahey said yesterday: “This is one of the most significant stages of the development of the Western Rail Corridor and I am delighted that it will now be in a position to move forward.

“In addition, I have also been informed that Garraun has been located for the Oranmore station as the level crossing at the old station site was not suitable for use. In order to progress matters as soon as possible, I have sought a meeting with Dr John Lynch of CIE concerning the station at Gort as well as the station at Oranmore,” he concluded.

Zoney

Chris_533976 wrote: »

Take Shannon and Ennis out of the bus route and it'll beat the train. That is just crazy.

That's not going to happen though. Also the bus will not be any faster when the dual carriageway is extended, because buses are limited to 80 km/h speed limit. I have been on buses where the driver breaks this - but services are timetabled for the slower speed, and mostly services stick to it - esp with intermediate pick-ups.

KC61

Chris_533976 wrote: »

Take Shannon and Ennis out of the bus route and it'll beat the train. That is just crazy.

Whatever about Shannon I cannot see Ennis being taken off the bus route - why would you miss out the biggest town on the route and the source of much business?

I really can't see Shannon being removed either - so the comparison is not really valid.

KC61

Tadhg17 wrote: »

1 hour 45/50 initally? Do they plan to reduce this time further after the service starts or something?

Possibly down to 1 hour 40 mins.

KC61

Tadhg17 wrote: »

Welcoming the news local Fianna Fail TD Frank Fahey said yesterday: “This is one of the most significant stages of the development of the Western Rail Corridor and I am delighted that it will now be in a position to move forward.

“In addition, I have also been informed that Garraun has been located for the Oranmore station as the level crossing at the old station site was not suitable for use. In order to progress matters as soon as possible, I have sought a meeting with Dr John Lynch of CIE concerning the station at Gort as well as the station at Oranmore,” he concluded.

You have to love our politicians. What possibly could a meeting between Frank Fahey and Dr. Lynch do to progress matters any more than they are happening already?

corktina

ishmael whale wrote: »

I think the name is a bit of a giveaway, at the same time:

Metropolitan \Met`ro*pol"i*tan\ a. [L. metropolitanus: cf. F. mtropolitain.] Of or pertaining to the capital or principal city of a country.

I’d be delighted to be proven wrong, but I don’t think that the WRC is expected to grow until it carries 2 million passengers a day, or 567.6 million a year. I take it the equivalent of the Metropolitan line in Ireland would be something like the rail line from Dublin to Dundalk or Mullingar.

http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/faq/lines/Met.asp

Metroplolitan as in GOING TO the Metropolis. Actually it was the Metroplolitan Railway who developed "metroland" from green fields, it was built for that specific purpose.

Schuhart

Chris_533976 wrote: »

Take Shannon and Ennis out of the bus route and it'll beat the train. That is just crazy.

In fairness, at this stage the proof of the pudding will be the eating. I await the wild assertions that the whole thing has been a tremendous success, without any actual clear statement of what passenger numbers are being achieved or how much the running costs amount to.

corktina wrote: »

Metroplolitan as in GOING TO the Metropolis. Actually it was the Metroplolitan Railway who developed "metroland" from green fields, it was built for that specific purpose.

Indeed, going to the Metropolis or 'capital or principal city of a country'.

Are you disagreeing with the statement 'the equivalent of the Metropolitan line in Ireland would be something like the rail line from Dublin to Dundalk or Mullingar'? Maybe you are not, I'm just wondering.

corktina

no, not disagreeing with that


..or agreeing....:D

sdanseo

How anybody can condone this project in its current form is beyond me. 110 minutes to do 90km? That's what, 70km/h or 45mph?

It will be faster by car, faster by bus, faster by plane and to be honest it' s not that far off being faster by bloody bicycle. And that's with the current road link, there's a new motorway going to be linking the route in few years' time.

What a fantastic waste of money.

Pisser Dignam

sdonn_1 wrote: »

How anybody can condone this project in its current form is beyond me. 110 minutes to do 90km? That's what, 70km/h or 45mph?

It will be faster by car, faster by bus, faster by plane and to be honest it' s not that far off being faster by bloody bicycle. And that's with the current road link, there's a new motorway going to be linking the route in few years' time.

What a fantastic waste of money.

All IE have managed to do here is reopen an outdated route that isn't even a direct Galway-Limerick link. Athenry must be the luckiest town in Ireland - a new railway line and a huge motorway axis, for a town of 3,000.

In fact, this line is just as indirect as Limerick-Cork, and how many people bother with that journey? The Galway-Limerick-Cork journey will be nothing more than a tourist trail - ticket pricing will see to that.

IE can't seem to grasp two of the most basic and fundamental of concepts - 1) a straight line between two points, and 2) the emerging motorway network and its effect on rail.

Rail is DOOMED.

Schuhart

Pisser Dignam wrote: »

IE can't seem to grasp two of the most basic and fundamental of concepts - 1) a straight line between two points, and 2) the emerging motorway network and its effect on rail.

In fairness, I don't necessarily think that IE are the authors of that ludicrous situation. All of the points you make are known and stated. But there's no political coherence. WRC supporters just want to see the line built. They honestly don't care if it does anything. The building of the line is an end in itself.

I know its a strange way to look at the world. But that seems to be how it is. They would prefer to see money wasted in Clare than used productively elsewhere.

Pisser Dignam

Schuhart wrote: »

In fairness, I don't necessarily think that IE are the authors of that ludicrous situation. All of the points you make are known and stated. But there's no political coherence. WRC supporters just want to see the line built. They honestly don't care if it does anything. The building of the line is an end in itself.

I know its a strange way to look at the world. But that seems to be how it is. They would prefer to see money wasted in Clare than used productively elsewhere.

I dont see a need for distinction when talking about IE/NRA/RPA - and the government. They are mere henchmen. They are the branches of the tree. IE is flawed and blinkered and weak - that means its masters must also be.

Schuhart

Pisser Dignam wrote: »

I dont see a need for distinction when talking about IE/NRA/RPA - and the government. They are mere henchmen. They are the branches of the tree. IE is flawed and blinkered and weak - that means its masters must also be.

Fine, but how do you feel about these people.

The WRC campaign is supported by over 100,000 citizens' signatures; 12 Western County and City Development Boards; all west coast local authorities; 3 regional authorities; The Council for the West; Shannon Development; the Western Development Commission; The Border Midlands and West Regional Assembly; National University of Ireland Galway, 3,377 Community and Voluntary organizations, members of the Community and Voluntary Forum along the West coast; all the Dáil represented political parties; all west coast Chambers of Commerce; ICTU in the West; IFA; IDA; Ireland West Tourism, Local Development Agencies.

Because the real problem is that the viewpoint of West On Track and their ilk gets articulated and accepted on political agendas, and views like yours and mine don't.

How this situation can be changed is something that has exercised my mind for quite a while. Because I find there isn't exactly a vast groundswell of opinion in our favour. Certainly, there's people out there who share our outlook. Certainly, no WRC advocate has ever been able to refute our views with logic or evidence. But I'm not confident that someone making the kind of point that we make would find that view reflected in the political system.

So, essentially, the reason why IE/RPA/Government do what they do is because West On Track and their ilk have traction in the political system. How we break that traction and replace it with reason I just don't know.

corktina

regrettably there are no votes in refusing to reopen a railway that 100,000 fairly uninformed people have signed a petition for....

Amtmann

Schuhart wrote: »

How this situation can be changed is something that has exercised my mind for quite a while. Because I find there isn't exactly a vast groundswell of opinion in our favour. Certainly, there's people out there who share our outlook. Certainly, no WRC advocate has ever been able to refute our views with logic or evidence. But I'm not confident that someone making the kind of point that we make would find that view reflected in the political system.

Sadly this seems to be an insoluble problem. And people, from all backgrounds, just do not recognise that there is anything wrong. If they do, they don't seem able to connect the dots and grasp that dispersed settlement is the chief cause of our ills.

The problem itself is multi-faceted, and you've covered this admirably on politics.ie

I see it as being a direct result of the peculiar nature of Irish national identity, which is of an extremely parochial and provincial quality - a hallmark reflected in the political system. Towns and parishes form the basis of this kinship, rather than any romantic nationalist notion of the Irish landscape and its physical features as some sort of idyll. Is there any Irish equivalent of England's "green and pleasant land" motif? By and large, no. There's the local GAA club, the "county" and its jersey, and that's the crux of it.

This characteristic, plus:

1) the sheer number of small, privately owned farms (i.e the source of all these infinite "sites")
2) the lack of 19th-century urban and industrial growth (which caused us to remain mostly rural while the rest of Europe became urbanised and nucleated)
3) the convenience of the car (which makes rurbanity feasible)

have all conspired to create a pretty unique Irish problem that nobody quite knows how to solve, without resorting to what would no doubt be resisted as a form of totalitarianism.

dowlingm

It's worth noting that the catchment area for those 100,000 signatures is probably about the same length as Drogheda to Rosslare (Sligo to Limerick). You'd probably get 100,000 signatures to get an extra DART service or two without breaking sweat.

As for the timings, we'll have to see but here's something to keep in mind. Between 0725 and 2025 the wait time for a BE service is never more than 60 minutes. If you have to wait three hours for the next train or be halfway to Galway at worst on the bus by the time the train reaches the platform - and both go from the same place? 1h50 segregated vs 2h20 in mixed traffic looks pretty bloody awful.

Schuhart

corktina wrote: »

regrettably there are no votes in refusing to reopen a railway that 100,000 fairly uninformed people have signed a petition for....

Indeed, when it gets that far it is very hard to stop. So its nearly a question of how do we improve just the general standard and depth of thought that those 100,000 folk give to things involving real tax money getting spent. I mean, I take it we can all picture someone out shopping being approached, briefly hearing ‘Rail’ and ‘West’ and saying ‘of course I’ll sign’. Similarly, you can imagine all those worthy organisations like NUI Galway just getting a bit of correspondence in and sending back a letter of vague support without really enquiring into what exactly they were lending their name to.

I’m not suggesting I’ve any solutions at all. This is just where these thoughts lead me. Using that slightly waffly term, its about improving our social capital so that the public is not a lame duck target for this kind of thing. Because when the thing has grown legs, its already too late. I mean, I take it the great minds at work in NUI Galway can appreciate the WRC is a turkey, now that its problems have been laid bare. What’s the chance of them actually admitting they backed it without giving it much thought – given that applying thought to matters of relevance to Irish society is meant to be one of the things they are there for?

Furet wrote: »

have all conspired to create a pretty unique Irish problem that nobody quite knows how to solve, without resorting to what would no doubt be resisted as a form of totalitarianism.

Indeed, yet doesn’t it also seem like an unsustainable position? So change is inevitable – whether its us getting ourselves onto a sustainable course, or catastrophe.

Again, I’ve absolutely no idea how these matters can be pursued. I just feel we need to do our best, in individual interactions, to insist that at least known realities are spoken about and not hidden.

dowlingm wrote: »

It's worth noting that the catchment area for those 100,000 signatures is probably about the same length as Drogheda to Rosslare (Sligo to Limerick). You'd probably get 100,000 signatures to get an extra DART service or two without breaking sweat.

Indeed, but why isn’t there an ‘Interconnector On Track’ Website announcing they’ve done that very thing? Or that they’ve signed up all Midland and Eastern local authorities as sponsors? And so forth.

Because the point I’m trying to get at is the political culture easily accepts the WRC kind of approach. There seems to be almost an inbuilt feature that means this stuff gets up there. So, indeed, the WRC has no merit, but a big amount of momentum behind it. Threads here are a microcosm of the process. How far can you go in rational debate before someone pops up, obviously of a mindset to just back anything with ‘West’ in the title, regardless of any merit or even regardless of whether the lot of the West might actually be improved in some other way. And in that I’m not particularly saying ‘Its all West West West’. Just that when you post something that says ‘some facts about the WRC showing it’s a bit of a joke’, you don’t see posts in response saying ‘Yeah, well that’s why the ‘Interconnector On Track’ people were able to get 1 million people signing their petition.

I mean, I recall at the last election the Fine Gael manifesto made no firm commitments in relation to any rail development – apart from committing to opening the WRC in full.

Again, I’m not offering any solutions. I’m just trying to sit back for a moment and say ‘Why does that happen? What can we do (if anything) to make it so Fine Gael (or any party) would be more likely to give that commitment to the Interconnector (just to pick a useful project) instead?

ODS

I for one look forward to the WRC being open.

I'm Dublin-based without interests in the WRC area, other than I look forward to day whereby I'm able to take my bike from Waterford, Cork, Rosslare, Limerick, to Galway, Clare, or Mayo - without having to go via Dublin.

The critical mass in connectivity created by the new linkage, will I believe, contribute to sustaining and encouraging growth elsewhere on the network.
Limerick - Waterford is a dead duck without linkage to Galway and beyond; if the way is there, let's use it.

This is not to say that I'm against the Interconnector; lets have that too!

As far as I'm concerned for far too long it's been a case of either one or another public transport element in this country gets a scrap from the table - after priority has been given to roads and the NRA. I drive a car - yet I reject utterly such an approach, that ultimately has been advanced by vested interests.

Posters on here give out about the WRC lobby; the WRC are amateurs when it comes to shoving their agenda onto government policy; if you want to see pros at work, take a look at SIMI, AA, NRA, and the construction lobby groups such as CFI... I suspect were more concrete being used for WRC - rather than just making efficient use of under-utilised resources - there would be a lot more talking it up.

According to Seán Barrett, TCD economist, the national roads budget went from 5.6 billion to 16.4 billion already spent, with only 50% built so far.

Despite such over spending, last year while construction prices were tumbling all around the country, yet the NRA committed and locked in on 90% of their contracts.

I also note that down in La-La Land, ie NRA HQ on Waterloo Road Dublin 4, only last week they proposed spending a further €80 million on an engineering report on the proposed Dublin eastern bypass. Remarkable stuff altogether; clearly state-(over)paid road engineers are not living in the same recession-ridden country as I am.

In this context therefore, the money being spent on the strategic unifying of existing infrastructure by the WRC is merely buttons.

Next on the agenda - along with advancing the interconnector - should be reusing other existing lines, such as Navan - Dublin (via Drogheda), and Galway - Dublin, via Mullingar - hence cutting down journey time.

Zebra3

You seem to assume that the state's coffers are overflowing with spare cash....

ODS

Zebra3 wrote: »

You seem to assume that the state's coffers are overflowing with spare cash....

Far from it - that's why I abhor the outrageous waste of resources by the NRA... Billions, not millions :eek: