Dublin cited as example of "Less Good" transport practice by Report to Scottish Govt.

West Briton

Here is the part of a report where Dublin is cited along with Lisbon as being an example of "Less good" practice in the totality of its planning for transport.

Ireland leads the way again!

P11 Comms

It's offical so, Dublin has a terrible public transport system...and what is every Irish politician and political party currently doing?

They are falling over each other to get commuter trains on the Western Rail Corridor to places like Kiltimagh and Swinford while the exsisting communter rail system in the East of the country is at the point of meltdown due to massive capacity and congestion issues.

When Platform11 comes out and points this out, we are accused of "not making sense" by WoT and their salivating army of British Trainspotters, who were expecting that Irish taxpayers spend €300 million so Nigel and Tarquin could come over from the mainland and photograph the Sligo timber train passing through Claremorries instead of Boyle.

The reality is that Platform11 came out against the Western Rail Corridor because common sense was missing from the whole WRC debate in relation to were the problems really are. Spending money in the East where the rail network is already at the point of meltdown is common sense and unlike WRC, serves the common good.

Irish polticans need to get with it and solve the problems on our exsisting rail network where real problems exsist instead of reopening the station where The Quiet Man was filmed.

www.platform11.org

jd

Originally posted by P11 Comms
They are falling over each other to get commuter trains on the Western Rail Corridor to places like Kiltimagh and Swinford while the exsisting communter rail system in the East of the country is at the point of meltdown due to massive capacity and congestion issues.

When Platform11 comes out and points this out, we are accused of "not making sense" by WoT and their salivating army of British Trainspotters, who were expecting that Irish taxpayers spend €300 million so Nigel and Tarquin could come over from the mainland and photograph the Sligo timber train passing through Claremorries instead of Boyle.


www.platform11.org

While I agree with the first paragraph, you do yourselves a disservice with the second paragraph. You seem to picked up the Irish Farmers Association manual to political lobbying-ie insult anyone who has a differing viewpoint..

P11 Comms

JD, the reopening of the Western Rail Corridor, with the possible exception of Galway-Limerick for inter-city trains (at some future date) would be a insane waste of Irish taxpayers money, mainly because our existing rail net work is far from perfect and the situation in Dublin is on the point of collapse. Skerries in north country Dublin is about to get 29,00 new houses and most of the people moving into these houses are going there to use the rail system. Skerries will need a minimum of 12 trains PER HOUR just to keep up with current demand.

Could you imagine an Irish Minister for Health telling people waiting on hip replacement operations that they have to wait until a cosmetic surgery clinic in Fox rock is opened first. This is the level of logic displayed by Irish politicians regarding the WRC.

Dublin needs massive investment for the people using the rail network now and into the future. The people behind the reopening of the WRC are demanding that Collooney in County Sligo with its population of 619 people is to get a second train station and a commuter rail service. Navan, Dublin Airport, Lucan, Interconnector anybody? Has we completely lost touch with reality here or is the needs of a slam village in the west greater than 2.5 million people living in the GDR?

People have to realise that this whole WRC idea as proposed in its current form is madness and Irish politicians are really showing themselves up for the transport Neanderthals they truly are, by rushing to get as many soundbites as possible concerning it. The same politicians have little or nothing to offer the tens of thousands of people standing on our Inter-City and Commuter rail network tomorrow morning come rush hour, except talking about the “vital” need for commuter trains to Knock International Airport and the same politicians wonder why the Scottish Government points out that Dublin pubic transport is a total joke.

Now we have the Scottish Government coming out and pointing what we all know and that rail transport in Dublin is a disaster, so what are Irish politicians doing? Making mindless speeches about the “vital” need for three trains a day between Sligo and Limerick through mostly empty barren countryside filed with dispersed one-off houses. This is why Dublin is the mess it.

Trainspotter fantasies of taking a train once up the WRC is a huge part of the driver to get that line open. These people see it as the Holy Grail for trainspotters (especially ones in the UK) – this is fact. The trainspotter went insane when Platform11 pulled the plug on our support for the WRC after we read the proposal and saw how unprofessional the thing was – do they give a damn about the tens of thousands of people standing on trains in the East of Ireland every day? Nope.

If you want to see the kind of arguments which are driving the reopening of the WRC then look no further than the bizarre hyperbole below. This is considered rational arguments by our polticians:

Is Dublin deaf to dissent from beyond the Pale?
Irish Independent
Thursday February 26th 2004
by Marese McDonagh

There is a growing "them and us" syndrome between Dublin and the rest of the country and people who live outside the city are mad as hell about a lot of things.

If the campaign to re-open a disused rail link through the western part of the country doesn't get the green light, it's going to be perceived as yet another indication that nobody is listening in the capital city.

A Sligo-based IFA official, Joe Coulter, warned recently that the country might just "topple into the Irish Sea" if a serious effort is not made to correct the population imbalance.

He was speaking in advance of the Minister for Transport, Seamus Brennan's visit to five railway stations on the Sligo/Limerick line, which closed to passengers in the 1960s.

There is grass growing on the track at most of the 20 stations on this route. Colman O Raghallaigh, spokesman for the lobby group West on Track, said that when they closed it down the government of the day "pulled out of the west and told the people they could go to America or England".

But, as the Minister was told, they may have closed it down but thanks to the Minister's intervention in the late 1980s, when he held the same portfolio, they never took away the line and the thoroughfare is still in public ownership.

Consultants believe that as a result, the capital costs of restoring the service would be just under euro250m.

Minister Brennan is insisting that no section of the line can be reopened until the sums are done because it is taxpayers' money which is at stake. Kiltimagh man Joe Kelly wondered if there was such rigorous value-for-money examination of projects like the Luas and Metro.

Luas gets mentioned a lot in the context of the western rail corridor. The consultants who examined the project pointed out that the 114 miles of rail between Collooney, Co Sligo, and Ennis, could be made operational for the equivalent of five miles of Luas or 2.5 miles of Metro.

The Galway-born Minister may have felt he was on home ground when he went west recently but on his visit he was effectively welcomed to one of the colonies.

Father Micheal Mac Greil, a sociologist in Kiltimagh, Co Mayo, explained to Minister Brennan that for several years now, people living in the west, the Midlands and parts of Ulster have started to believe that they are a colony of the expanded Pale. Father Mac Greil has spent 25 years hounding successive governments about this rail project and took the opportunity to educate the relevant Minister about a condition he dubbed "post-colonial attitudinal schizophrenia".

Interestingly, after Minister Brennan walked the line at five stations in counties Sligo, Mayo and Galway, his audience seemed equally divided between those who believed he had delivered nothing and those who can already hear the commuter trains whizzing between Athenry and Galway.

The Minister's promise to set up a working party to examine which sections of the line might be considered first, was greeted with snorts of derision from his political opponents. Sligo/ Leitrim Independent TD, Marian Harkin, a former chair of the Council for the West, said she was dumbfounded by the lack of a financial commitment, especially given the euro37m to be spent to allow Luas "cross the road" at one Dublin roundabout.

Fine Gael's Michael Ring said the country was full of reports. "What we want are euros," he insisted.

West on Track have derided the "negative spin" put on the Minister's words, but Father Mac Greil, with no pun intended, had to "read between the lines" to find the positive news. And while the battle-hardened campaigner insisted that agreement in principle had now been delivered, Father Mac Greil said he had also hoped that "a bit of track would be delivered in the short term".

The Minister did make a pointed reference to the potential of a commuter service between Tuam and Athenry and O Raghallaigh believes that work on this section of the line will begin in 2005.

The Minister's comment that the line would not be built on sentiment or emotion alone clearly nettled some of those who had already done their sums and believe the line will generate more than enough income to pay its running costs.

But as with all great rail lines there is sentiment attached. Dozens of local people, many of them elderly, turned out to meet the Minister when he and his entourage crowded into stations in Claremorris, Kiltimagh, Charlestown, Tubbercurry and Tuam .

In Kiltimagh, 79-year-old Henry King said that as a temporary postman he had witnessed many tears being shed in the station when he delivered mail to the train in the 1950s. "A lot of people left from that station and went across channel and they never came home," he said.

West on Track believes what is needed now is a commuter service for the thousands of workers who do not have to emigrate but who cannot park their cars in cities like Sligo and Galway. Traffic congestion is now costing Galway euro1.8m every week, with the volume of traffic on the N17 from Tuam up nearly 40pc in the last five years.

All week local radio stations have told the stories of those whose lives could be changed by a decent public-transport system. As one business man in Mayo said: "We do not want to be seen as whingers. We are just here to make our case."

Crossley

While I agree with the first paragraph, you do yourselves a disservice with the second paragraph. You seem to picked up the Irish Farmers Association manual to political lobbying-ie insult anyone who has a differing viewpoint

I for one am particulary concerned with the anti-Brit undertone to many of P11's rants of late.