Minister confirms Navan rail design to be included in 2006 Estimates

NavanJunction1

The Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen through correspondence with Meath on Track and Minister Mary Hanafin has confirmed that design of the Navan line is to be funded next year.

This a significant developement as design and planning of the line means that for the first time in all the years of promises, it is possible that the line will be reinstated as MCC can start to impose levies to part fund the line's consruction.

The important question of when still remains however. Meath needs rail now, not 2015. What took 3 years in 1859 to construct with Picks and shovels, should not take 10 years now.

Written correspondence can be viewed at www.meathontrack.com

Transport21 Fan

Great news and well done, although I wish Meath on Track would forget about Kells and all that ****e and concentrate on the real meat of Navan.

With the closing of the NEC plant tonight I had to laugh at the look on Dempsey's face when Brian Dobson mentioned "they will all have to join the thousands of Meath people who have a long commute to Dublin each day?" - you could almost sense Dempsey thinking to himself "oh ****e..."

Me thinks a whole other route could be selected to Navan and the current NTR Siding out of Clonsilla will have to be altered as well as it's a load of tokenist crap. Running the traditional line from Clonsilla to Navan would be just an exercise in Irish railway tradition - the whole approach to getting a rail line to Navan really needs to be reworked with a blank sheet of paper and forget the old days.

If I was involved in rail lobbying (other than another gob****e gving his opinion on a message board) - I would advise MeathonTrack to forget Kells and just concentrate on a viable route as if the Clonsilla-Navan line which closed in 1963 never exsisted.

Who knows...maybe the Drogheda-Navan line upgrade might be the best way to go in the end. But forget the historical railway and stick with current population maps of Meath. Comparing the Meath of 1963 to today, would be like comparing the Meath of 1863 to today.

But anyways, this is very positive development. Keep the fire under their backsides and forget about meaningless issues like the drain pipe as the line to Navan is a blank sheet with no CIE property to be utilised anyways. Everything to play for, in many ways Meath on Track are lucky that pipe was run down the old alignment as it's a good excuse not to use it.

You do of course realise that once Navan is rail connected you'll then be rewarded with the CIE culture of late trains, appalling customer service, volitile unions who use the commuters of Navan as a randsom, the wrong timetables posted on the train stations, PIS system switched off, inaudible announcements, trains stopping in the middle of nowhere and no reason given etc...

NavanJunction1

Transport21 Fan wrote:

You do of course realise that once Navan is rail connected you'll then be rewarded with the CIE culture of late trains, appalling customer service, volitile unions who use the commuters of Navan as a randsom, the wrong timetables posted on the train stations, PIS system switched off, inaudible announcements, trains stopping in the middle of nowhere and no reason given etc...

As I mentioned somewhere recently, the commuters in Meath would be quite happy even to accept the Cravens.. And as many as you have..:) Any train service is better than none - though obviously people are likely to become a little more demanding than that once the line is in..

Transport21 Fan wrote:

Great news and well done, although I wish Meath on Track would forget about Kells and all that ****e and concentrate on the real meat of Navan. I would advise MeathonTrack to forget Kells and just concentrate on a viable route as if the Clonsilla-Navan line which closed in 1963 never exsisted. But forget the historical railway and stick with current population maps of Meath. Comparing the Meath of 1963 to today, would be like comparing the Meath of 1863 to today. Everything to play for, in many ways Meath on Track are lucky that pipe was run down the old alignment as it's a good excuse not to use it.

Realistically, Navan is a good start (in fact most people in Meath would be quite happy with just that link. However, with the population forcast to rise possibly to 500,000 in the county in coming decades, and bearing in mind similar growth in sth Cavan, which is a sizeable hinterland of Kells, it probably isn't such a bizarre idea to at least put the link out there.

I take your points re population centres - I guess the scoping study will sort that issue out..

dr zoidberg

500,000?! Could you give a link for that?

Good to see the government finally doing something about this - I agree with Transport21 fan though, they should look at all the routes. Clonsilla station will be under a lot of pressure from the extra trains on the existing Maynooth line by the time the Navan link is open. The station itself is at a level crossing and can't really be widened, so it's not the most ideal location. Creative use of signalling could manage the extra traffic but it's still messy.

dbnavan

Great news about time, FF are panicing, and rightly so.

MarkoP11

dr zoidberg wrote:

Good to see the government finally doing something about this - I agree with Transport21 fan though, they should look at all the routes. Clonsilla station will be under a lot of pressure from the extra trains on the existing Maynooth line by the time the Navan link is open. The station itself is at a level crossing and can't really be widened, so it's not the most ideal location. Creative use of signalling could manage the extra traffic but it's still messy.

Clonsilla level crossing is to be closed anyway. Removal of other level crossings appears likely.

The Clonsilla Dublin section will be able to take 12 trains an hour, 4 Maynooth, 4 Pace, 2 Longford, 2 Navan, roughly 14,000 an hour

The route via Drogheda is slower by about 20 minutes but an hourly service wouldn't cause much trouble, plently of spare capacity and would be very handy if you live in Navan and work in somewhere on the northside DART line.

There is a mental block about this line, I expected that the capacity excuse would appear but no it was a no money issue, in fact the unwillingness to even ask for the money, 50 million would sort it out. This tends to be enlightening http://www.platform11.org/campaigns/navan/navan_drogheda.php


There are plenlty of murky things going on in Navan, Meath CC and the sewer pipe exposed the farce of there so called support, they backtracked changed there story and I have it in writing

murphaph

dr zoidberg wrote:

500,000?! Could you give a link for that?

Good to see the government finally doing something about this - I agree with Transport21 fan though, they should look at all the routes. Clonsilla station will be under a lot of pressure from the extra trains on the existing Maynooth line by the time the Navan link is open. The station itself is at a level crossing and can't really be widened, so it's not the most ideal location. Creative use of signalling could manage the extra traffic but it's still messy.

Clonsilla will be fine. The plan is for 4 tph from Maynooth and 4tph from M3 P&R (Pace). The latter will see some of these extended to Navan (unlikely to be all 4 in the hour except maybe at peak times). So it's 8tph through Clonsilla plus Longford commuter and Sligo IC. It's still well able for that with proper signalling. It's only something like 10 or 11 tph at peak. That's a 5 or 6 min headway and you can get that with the existing signalling from my observations. Clonsilla (my local station) will have a great service (well, in theory, it is CIE!). The level crossing is planned to close longer term. A new link road from Ongar Village (behind Johnston Mooney and O'Brien's bakery) to the M4 interchange at the Spa Hotel is planned, including a new brigde over the Liffey. This will allow the level crossing at Clonsilla to close as local vehicular traffic can go via Porterstown.

NavanJunction1

dr zoidberg wrote:

500,000?! Could you give a link for that?

It's an guess-estimate courtesy of Dominic Hannigan in the local papers. Basically he calculated that if planning permission was given for all of the submission before MCC, that would be the population we'd be heading for. Again, it's probably doomsday scenario and thankfully not everything gets permission, but remember recent press reports have said 7m people on the island in coming decades, most population growth to be in the NE.

285,000 is MCC's estimate for the next decade but recently it came out that the county was 10,000 ahead of 2011 projections.

I'm not entirely convinced that anyone has a handle on this - I recently read an article from 2003 by Frank McDonald - he pointed out that rezoning/development etc in Meath is like a runaway train..

dr zoidberg

murphaph wrote:

...

Cheers, I didn't know that. I knew about the Outer ring road but is the Liffey bridge to the Leixlip junction definitely being built?

500,000 does seem a bit much for Meath but nonetheless it will have a very big population in the future. AFAIK it's current population is less than Kildare which has about 170,000 people, but Dunboyne, Ashbourne and Navan are experiencing massve growth (also Clonee but all the new "Clonee" housing estates are being built in Clonsilla) and a proper commuter rail network is vital. Predictions are that the Irish population will be 5 million by 2020, of course that could be an underestimate but I don't think our population is going to rise exponentially and it will probably reach a point where it levels off, in fact immigration is the main reason this is being delayed.

Development is getting out of hand in some commuter counties, I don't know much about Meath's situation but KCC have allowed Athy to increase from a population of 3,000 to 11,000 in five years - absolute madness The Leixlip-Celbridge-Maynooth population growth has been much more modest, despite them being in the Metropolitan area. It's a joke, they seem determined to increase the number of long-distance commuters.

Anyways, back on topic, the government is finally doing what it promised 4 years ago. Hopefully they can deliver this project on time.

NavanJunction1

dr zoidberg wrote:

Kildare which has about 170,000 people.

Meath about the same.

murphaph

dr zoidberg wrote:

Cheers, I didn't know that. I knew about the Outer ring road but is the Liffey bridge to the Leixlip junction definitely being built?

The outer ring road plans have changed since the old days of Dublin County Council. The old plans had the ORR countnuing north over the Liffey from the Woodies Interchange on the N4 and on to connect with Blanchardstown Road South. This has been ditched by FCC and in it's place a new road much further west has been planned (well, included in the Development plan).

Here's the northernmost map and here's the southernmost one. You can see where the dashed grey line runs roughly north-south, indicating the approximate route.