Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Waterford/Rosslare Strand Railway reaches the buffer stops (again)!
Options
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
Now after all that old guff how about a real entertaining piece about the closure from http://pipsrailway.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/lets-not-suck-our-own-dicks-gentlemen/.....PS This in not a blog of mine - I wish it were!
Posted in Ireland by Chairman Pip on July 15, 2010
There is something of a congratulatory piece in the latest issue of Rail News on (you guessed it) Iarnród Éireann. Very much in the same tone as this article from Rail in 2008 (even going so far as to use the same picture of the Chief Executive, Dick Fearn, standing in front of a shiny new 22000 Class DMU). The article goes into all the super things that IÉ have been doing through Transport 21, like the €500m invested in new rolling stock, reopening the first stage of the WRC, restoring commuter lines to Navan and Midleton, with the crowning glory planned to be the Interconnector, the 7km tunnel under the centre of Dublin that will transform the DART and connect most of the suburbs surrounding the city through a high frequency rail service. Makes you think everything is hunky dory right? There’s nothing going on to the network except expansion. We all know that isn’t true, but there’s the merest passing reference to the issue that I’ve been commenting on for some time, the suspension of the Waterford-Rosslare service. Indeed, Mr Fearn only has this to say about it:
The service costs around €4 million a year to operate but generated only €40,000 from ticket sales. Once, foot passengers were regulars on the ferry to Rosslare; now they fly in on low cost airlines. We have to be realistic.
Indeed we do have to be realistic. Using just the facts ma’am, there’s very little point in carrying on with that kind of service. But that’s based on the badly timetabled one train per day in each direction, not the kind of service that the campaign to save the route advocates, which could see three or even four trains in each direction, timetabled to meet the genuine needs of commuters in the morning, during the day and in the evening. However, what about the threats that appear for other routes, such as the Limerick-Ballybrophy route or the remainder of the Waterford line to Limerick, or even the Ballina line, all of which have sparse services and are heavily subsidised. Or the great swathes of the country that have railway lines but no passenger service, either because the line is freight only, like the existing like to Navan, or simply because Iarnród Éireann decided they couldn’t be bothered anymore, like the line running through the town of Moate. Never mind the almost complete withdrawl from running freight on Ireland’s railways. Mr Fearn is a railwayman man and boy, and used to work for British Rail, after which he worked for Railtrack, so he’s perfectly well aware of the differences between the railways as a nationalised industry and the railways as a privatised one. Indeed, the reason he went to work for Iarnród Éireann was because it was like British Rail used to be:
(I wanted to) get (my) arms around a whole railway again, not just part of it
If you want a trainset, then you go and buy one in a hobby shop. This is a service we’re talking about, and you have to look at the service as a whole. To me it seems that Iarnród Éireann is a nationalised company operating like a private sector one, with one and a half eyes on the balance sheet all the time. While this is right and proper given the amount of public money that is spent on it (the annual budget is in the region of €500m), it is still a public sector concern, and the needs of the public should be addressed. But Iarnród Éireann has no regulator acting as the public’s advocate in the manner of the ORR (if I’m wrong about that, please tell me), no one to stand up to them and say “no, go away and think again”. Nor though does it have shareholders to answer to. It occurs to me that, with the planned removal of one significant route, in spite of the standard message about Waterford-Rosslare
…various options are being considered for the route from the port, including the possibility of a heritage line
not to mention the uncertainty hanging over other parts of the network, and the lack of interest in promoting freight, which could be a significant factor in the economic growth of the country, that this kind of self-congratulation on the part of Iarnród Éireann is somewhat distasteful.0 -
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
See, this is the sort of post that makes me sick and tired of many of the rail discussions here.
DW is currently on holidays so he won't be back until sometime next week. As a general warning to the rest of you, more trollery, don't care what side of the argument it comes from, will result in bans of minimum 1 month. This is because I take a dim view of trolling and I take a very dim view of mod instructions being ignored.
Cool it.
well said 0 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
Haddockman wrote: »They have taken the story off their front news page.
It's also been removed from Aertel. Fact checking - who needs it? 0 -
-
Advertisement
-
UPDATE Waterford to Rosslare rail line services by Corporate Communications
http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=765
Waterford-Rosslare service update, 15th July
As customers will know, Iarnród Éireann has applied to the National Transport Authority to suspend Rosslare-Waterford rail services on 21st July, with an alternative bus service to be provide by Bus Éireann from 22nd July onwards.
No decision has yet been made by the National Transport Authority in relation to this application.
Therefore, the existing rail schedule will continue beyond 21st July until further notice. We will advise customers as soon as further information is available.
Poor old Barry Kenny....he and the 'big dick' will be burning the midnight oil on this one. Wonder if he'll ever get a proper job? 0
This discussion has been closed.
Advertisement