Western Rail Corridor / Rail Trail Discussion

One lesson to be learned from this: No more policy strategy reviews. They are an excuse for further reviews and indefinite postponment of any real tangible investments.

The cost of all the reviews of the last 20 years (including the cost of delays) would have financed quite a lot of real developments

By the rime the All Ireland Review is published (late 2024!!!) it will be somewhat dated and therefore a review and revision of the Review will be necessary. Rinse and repeat. Madness.

I didn't see that update - the announcement that it's pushed back to third quarter of 2024. Do you have a link please?

Even the NDP seems to be subject to changes if projects like the N17 upgrade is pushed back or shelved - and this a project that was previously regarded as key to developing an Atlantic economic corridor.

lt feels like a lot of the recent uncertainty and mixed messaging could be the consequence of a 3-party government set up that's going a bit stale. Parties with different agendas pulling in different directions resulting in stagnation.

If something is important enough and worthwhile for NI, it still can get sign off. The AIRR is just another report for the shelf. If the civil servants thought it was important, they could get it the necessary sign off.

The AIRR is only a report. Whatever about an NI Governmant being needed to approve projects or programmes stemming from the AIRR, surely the Irish Government can go ahead and publish and be damned. Bureaucratic hyper-caution at its worst.

I think that you must have missed the approval of energy grant payments which was delayed due to no NIE but happened eventually. Health cuts are happening all over the UK, it's not due to the lack of Ministers in NI. I'm sure sign off was needed for the Irish government paying for southern student nurses to study at northern universities but again it is happening.

Civil servants can operate within existing policies set by NIE when it was still operating. I doubt there were any policies against reports on the rail network.

I'm just saying if the report was important, it would be published. Not publishing doesn't really change anything, it just gives an excuse to hold up greenway projects.

"Clasrmorris-Athenry freight - linking to Ballina". What does this mean? Where does this freight go from Athenry?

I can think of freight flows which should be orders of magnitude more promising than this.

Don't know where you get your idea that Company X "wouldn't bother with green-washing". You could apply your follow-on logic to any company, and if it applied no-one would be doing it. But we know that's not the case.

And in fact, if Baxter wanted to just do the right thing, then we wouldn't know about it. Instead we have (presumably) a press release which the Connaught Telegraph helpfully re-published (Note: no "journalist" named on the "article"). The fact that they want to virtue-signal about their decision ("look how green we are") should indeed make one question their motivations.

I disagree. I don't get the sense that they are just saying "look how green we are" as some empty slogan. Whatever their own motivations they also have said that reducing carbon is "a key expectation of its global customer base". Its the world we live in now where switiching to lower carbon options will make business sense and make a company more attractive to customers.

Baxter is a major employer in Mayo and I would think a press release about switching to rail was a positive thing. To me its sending a message to other local businesses to consider a similar approach and it would be a welcome thing to hear similar announcements from other companies. But you seem to think it should be kept quiet and that if it arrives in the local media then it must be empty rhetoric. The fact is they are moving output from road to rail now and that's undeniably carbon reduction. Its not a vague aspiration for the future.

There are often more than one train per hour passing through Oranmore.

Yes, there is prep surveying happening.

But please note that the planning application for the 1km passing loop has not been submitted yet.

Any attempt to make a business case by moving pre existing traffic flows would fail unless they could show some exceptionally beneficial replacement use for those slots

Even if it's a shorter distance going Claremorris > Limerick > Waterford, I doubt it is a faster journey time. The driver would have to change ends in Limerick and it is a poor quality route riddled with LCs.

If the AIRR is of any use, it would examine the costs and benefits of reopening Athenry - Claremorris v double tracking Portarlington - Athlone. I'd be confident that the extra paths created from the double tracking would be hugely beneficial whereas the Athenry - Claremorris reopening would be of little use due to lack of paths in all directions out of Athenry.

The direct curve you have shown at Limerick, from the Athenry direction towards Waterford, goes right through an industrial estate. Good luck with that.

By comparison, a direct curve from the Cork main line onto the Waterford line south of Cherryville Junction would be across open fields (with 2 bridges under major roads) and would make for very large cost and time savings by avoiding running around at Kildare.

Combined with longer loops and some doubling between Portarlington and Athlone, this would enable much more freight and passenger traffic to and from the West

Do trains have to slow down when crossing LC?