Cross-border review of rail network officially launched

I've said this before but Metrolink extension to Donabate Dart station seems a no-brainer, and it's disappointing it's not in the current plans. Other than a bridge over the M1 it would be fairly cheap.

Donabate isn't realistic given the development all around the station. Rusk & Lusk is ideal as there is plenty of space there. You'd also need two more heavy rail platforms too I'd say. Ideally the Metro platforms would be built across under the heavy rail platforms to facilitate ease of transfer between systems.

Given how averse they were spending 300m on the GL tie in, they might have been worried that any extension north might have sunk the entire project. Unfortunately I think we are lucky that ML is still going at all despite it facing near complete opposition.

Disagree, GL upgrade very nearly sunk the whole project, and there have been countless articles about the impact on the inner city and cost in particular. It's quiet now as it's still with ABP for RO but the usual suspects (McDowell, McDonald etc) will make their way out of the woodwork onto Newstalk guest panels whenever ABP comes with its decision

He never did oppose Luas. In fact his whole opposition of Metro was because he felt that a full Luas network should be built instead.

Interesting piece in the I.T from John FitzGerald: he doesn't let his personal enthusiasm for railways cloud his judgement. While I would disagree with him on some points, he is basically right: inconcentrating on improvements to the existing network rather than all the fantasy stuff which has our politicians and journalists so excited.

This what realists are up against.

Fails to take into account that funding is always limited and that the opportunity costs of railways in Donegal is less rail infrasctucture in areas whare it more urgently needed.

I got the train down to cork from thurles this week and it got me thinking- even electrifying this mainline will be a huge undertaking- had anything even been planned apart from fancy words in reports?

An aside how annoying the cork trains are socket only phone charging! I only brought a cable with me so had to spare the phone for the afternoon!

The fantasists justify enormous spends on these sorts of lines by claiming there'll be an unfathomable economic boom in the towns and villages of rural Ireland because a train service will now pass through it. Point out that at best it will be in an infrequent service and they'll just up the ante, saying tens of millions more should be spent on providing a more frequent service to make it worthwhile, including early mornings, weekends etc.

But is there any evidence of the small towns and villages with rail being vastly more economically successful than those without? Are Ballybrophy, Dromod or Rathmore thriving because a rail line passes through them?

Nitpicking certain parts of the report is madness. Less than 1% of the proposed spend is on lines such as Letterkenny-Derry, Portadown-Mullingar and is well down the priority list of things we need done. However the purpose of this report wasn't what we should be spending money on in the next 10 years rather than the next 50.

There are certain things which we will have to spend money on if we want to hold onto our national railways at all, such as rolling stock and track upgrades etc. But if we want to move away from ribbon development towards urbanisation of certain regions in the west, decent train services with sensible local buses tying it together is *how you achieve this*.

Would Kent have the platform capacity for this once platforms 5 and 6 are being used for commuter services.

I'm not arguing against electrification, I'm saying it's the only option and should have been done decades ago.

Sorry, I clicked on the wrong post: someone else was saying that electrification is not warranted..